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Comment by oxfordmale | Hacker News Reader

According to Goodhart's Law, when a measure becomes a target, it cease to be a good measure.

For example, I have just written a Snowflake stored procedure that auto generates SQL code and then executes it. I am going to call this stored procedure from multiple places in my Python codebase. Now if my manager would look at the number of lines of code I would still write the stored procedure, however, rather than auto executing the SQL code, I would just copy and paste the auto generated code into my Python codebase increasing my LOC for that week.

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> Now if my manager would look at the number of lines of code I would still write the stored procedure, however, rather than auto executing the SQL code, I would just copy and paste the auto generated code into my Python codebase increasing my LOC for that week.

Not everyone panders exclusively to optimizing grading metrics. I wouldn’t do that even if my manager looked at lines of code because I care about the quality of my work. I’m confident a lot of people share my sentiment.

You wouldn’t, but maybe some other people on your team would, or maybe some other team. Even if it’s just a small minority, all of a sudden you’re performing worse than them, despite doing an objectively better job. Hence, it’s not a good measure.

Sure, maybe if your manager passively mentioned looking at the stat, you wouldn't. If your manager brought it up in performance reviews as a reason you weren't getting a raise or being promoted, or suggested you might be laid off if you didn't get your LOC metric up, you would immediately change your behavior (or hopefully quit).

If you are already good, productive professionals, than what is the point of counting lines of code at all?

If you are trying to use lines of code to measure productivity, the only reason is because you think some members of the team are not being productive. Sure, the good and productive team members won’t try to game the metrics… but the bad programmers, who you are trying to find, sure will.

The good programmers won’t game the system, but that doesn’t matter because they are going to be fine no matter how they are evaluated. So what is the point of measuring lines of code? You aren’t gaining any new information.

Up to 50% bonus based on this “performance metric” … what about now?

Bottom 10% get fired each year. What about now?

So its ok to measure, but dont turn it into a target.

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