Metrics is insanely useful to help inform all kinds of product decisions. The most basic example I can think of, detecting when people aren't using a particular

Metrics is insanely useful to help inform all kinds of product decisions. The most basic example I can think of, detecting when people aren't using a particular feature you've built. I think where it gets tricky and where even FAANG companies fail at, is the intersection of intuition and validation. Intuition can guide you along initially, ie, we need to build this thing because this it could become our differentiator and would be useful. Well then you need some way to validate that your intuition is correct. So how do you do that? At FAANG companies metrics can come from all kinds of sources, not just a few various MixPanel event streams. UX researchers can go out and do real world case studies and bring back statistics. User feedback itself can come through Marketing outreach or surveys. PMs collect research on similar products and add valuable data to goal against. All this to say, when you hear the word Metrics, do not assume it's just a single stream of usage data. Yet still, even when FAANG companies get all these data points from all over, they still make invalid decisions too. It's really hard for everyone! The point I'm making though, use Metrics to help inform, but also understand that Metrics should never become dogma. They will help give clarity in many many things, yes, even early indicators of things. However, they are never going to invent the next big thing. That will be up to your creative teams who work outside the metric bubble to push in different ways to see where things could go.