> the only meaningful measurement is business value That's true for the business. But the business is not always the unique and only incentive in work, general

> the only meaningful measurement is business value That's true for the business. But the business is not always the unique and only incentive in work, generally speaking. > Those decisions are usually decided from higher up than developers. This depends a lot on the team structure and culture and size you are in. My first 5 years as a junior developer in a ~100 people software company, a LOT was up to developers/sysadmin left alone to design, triage, prioritise and deliver too without the supervision of a product owner or manager (which was the CTO, the role/concept of architect/PM/PO did not really exist in that environment at the time - circa 2004). I have never felt as productive and fulfilled, neither have been in a similarly fluid and flowing project since then. Sure we delivered. The company still went down for unrelated reasons. So was it productive really? In retrospect, 20 years later, what would have been really more productive (both tech-wise and business-wise)? Spinning off 3/4 internal technologies into collaborative, but dedicated small startups.