Duolingo’s product and growth teams fell into a Moloch [1] trap. “From a god’s-eye-view, we can optimize the system to “everyone agrees to stop doing this at o

Duolingo’s product and growth teams fell into a Moloch [1] trap. “From a god’s-eye-view, we can optimize the system to “everyone agrees to stop doing this at once”, but no one within the system is able to effect the transition without great risk to themselves.” Each individual team is incentivized to drive their metric forward. Done together as a whole company, this leads to all metrics dropping. [1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/