I personally believe that the best measure of developers' productivity is the "impact" they have, not the number of lines of code they write. Consider a developer who writes thousands of lines of code for projects that have little to no impact on the team, organization, company, or industry (depending on their level). Now, compare that person's productivity to a developer who finds a bug in a service and fixes it by changing just 15 lines of code, resulting in reduced latency, lower product costs, or increased revenue. The contribution doesn't even have to involve code. Someone could write comprehensive onboarding documentation for new hires that cuts their acclimation time in half. This bring a significant saving for the company in the long run, as it could save hundreds of hours in onboarding costs.

I also recommend the book [*Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout*](https://www.amazon.com/Slow-Productivity-Accomplishment-Without-Burnout/dp/0593544854) by Cal Newport. It helps to focus on what matters in the long run.

Senior Software Engineer @ Meta

Mehrdad

Engineers are surprisingly terrible at taking care of themselves. Never forget: A healthy personal life is the foundation for a successful career, not the other way around.

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Communication is both simultaneously the most important and most underrated skill among software engineers. Understanding people (and getting them to understand you) is far more impactful towards your career growth than understanding code.

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What's the difference between a senior and staff engineer? What does it mean to be L3 vs. L4? This playlist, anchored against Big Tech levels, breaks it down.