A shorter function is a great side effect but it should never be the point. I want someone who can do things like: find obsolete code, create a better algorithm, decides on a better language for the task. If I say that a system is bad because it's 200,000 lines, I may discover that developers are really good at removing comments and obfuscating code to "improve" it down to 150,000 lines. If I come up with specific performance improvements, and state clear expectations such as "find functions we never use", I end up with a more maintainable system.
