Navigara

The distribution of engineering output — across developers, across commits

Window 90d · 19,778 commits · 683 engineers

Abstract

For every engineer and every commit merged in the selected window, we compute the Engineering-Throughput-Value (ETV). This page replaces aggregate totals with three complementary statistical views of how that quantity distributes across each population.

Reading engineers and commits side-by-side separates a people story (output tracks individual capability) from a commits story (output tracks the size of merged changes).

How ETV is measured

Histogram

The empirical density, binned linearly and clipped at the 99th percentile with an overflow bucket so tail outliers don't dominate the visual.

Lorenz curve

The cumulative share of total ETV produced by the bottom p · 100% of the sorted population; L(p) = p is perfect equality, and the further L sags below the diagonal, the more concentrated the distribution.

Gini coefficient

G = 1 − 2 ∫ L(p) dp, with G ∈ [0, 1], is a scalar summary (0 = uniform contribution, 1 = all mass in a single entity); reported alongside the top-20% share and the p90/p50 ratio as redundant sanity checks.

1Developer distribution

How ETV is spread across active engineers in the selected window. A flat histogram means the team contributes evenly; a long right tail means a few top engineers carry most of the output. The Lorenz curve bends toward the bottom-right in proportion to that concentration.

Gini coefficient
0.76
strong concentration
Top-20% share
79%
top 137 of 683 engineers
p90 / p50
11×
15.1 ETV vs. 1.4 ETV

Figure 1 · Engineers per ETV bucket

Read each bar as: "there are this many engineers whose total ETVin the selected window falls in this bucket." Linear x-axis, clipped at p99 with an overflow bin on the far right.

Figure 2 · Cumulative share of ETV across engineers

Read a point (x, y) as: "the bottom x% of engineers produced y% of the total ETV." Dashed diagonal = perfect equality. The further the curve sags below it, the more output is concentrated in the top few.

2Commit distribution

How ETV is spread across individual commits. Most commits are small; a few large ones carry disproportionate weight. The histogram uses a log x-axis because the distribution is heavy-tailed — on a linear axis everything collapses into the first bar.

Gini coefficient
0.70
strong concentration
Top-20% share
72%
top 3,956 of 19,778 commits
p90 / p50
7.5×
0.5 ETV vs. 0.1 ETV

Figure 3 · Commits per ETV bucket (log-spaced bins)

Read each bar as: "there are this many commits whose ETVfalls in this bucket." Buckets are spaced logarithmically because the distribution is heavy-tailed — on a linear axis everything collapses into the leftmost bar.

Top 10 by ETV

Bottom 10 by ETV

Figure 4 · Cumulative share of ETV across commits

Read a point (x, y) as: "the smallest x% of commits account for y% of the total ETV." Diagonal = every commit contributes the same. The deeper the curve sags, the more a handful of large commits carry the window.

3Head-to-head

Is ETV a people story or a commits story? The same output, viewed two ways — once as how it piles up across engineers, once as how it piles up across individual commits.

Figure 5 · Engineer vs. commit Lorenz curves

Same Lorenz framing as Figures 2 and 4, overlaid. The x-axis is the bottom x% of whichever thing you're sorting; the y-axis is the share of total ETV they produce. Dashed diagonal = perfect equality. The deeper a curve sags, the more concentrated that dimension is.

Engineers · Gini 0.76Commits · Gini 0.70

Figure 6 · Volume vs. complexity per engineer

Each dot is one of 683 engineers active in the selected window: x = commits shipped, y = average ETV per commit. Dashed lines mark the median on each axis. Upper-left = complexity specialists, lower-right = volume merchants, upper-right = balanced stars, lower-left = peripheral.