"I think it could be around 40% more productive." Why do you think this? What metrics do you have to support this thought? The one thing I wish managers ever

"I think it could be around 40% more productive." Why do you think this? What metrics do you have to support this thought? The one thing I wish managers everywhere would burn into their memory is this, "If you can't measure productivity outside of time spent in chair (looking at code), then you're not actually measuring productivity." Productivity should be measured based on whether or not a team is meeting both their team goals as well as the team's individuals meeting their own goals. These goals need to be clear and realistic. A manager that is setting unrealistic, vague, or otherwise unclear goals is a problem. When teams and individuals repeatedly meet their goals then you can increase the amount and/or difficulty. Or if it is an agile shop, the team should be increasing their "velocity" or whatever metric is used to determine work done, you shouldn't be left with too many empty days in a sprint. If you increase the amount of work or difficulty of work and these individuals are still looking at investment/finance websites after accomplishing their goals, then it is likely that you as the manager were under-utilizing the skills of the individuals on your team. The other important thing to remember is that engineers get blocked. Sometimes more frequently than is desirable. When this happens, managers need to get involved in order to work with others in the organization to alleviate the block and potentially alter processes for the long-term.