> Using work design theory, we created a set of research hypotheses, developed questions, and surveyed more than 20 industry-diverse companies.
So it's a bunch of surveys, not experimental data; AFAICT nothing here distinguishes ex. "devs who understand their code are productive" from "devs who are productive develop an understanding of the code". But forget correlation/causation, because it turns out their claims - even in the linked "research" is about how people feel, not their actual effectiveness - choice quotes are
> developers who report a high degree of understanding of their code feel 42% more productive
or
> Developers who have a significant amount of time carved out for deep work feel 50 percent more productive compared with those lacking in dedicated time
Notice that there's no attempt to objectively see if those feelings are true! SLoC might be poor, but you could look at literally any objective measure to proxy actual productivity and be better off than this!
So for all that I'd like to believe them, and all that the claims could actually be true, this is just a bunch of meaningless nonsense that barely qualifies as "data" and certainly shouldn't be taken seriously as "research".
So it's a bunch of surveys, not experimental data; AFAICT nothing here distinguishes ex. "devs who understand their code are productive" from "devs who are productive develop an understanding of the code". But forget correlation/causation, because it turns out their claims - even in the linked "research" is about how people feel, not their actual effectiveness - choice quotes are
> developers who report a high degree of understanding of their code feel 42% more productive
or
> Developers who have a significant amount of time carved out for deep work feel 50 percent more productive compared with those lacking in dedicated time
Notice that there's no attempt to objectively see if those feelings are true! SLoC might be poor, but you could look at literally any objective measure to proxy actual productivity and be better off than this!
So for all that I'd like to believe them, and all that the claims could actually be true, this is just a bunch of meaningless nonsense that barely qualifies as "data" and certainly shouldn't be taken seriously as "research".