Two out of three developers do not believe, or are not sure, that the productivity metrics their company uses reflect their real contribution. That is from JetBrains' State of Developer Ecosystem 2025, a survey of 24,534 developers.
What they ask for instead is not fewer metrics. The report says developers consistently want more transparency and clarity about how they are measured.
I think that is the most useful finding in the report for anyone who manages engineers. The challenge with productivity measurement is rarely the number itself. It is that the people being measured cannot see how the number is built, or what it is for. A metric a team helped define and can explain is a different thing from one they discover in a review.
My own view, after years on both sides of these conversations, is that the first question is not which metric to use. It is whether the team would describe the metric the same way the manager does. If they would not, the number is measuring a gap in understanding, not the work.
How much of the way you are measured could you explain to someone outside your team?
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