I've seen some of the worst developers commit more LOCs than others (churn in badly written code, or "cut-and-paste hell"). I've also seen developers sandbaggin

I've seen some of the worst developers commit more LOCs than others (churn in badly written code, or "cut-and-paste hell"). I've also seen developers sandbagging the metric (as well as artificially inflating code coverage measurements) by checking in fluff code; a null check on every pointer or reference parameter can get you 5-10 lines of actual live and executable code that is practically guaranteed bug-free and politically correct, even for functions you haven't really started implementing yet. Saw this being used in a USB stack once, it had been worked on by serial contractors and was a real eye-opener (when we got it, it was 5K LOC or so; we whacked it down to about 1100 LOC by removing a bunch of badly-motivated layers; removing the junk sped it up quit a bit, too). My position is that if you're evaluating people by comparing metrics, you're probably a terrible manager.