The Productivity Delusion: Gizmos, Resentment Metrics, and the Art of Deleting Code

About this episode

Dorota and Warren discuss the subjective nature of engineering productivity and challenge traditional metrics of value in software development.

Share Episode                     Dorota, CEO of Authress , returns to apply the US Supreme Court’s definition of obscenity to a scandalous topic: Engineering Productivity. In a world obsessed with AI-driven efficiency, Dorota and Warren argue that software development productivity has nothing to do with manufacturing "gizmos" and everything to do with feelings. They dismantle the factory-floor mentality that equates typing speed with value, suggesting instead that the most productive work often happens while staring out a train window or disassociating in the shower.           The conversation takes a dark turn into the reality of performance reviews. If productivity is subjective, how do you decide who gets promoted? Dorota proposes the "Resentment Metric"—ignoring Jira tickets in favor of figuring out who the team has secret concerns fo. They also roast the "100% utilization" fallacy, noting that a fully utilized highway is just a parking lot, and the same logic applies to engineering teams that don't schedule downtime for actual thinking…

People in this episode

Host: Warren

Guest: Dorota

Topics covered

• engineering productivity
• AI-driven efficiency
• performance reviews
• Resentment Metric
• deleting code
• software development

Keywords

• productivity
• engineering
• performance reviews
• software development
• Resentment Metric
• AI efficiency
• deleting code

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Authress

Books & works: DORA 2025 Report

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