People who are hard working are rewarded more than those spending less time and getting more done
A developer who finishes a task in two hours through experience, automation, or better tooling can appear less hardworking than someone who takes the entire day. The reward for being efficient is often more work, while long hours remain the most visible signal of effort.
This creates the wrong incentive. People learn to look busy instead of improving how they work.
We’re building Meridian to make the work behind outcomes visible, from commits and pull requests to Jira updates and meetings, without requiring developers to document everything manually. It’s fully open source and free for individuals.
We’re currently #1 on Product Hunt, which suggests this problem resonates with more people than we expected.
Should performance be measured by hours worked, output delivered, or something else?
Replies
Output delivered is the best starting point, but I’d pair it with quality and leverage: was the promised outcome met, how much defect/rework followed, how quickly did it reach users, and did the work create reusable automation or documentation? Hours are useful for capacity planning, not as a performance score. For Meridian, the important safeguard is letting developers review and contextualize the timeline so “visibility” doesn’t become activity surveillance.