Legibility is Ruining You

A provocative critique of how corporate legibility practices — OKRs, code review, velocity metrics, coding standards — erode engineers' genuine values by substituting thin, measurable proxies for rich, contextual judgment. Drawing on Sean Goedecke's related essay and Lorraine Daston's work on rules, the author argues that these processes don't just constrain behavior but actively reshape engineers' values through 'value capture.' The piece urges developers to resist being reduced to legible abstractions and to preserve their authentic, unmeasurable care for the craft.