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I believe the term "Perverse incentive" applies here. I think many people have heard of the story of the British government trying to get rid of Cobras in Delhi
by theologic 5y ago
I believe the term "Perverse incentive" applies here. I think many people have heard of the story of the British government trying to get rid of Cobras in Delhi, so they offered a reward for each Cobra tail.
Enterprising people started to breed Cobras for a little extra income. Thus a program designed to get rid of "bad actors" actually bred bad actors.
Various versions of this story have been told. Another famous one is about rat tails having a reward, thus breeding rats became popular.
Write up of the above and some more examples are on Wikipedia.
- MattGaiser 5y agoMany metrics are also created just for the need for metrics. I am reading a draft of "development metrics" for my company and "frequency of code commits" is right at the top for quantifying developer productivity. The only reason this document exists is that generating quarterly goals is also a metric, which is why I am not afraid of lazy productivity metrics being implemented.