Why cost per customer interaction is a better metric for engineering performance

People have been laughing at this take from Brian Armstrong but it’s not really any different than engineering leaders over-indexing on any other output metric. Counting story points completed, number of pull requests merged or lines of code shipped are equally poor measurements of an engineering team. They can be useful if they form just one piece of how you measure your team but using them as your primary goal is always a mistake. If you are only measuring the output of your team and not connecting it up to the outcomes or value it delivers you will likely be led down the wrong path. Metrics will be going up and to the right while the software suffers and your customer’s lives made harder. A true measure of team performance only comes when you have the full picture of output, outcomes and value!

How to spot and unblock engineering bottlenecks Learn how your team can identify and fix what’s really slowing them down. The post How to spot and unblock engineering bottlenecks appeared first on LeadDev. Josh Fruhlinger https://lnkd.in/eTrKEMGp

Most software teams struggle not because of talent or effort, but because they can’t see the bottlenecks slowing them down. Measuring engineering performance isn’t about hours or lines of code. It’s about predictable delivery, empowered teams, and real business impact. How does your team currently measure engineering productivity, and is it working?

It still shocks me how many senior people in software confuse extreme engineering with extreme over-engineering culture. Extreme engineering means pursuing ambitious, sometimes unimaginable goals with maximum efficiency (and minimal resources). Anything redundant needs to go. Best part is no part. Extreme engineering requires curiosity, creativity and courage more than just craft.

Knowledge silos slow engineering teams. As teams scale from 50 to 250+ engineers, expert-to-team ratios drop from 1:9 to 1:49, creating bottlenecks that stall delivery. Our latest guide breaks down how these barriers form and provides 5 proven strategies for building shared context at scale. Read it here 👉 https://lnkd.in/gFSWDsDF #FixLearnPrevent #EngineeringProductivity #ScalingTeams

Great engineers don’t just deliver features — they deliver speed. ⚡ Every request your system handles carries a hidden cost in milliseconds. Individually, it feels invisible. At scale, it’s the difference between delight and frustration, between needing 10 servers or 3. Bad engineering repeats work. Good engineering reuses, caches, and simplifies — often cutting execution time by 10× without adding complexity. This is what sets senior engineers apart: they see performance not as an afterthought, but as a core part of design. Because in the end, efficiency isn’t optional — it’s the multiplier that makes everything else possible. 👉 “Every millisecond is either your advantage… or your bottleneck.”

One of our engineers recently spent two weeks investigating a tricky performance issue. At the end of it all, the solution was a single pull request: just 2 lines of code. On paper, it looked insignificant. In reality, it delivered stability at scale and prevented weeks of potential downtime. This is why engineering effectiveness is so nuanced. Measuring productivity by pull requests or coding time gives you, at best, half the picture, cause it lacks context. Some fixes take hundreds of lines of code. Others require the same effort for just two. The best leaders know: one-size-fits-all engineering metrics don’t work. Impact > output. Always. I'm curious to hear how your business measures effectiveness. Do you lean on standard metrics, or build your own playbook? #EngineeringEffectiveness #CTOInsights #TechStrategy #ProductivityMetrics

Every customer request sounds reasonable in isolation. Every competitor feature feels like table stakes. Every stakeholder has "just one small addition." However, we've learned that complexity is the worst enemy of reliability. The Minimal O1 succeeds because it masters three functions, not because it attempts thirty. Our current strategies: For every new feature request: "What can we remove instead?" Measure success by problems solved, not features shipped Make feature advocates prove the case for "yes" But honestly? It's an uphill battle. The pressure to add never stops. Your turn: What's keeping you up at night as an engineer? Technical debt that's become technical bankruptcy? Resource constraints killing your timeline? Quality vs. speed trade-offs? Team scaling challenges? Something else entirely? Drop your challenge below Maybe we can crowdsource some solutions. Sometimes the best engineering insights come from engineers helping engineers. #Engineering #TechChallenges #ProductDevelopment #TeamBuilding #minimalengineering

One thing our clients consistently tell us they value? Engineers who show initiative, think beyond their task, and flag risks early. That doesn’t happen by accident. At Caliber, we teach our engineers how to "manage up". Here are a few of the principles: Think holistically - what are the downstream impacts of this decision? Are there gaps upstream that haven’t been addressed? Communicate proactively - we encourage engineers to send regular status updates, even when they’re not asked for. Small habit, big trust builder. Notice the friction - missing design standards? Inefficient workflows? Repeated rework? Spot the patterns and address them. Don’t assume someone else is onto it - budget slipping? Timeline unrealistic? Speak up. Better to raise a concern early than explain it later. Stay curious - ask questions. Why is this process the way it is? Who else might benefit from what we’re building? These are the qualities that our clients appreciate and that we encourage our engineers to apply to their daily work.

I got engineering management wrong... Not in theory. In timing. I thought clarity came before trust. It doesn’t. Engineering management isn’t just systems and sprints, it’s a trust architecture. Early on, I led like a tactician: clean processes, clear goals, measurable velocity. And it worked, until it didn’t. Then came friction. Silent blockers. Passive compliance. Talent quietly opting out. And I finally saw it: Clarity without trust is noise. 🔁 I shifted. I began to manage context, not control. I began treating engineers not as resources, but as strategists. The result? Buy-in got easier. Ownership increased. Velocity came back, with alignment. We don’t manage engineers. We build conditions where they can win.