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"Everyone in the organisation has metrics to meet, and those KPIs affect promotions and pay. If your KPIs are entirely driven by revenue/profit it ..." That is

"Everyone in the organisation has metrics to meet, and those KPIs affect promotions and pay. If your KPIs are entirely driven by revenue/profit it ..." That is how a publicly traded corporation works, whether you or I like it or not. When you get a listing on stock exchanges you are asking for investment from Tom, Dick and Harry. In return you sell your soul errr provide a return on that investment, in return for more investment. I remember when I dumped Altavista from my browser and started using the cool new Google "Do no evil". I still have a pretty early gmail address, when it was invite only and 1GB looked like close to infinity or at least pretty bloody huge. I don't put anything useful into a Google thingie because I value my stuff. I'll be changing my search engine quite soon too. It is all rather soulless and that is what saddens me. The whole raison d'etre for Google in the early days was to do good stuff, innovative engineering and so on. Then the profit motive or bust took over. It doesn't _have_ to but it did. Sadly the two cool kids with wonderful ideas were infected with the lust for world dominance or avarice or both. I don't know what Google would look like if it had stayed private and stuck to what appear to be its initial values. I do suspect that Brin and his mate would still have been rich beyond my wildest dreams, along with a lot of other people. MS would have probably bought them or tried to.

checkyoursudo 3y ago
I think that c-suite-shareholders and manager-shareholders generally make these decisions to pump their own investments in the company, and not directly for Tom, Dick, and Harry-shareholders. TD&H benefit, and will complain and drive the share price down if returns are not satisfactory, but the only effect of share prices being driven down is that c-suite-shareholders and manager-shareholders cannot cash out with as big of a sack of money. So, I don't think that is how publicly traded companies HAVE to work, but yes that is how they do work. Managers do the best to pump the stock for their own personal gain, and who gives a damn if it fails long term because they want to be gone before then anyway. Anyway, just my cynical view. I have no empirical evidence.
aprdm 3y ago
Not every company listed runs on a kpi framework
hakfoo 3y ago
"You Get What You Measure" means you have to be smart about what metrics you pick. Instead, we've got a lot of really stupid, but "easy to track" metrics. Today's top-line is easy to track, how much you've burnt through customer goodwill for tomorrow isn't. You also see a lot of metrics engineered to be gamed. NPS probably meant something in some early original use case, but it's turned into the universal consensus that we're not allowed to actually say "I only got 4.5 star service" out of fear the $10-per-hour schlub giving us that service will be punished for things outside his control. I wonder-- we know what theoretical research for things in CS and IT look like, but are the "academic" sides of business schools trying to come up with better metrics?

checkyoursudo 3y ago

I think that c-suite-shareholders and manager-shareholders generally make these decisions to pump their own investments in the company, and not directly for Tom, Dick, and Harry-shareholders. TD&H benefit, and will complain and drive the share price down if returns are not satisfactory, but the only effect of share prices being driven down is that c-suite-shareholders and manager-shareholders cannot cash out with as big of a sack of money. So, I don't think that is how publicly traded companies HAVE to work, but yes that is how they do work. Managers do the best to pump the stock for their own personal gain, and who gives a damn if it fails long term because they want to be gone before then anyway. Anyway, just my cynical view. I have no empirical evidence.

aprdm 3y ago

Not every company listed runs on a kpi framework

hakfoo 3y ago

"You Get What You Measure" means you have to be smart about what metrics you pick. Instead, we've got a lot of really stupid, but "easy to track" metrics. Today's top-line is easy to track, how much you've burnt through customer goodwill for tomorrow isn't. You also see a lot of metrics engineered to be gamed. NPS probably meant something in some early original use case, but it's turned into the universal consensus that we're not allowed to actually say "I only got 4.5 star service" out of fear the $10-per-hour schlub giving us that service will be punished for things outside his control. I wonder-- we know what theoretical research for things in CS and IT look like, but are the "academic" sides of business schools trying to come up with better metrics?