How to prove your code quality is better than just "fixing bugs" (and stop LoC-based performance reviews)

#career #codequality #productivity #softwareengineering

The Problem: We are measuring developers the wrong way

Most managers measure "productivity" by the number of tickets closed or lines of code written. But we all know the truth: you can write 1,000 lines of spaghetti code that introduces technical debt, or you can write 10 lines of elegant, maintainable code that saves the company months of refactoring later.

The problem is that traditional SAST tools only tell us when we’ve done something wrong (security bugs, syntax errors). They don’t tell us when we’ve done something right (improving maintainability, modularity, and health).
Enter the ISO/IEC 25010 Standard

A few months ago, I started looking into the ISO/IEC 25010 standard. It’s an international benchmark for software quality that breaks code down into:

Maintainability
Functional Suitability
Performance Efficiency
Security

I wanted a way to automate this analysis so I could see my own progress as an engineer. That's why I've been working with Cyclopt Companion.

What is Cyclopt Companion?

Cyclopt Companion is a research-backed SAST tool that doesn't just look for "vulnerabilities." It uses ML-powered ranges to evaluate your code against those ISO standards.

Here’s how it changed my workflow:

The Developer Profile (My "Code CV")
Instead of a resume that just says "I know React," I now have a Developer Profile. It shows a high-fidelity breakdown of my actual coding contributions. It tracks my technical debt trends and proves that I am a "clean coder."
Shifting from "Bug Hunting" to "Health Monitoring"
Most tools yell at you for a missing semicolon. Companion looks at the Maintainability Index. It caught a piece of logic I wrote that was technically "correct" but so complex that it would have been a nightmare for a teammate to edit next month.
Integration where I actually work
I don’t want to open another dashboard. It integrates directly into my GitHub/GitLab flow, so I get the feedback during the PR process.

How to get started (It's Free)

If you want to stop the "lines of code" argument with your manager and start showing the real architectural value of your work, you can try it out: