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I have no idea how metrics would be measured unless the work is always the same and trivial. In my job, every problem seems to take a random amount of time. It

by nox101 3y ago

I have no idea how metrics would be measured unless the work is always the same and trivial. In my job, every problem seems to take a random amount of time. It might be the thing I'm assigned is trival and done in 1-2 hrs. It might be it would be trivial but it pointed out an issue elsewhere than needs to be fixed first. It might be trivial but the CI was down for 6hrs. It might be trival but requires some other library to roll to a new version and the roll broke something else. It might look trivial but turns out to need a non trival refactor to work. I ran into that last one yesterday where I started on an issue that seemed like it should be trivial, in an object with different options than it currently has. These objects are cached by their options since they are heavy. The code that gets an existing or new one is 5 levels deep. It creates them from a factory but the info this new issue needs needs to query the factory to figure out the creation options. So, what seemed like a 10-15 min change is going to be several hours to decide how to surface or pass that factory to/from the top level the point being, from outside management is going to see different levels of work. It's not as trivial as "created N widgets an hour" nor is it as trivial as "lines per hour" I feel like there could be lots of unintended consequences with people only taking the smallest tasks or whatever to avoid taking tasks that take longer or to find ways to account things so it looks like they're doing more, etc

ozim 3y ago
This is exactly why I oppose any dashboards with amount of completed tasks per employee. This just gives wrong ideas to the team.
PurpleRamen 3y ago
> I have no idea how metrics would be measured unless the work is always the same and trivial. Don't count the result, but the actual work itself. Meaning, you need to document every little step you do, every command, script, search you have. Write down your thoughts and conclusions, and so on. But this is very annoying, and barely anyone is well-equipped for doing this. And most people have some natural defensive for exposing themselves to this level. Though, it would also be helpful for yourself to be able to review your work. So maybe some balanced middle would be a way to go? Maybe if tools would be designed in a non-annoying way to support this, more people would be willing doing something like this.

by nox101 3y ago

ozim 3y ago

This is exactly why I oppose any dashboards with amount of completed tasks per employee. This just gives wrong ideas to the team.

PurpleRamen 3y ago

> I have no idea how metrics would be measured unless the work is always the same and trivial. Don't count the result, but the actual work itself. Meaning, you need to document every little step you do, every command, script, search you have. Write down your thoughts and conclusions, and so on. But this is very annoying, and barely anyone is well-equipped for doing this. And most people have some natural defensive for exposing themselves to this level. Though, it would also be helpful for yourself to be able to review your work. So maybe some balanced middle would be a way to go? Maybe if tools would be designed in a non-annoying way to support this, more people would be willing doing something like this.