I don't think anyone (sensible) thinks 'if someone only writes 30 lines of code per quarter, they should be immediately fired'. I think the point is more that i

I don't think anyone (sensible) thinks 'if someone only writes 30 lines of code per quarter, they should be immediately fired'. I think the point is more that if you have someone who's only written 30 lines of code, it's worth taking a look to see what they've been doing instead. For sure there may be a thousand good reasons for it, but as a quick heuristic for 'who is worth having a quick check to see if we're getting the value out of them that we're paying them for?', I don't think it's irrational.