This is an unpopular opinion, but I completely disagree. Great people + perceived activity + being there + lines of code + check marks + social skills = happy

This is an unpopular opinion, but I completely disagree. Great people + perceived activity + being there + lines of code + check marks + social skills = happy customers (usually). Mediocre people + perceived activity + being there + lines of code + check marks + social skills = waste of time/money (usually). Great people - (perceived activity + being there + lines of code + check marks + social skills) = happy customers => unicorn scenario (usually). In an ideal world your great people give you acceptable deadlines and consistently deliver high quality software on time. Then you can ignore subjective metrics like time in office, perceived activity, etc. and everyone is happy. This happens once in a blue moon. Most of the time when great things happen people happen to be in office, they look like they're working, and they produce a ton of code. Of course correlation is not causation, so forcing people to produce lots of code and be in the office won't necessarily get you good results. Engineering management is really hard. Please don't trivialize it with feel-good nonsense.