How teams use productivity metrics at LinkedIn | Max Kanat-Alexander (LinkedIn, Google)

The podcast explores strategies for measuring and improving developer productivity, with Max Kanat-Alexander from LinkedIn's Developer Insights Team providing insights. A key focus is on the importance of team adoption of metrics, driven by relevance and integration into existing review processes. Max emphasizes that productivity metrics should primarily target managers, using longer-term trends to identify team pain points rather than individual performance. The discussion highlights the need for custom metrics beyond out-of-the-box solutions due to diverse in-house tools and workflows. Qualitative data, gathered through surveys, complements quantitative metrics by capturing developers' experiences, such as code quality perceptions. A central developer productivity team can steward measurements, ensuring data accuracy and usability across the organization.