In a creative job (such as programming) it's extraordinarily difficult to evaluate how valuable someone is, but I would suggest some sort of human valuation ("y

In a creative job (such as programming) it's extraordinarily difficult to evaluate how valuable someone is, but I would suggest some sort of human valuation ("you know it when you see it"), a LIGHT metric used only as a data point (goals and whatnot, any measurable impact on bottom line, or website performance, or some other numbers), and some means of simply measuring how much someone cares about their job, company and career. I think I can tell how much the people I work with care about their job, company and career, I think I could trust most of them to know that about me, and I think that's a good place to start. Metrics-wise perhaps a "spread spectrum" approach that covers so many things that most signs of being "productive" would end up at least reflecting in the numbers, yet would prevent "gaming" of the numbers since so many things are measured. Used only to inform and not base hard decisions on. This would catch both people who care about their job but for whatever reason aren't producing anything measurable, as well as people who have produced but perhaps could produce even more if they were more engaged.