Lines of code is a much better proxy than reported productivity.

It stops being a good proxy if you use it to reward or punish developers, compare different languages, or different types of software. But if you don't do those, it's quite good.

Velocity points is worse, because the current culture implies it will be used to reward or punish developers. But it's probably still better than reported productivity.

In fact, reported productivity is probably one of the worst metrics around. People can't even keep track of how long they spend programing, much less of how much they accomplish.

"Lines of code is a much better proxy than reported productivity."

Researchers who specialize in this field largely disagree with this. Here's a round-up: https://getdx.com/blog/measuring-developer-activity/

You noticed that those quotes are almost all about metrics for rewarding or punishing developers, right?

The point of collecting data is to act on it.

But in this case the individual devs aren't rewarded/punished

Alright, I'm willing to consider that their claims are not merely unsupported but impossible to support, but that's not a better look exactly.

>>>> It's fairly well-established in research (and in practice) that there is no objective measure of developer productivity.

Oh, there is.

Money.

How much do you spend on eng to earn a buck (eng value, infrastructure). Impact of your next project on the bottom line. How much can you save by making a change.

So many bullshit features from engineers, and product people that have FUCK ALL impact on the bottom line. But hey they made you happy, or looked good on your resume to get you the next job...