Episode 130 (rerun of episode 87): Stand up and fight! and Metrics

Published: Oct. 29, 2018, 7 p.m.

This is a rerun of episode 87 from December 14, 2017.

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In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

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    \u2018I\u2019ve been working on a project for the past year with two other senior developers. One of them is the lead, and the other, is my peer. We all have a lot of respect for each others opinions and resolve our engineering disputes amicably.

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    My problem is that sometimes my peer will just give up saying \u201c\u201chave it your way\u201d\u201d etc. I want to have it out with him and evaluate each solution on its merits. I\u2019ve considered saying \u201c\u201cSTAND AND FIGHT YOU MANGY CUR\u201d\u201d, but then looked up \u201c\u201cMangy Cur\u201d\u201d and decided against it.

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    How do i get him to be more vocal about his opinions? (so that i can prove to him that i\u2019m right)

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    I like the idea of measuring things, but I also feel like work \u201cmetrics\u201d are easy to game and hard to make indicative of actual quality work being done / product being produced.

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    In particular I worry when the data collected leads people to choose work that will bump stats rather than lead to better end user experiences / product / maintainable code. What kind of data do you think is useful to collect in terms of developer activity? Can you share some examples of ways you\u2019ve been able to assess your own and your coworkers productivity?

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    I\u2019m interested in this both on a team level and a personal one. How can I get better if I don\u2019t have a way to track what \u201cgood\u201d is for myself? Is trying to turn the complicated and messy thing that is what I actually do all day into a trackable, data driven domain a fool\u2019s errand?

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