> But for many kinds of work, including software development, I've never seen anyone figure out how to quantify individual contributions directly (as Paul Graha

> But for many kinds of work, including software development, I've never seen anyone figure out how to quantify individual contributions directly (as Paul Graham talks about [1]). Maybe your company has fewer of those kinds of jobs. That is true and a fair criticism. I'm only talking about the example of my company, not declaring universal rules. :-)