Managers can and should watch whatever metrics they can collect passively, and they should absolutely talk to their teams and assess productivity. But it’s not an organizational metric that can be measured without crushing the life out of the team.

An example is the folks that generate enormous lift by enabling others to produce better faster delivery in the code base. They work relentlessly but never change code. They’re the most valuable engineer you have, and are frankly in my experience what a 10x engineer must be. Are they unproductive? How do you measure their contribution?

The only answer is by watching them work and understanding the team dynamic and just letting them do what magic they do.

But this is actually hard work for managers and requires introspection and empathy most managers lack. Most managers are there to monitor widget production, promote people along the level guidance by the metrics, report status to their managers, and give delivery timelines based on all this. These managers strangle engineering by their attempts to measure.

I call this the Heisenberg uncertainty principle of software engineering.