Toxic metrics: story points, commits, and other creative ways to fool yourself

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

There are many ways to wreck a development team.

You can force them to use a framework nobody asked for, make them estimate every last comma in a four-hour meeting, or —my personal favorite— slap the wrong metrics on them and call it “data-driven management.” It sounds polished, plays great in a slide deck, and the damage takes just long enough to show up that whoever’s responsible has already been promoted.

Rewriting from scratch: 'hold my beer'

Fri, 10 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Every developer hears that little voice sooner or later.

It shows up on some random afternoon, after wrestling with a chunk of code that looks like it was written out of spite, and it whispers something like: “this thing is a dumpster fire; give me a couple of weeks and I’ll rebuild the whole thing from scratch, clean and proper.” It speaks with the confidence of someone who’s already lost their patience, with a certain contempt for everything that’s been built so far, and with an almost religious faith that this “new me” finally, truly knows how to do things right.

Software Engineering on I am Lino

Toxic metrics: story points, commits, and other creative ways to fool yourself

Rewriting from scratch: 'hold my beer'