Engineering Manager Princiya Sequeira: "I Never Counted Tickets"

TVS News AI, editorially supervised, presents Engineering Manager Princiya Sequeira: "I Never Counted Tickets".

In many engineering teams, counting tickets is part of everyday life: Who closes how many tasks per sprint? Not so for Princiya Sequeira. The engineering manager at Distrokid deliberately sets different standards — and explains in a newsletter what this has to do with code quality and the well-being of her team.

Sequeira sums up her stance in one clear sentence: "I never counted tickets." Instead of focusing purely on headcount numbers, she turns her attention to what actually drives development — clean code and a climate in which people can work well. The piece is categorized under the topics of work and software development.

What Sequeira says specifically

"It's about the quality of the code and the quality of life of the team members," Sequeira says in the newsletter. The statement connects two points: the technical excellence of the work and the well-being of the people who do it.

It's about the quality of the code and the quality of life of the team members.

What lies behind the sentence

Those who count tickets primarily measure output volume. Those who put code quality in the foreground ask instead: How good is the solution, how sustainable is it — and how are those who build and maintain it doing? Sequeira's brief statement makes clear that for her, both go together.

What we know — and what we don't

Which specific methods, tools or processes Sequeira uses at Distrokid, how large her team is, and what examples she cites in the full newsletter do not emerge from the teaser. Anyone who wants to follow her stance in practice should read the full piece.

Bottom line: Princiya Sequeira sets an example at Distrokid against pure output measurement in engineering. Her sentence "I never counted tickets" fits into a broader debate about how development teams should be meaningfully led and evaluated — with people at the center, not the number.