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While this is a personal feeling and I don't have any data (metrics) to back it up: I think a large percentage (and probably a majority) of metrics don't end up
by bdavisx 10y ago
While this is a personal feeling and I don't have any data (metrics) to back it up: I think a large percentage (and probably a majority) of metrics don't end up helping a company once they are created - especially if any salary or bonuses are based on them. They are always so gamed that they become worthless.
This is a great case in point if true.
- SomeStupidPoint 10y agoAmazon has metrics so they can tell a story, not so they can measure things. As a cute example, one of their senior people (in a stats heavy role) couldn't explain how they'd detect if people wanted to be able to automatically order socks and tshirts on a buying cycle outside of what I call the "scheduling horizon", eg every 3-6mos. (Things I need regularly, but sparsely enough it doesn't stand out to do proactively -- eg, I buy socks when they all have holes, not on a reasonable replacement cycle.)
- rab-the-goat 10y agoYour point hits on a true thing. One problem is that companies measure proxies for performance, not performance itself. A great book on the topic (and related topics) is Weapons of Math Destruction. Anyway, a green checkbox is pretty far into proxie-land. It's not very closely related to client retention or profitability, and now we see it's not even related to operational time of the equipment. Yikes. So a proxy like this is not even worth using as a metric; it can only cause false confidence that some information is known, and that leads to bad decisions. Not the least of which is bonusing incompetent managers.