Measuring "productivity" of any knowledge worker is absurd. From the perspective of measuring job performance, yes that can be measured (some of it is subjecti

Measuring "productivity" of any knowledge worker is absurd. From the perspective of measuring job performance, yes that can be measured (some of it is subjective, not metrics) but not productivity. They are slightly different in that as a manager I want to see people performing well, growing in their career, learning new things, getting work done, etc. If you use the lens of productivity there is a different intent that you can somehow increase productivity by expecting more numbers of X, Y or Z. So if you set a silly goal of close X tickets/month its meaningless and if you tie raises/bonuses to it expect it to be gamed. Instead if you use metrics of things (ticket counts) and look for outliers as an indicator, then that can be helpful if someone is struggling for what could be many different reasons (under-skilled, requirements keep changing, personal life stuff, etc.) Subjective things can be measured but its more of a thumbs-up/down/middle measurement. Being helpful to other people on a software team/mentoring is subjective, so is good software design. Once you start putting numbers on subjective things and expecting better numbers its going to fall apart and be gamed. The problem is with bad or lazy management that wants charts and thinking they can squeeze more out of workers by counting things and "make chart go up".