{
  "id": 8807535,
  "title": "When Your Impact Is No Longer Measured in Pull Requests",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/21/when-your-impact-is-no-longer-measured-in-pull-requests",
  "topic": "tech",
  "section": "Tech",
  "published": "2026-09-21T00:04:20.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Dev.to",
    "slug": "dev-to",
    "url": "https://dev.to/aoligama/when-your-impact-is-no-longer-measured-in-pull-requests-l07"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "After transitioning from a Senior Developer to a Tech Lead, I've come to realize that my definition of productivity has changed. In my previous role, I could gauge productivity through features implemented, bugs fixed, pull requests opened, and technical problems solved. However, as a Tech Lead, these tangible outputs are no longer the sole indicators of success. My day-to-day work now involves planning, product discussions, stakeholder meetings, 1:1s, releases, technical decisions, hiring, security concerns, cross-team dependencies, and more. This shift in focus has led to days where I don't write much code or even any code at all, which can feel strange after years as a developer. GitHub's commit and pull request system, which once served as a visible record of my work, now feels inadequate in capturing the value I bring to the team. The challenge lies in adapting to this new reality and redefining productivity beyond the metrics of traditional development.",
  "summary": "I recently came across a post about the transition from Senior Developer to Tech Lead, and it got me thinking about something I've been experiencing myself: how much your definition of productivity changes when you move into technical leadership. For most of my career as a developer, being productive was pretty easy to recognize. I could look back at my week and see the features I implemented,…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}