Repetitive manual labour seems as good a proxy as any for productivity. It would be nigh on impossible to find such a robust index for software development work, but other modern professions, particularly repetitive ones, e.g. administrative positions, may be an interesting population to study today.
Software specifically is too variable to accurately measure productivity. It's too subjective. Not only from a personal point of view, but also dependent on the task. Given the tendency towards automating the boring tasks, it seems that conducting such a study in the software development world becomes less and less likely.
Software specifically is too variable to accurately measure productivity. It's too subjective. Not only from a personal point of view, but also dependent on the task. Given the tendency towards automating the boring tasks, it seems that conducting such a study in the software development world becomes less and less likely.