If you cannot track, you cannot improve

Key Metrics for Senior Engineers to Track Productivity

As a software engineer, tracking your productivity isn’t just about writing code. It’s also about how you help the team work better, improve the system, and get things done efficiently. It is about learning from failures and improving every day.

As a side note, I started an IG account where I share daily career growth and interview tips and resources. You can follow at hemant_careerbytes

📣 PostHog (Sponsor)

---

Before we start, special thanks for PostHog for sponsoring this week’s newsletter

PostHog is an open-source, all-in-one suite of product and data tools like product analytics, session replays, A/B testing, and surveys.

Product For Engineers is a free newsletter by PostHog dedicated to helping engineers level up their product skills.

Subscribe for free using button below to get curated advice on building great products, lessons (and mistakes) from building PostHog, and deep dives into the strategies of top startups.

---

Coming back to the topic, I will be sharing some key metrics I track every half (6 months) to measure my impact.

1. Code Quality and Review Metrics

• Code Review Speed
  The time I took to review diffs and pull requests. I generally keep a 24 hour window for myself to review all the requests in my list.

  This has a huge impact as it can block others from shipping code and moving forward.
  

• PR Size and Complexity
  Keeping an eye on how big and complicated my diffs or pull requests are. I also keep track of diff versions i.e. how many versions of diff were needed before landing the code.
  Smaller PRs are easier to review, which means fewer mistakes and a cleaner codebase.

• Bugs After Releases
  Counting how many bugs are found after code goes live and if I had to revert any change due to SEV or other failures.

  It is OK for your code to cause SEVs and failures as that will always happen, but if there is a pattern, you need to fix.

2. Architectural and Strategic Contributions

• System Uptime & Stability

  The amount of time my systems run without problems. I generally measure this by keeping track of SEV count, test failures, QA Bugs filed and looking at monitoring dashboards.
  As a senior engineer, keeping systems stable shows how your architectural decisions are and you can learn a lot from this.

• Scalability Metrics

  How well my systems handle growing traffic or usage, such as response times and load capacity. I measure it through regression and stress testing. I often work with my QA partners to figure out what quality initiatives we can run to improve the scalability.

3. Collaboration and Mentorship

• Mentorship
  The amount of time I spend helping others, through things like 1:1s, pair programming, or giving feedback.
  Mentoring junior engineers helps grow the team and improve their skills. You can create much more impact through others.

• Cross-Team Collaboration
  How often I work with other teams in the company. It is very important to collaborate outside your team and find scope or opportunities for your team to grow.
  It often helps to figure out problems which other teams are facing and your team can help them with.

4. Direction and Long-Term Impact

• Projects Lead
  The number of projects or work streams I lead in the half. It is very important to reflect on the learnings and retrospect on those learnings to be a better tech lead.
  

• Influence on Technical Roadmap
  How much I contributed to the org’s roadmap and how I can influence the long-term technical direction.

• Technical Debt

  I always plan to dedicate 10-15% of my bandwidth working on technical debt or better engineering work streams. It is not always possible as higher priority project always take this bandwidth, but I am working on it.

What are some metrics you track to measure your progress and productivity ?

---

I added new tab “Free Resources” on my newsletter home page. Do checkout if you didn’t get a chance yet.