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Goodhart's Law: “when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law https://en.m.wikipedia.org/

Goodhart's Law: “when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law

dpq 3y ago
It sounds like a profound wisdom and on a very surface level it does make sense, but think of this: if you can assess that a measure is a bad one, this means that you have your own intrinsic preferences, otherwise you wouldn't be able to tell that! Therefore, if you are unhappy with a measure, it means solely that it doesn't capture all of your preferences properly. Which is a technical problem rather than a philosophical one.
- OJFord 3y ago
  It ceases to be a good measure: it captured your preferences properly prior to becoming a target.
- digitalsushi 3y ago
  good == honest in this context
- constantly 3y ago
  What your saying sounds like profound next level wisdom and on a very surface level does make sense, but think of this: an org can create a measure that captures the relevant preferences properly, and everyone is quite happy with the results because the team continues or slightly modifies what they’re doing and lifts up the product to lift up the measurement and life is good. And then over time they start realizing they don’t have to lift up the whole product, but just a small piece to increase the measurement. So they do that and the measurement goes up, but the product doesn’t get better because they’ve found the path of least resistance to raising the measure. This is really the underlying crux of Goodharts Law. So it was a good measure probably until it became a target. So what is a manager to do? “Capture all [the] preferences properly” as you put it? Probably not because that quickly devolves from measurements to long form status reports, not even measurements, because it’s impossible to capture all dimensions of this with measurements, so one has to reduce the dimensionality a little. This is a philosophical problem not a technical one. Though your point does seem superficially correct, in practice with real teams the second and third order effects from the measure becoming a target dominate.
- xavxav 3y ago
  > It sounds like a profound wisdom and on a very surface level it does make sense, but think of this: if you can assess that a measure is a bad one, this means that you have your own intrinsic preferences, otherwise you wouldn't be able to tell that! That assumes that the ones working towards a specific KPI are both the ones noticing the metric is bad and that their are noticing it before the negative consequences have destroyed their product / company. Often when the issue of optimizing to KPI comes up, it seems that exterior people notice the problem but not interior ones, or otherwise the issue is noticed after the fact but not before a meaningful change could be affected.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- littlestymaar 3y ago
  > Therefore, if you are unhappy with a measure, it means solely that it doesn't capture all of your preferences properly. Which is a technical problem rather than a philosophical one. Here, you're assuming that the space of possibilities is an ordered set. But it's probably not, so your “technical problem” is in fact a mathematical impossibility. With KPIs, you push people to maximize a very-straightforward-but-fundamentally-flawed metric, instead of relying on their own judgment. Or when not trusting your employees end up having them behave like brainless bots.
- grey-area 3y ago
  The aphorism is pointing out that if something is made a target, people will game the target, even if that has very bad effects on the company or product. So even a good measurement is vulnerable to this problem.
- mordae 3y ago
  You can't really align (hahahaha, hahahahaaaaaaa, align, anyway) stated goals of a company under capitalism with actual goals, because there are multiple competing games being played at various levels and when you actually pick a level and make their goals explicit, an actual class war would quickly ensue.
sph 3y ago
Also related, the perverse incentive and the cobra effect. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive
- Ialdaboth 3y ago
  Both are almost unavoidable when your management layers grow beyond a certain level. Most of the complexity, inefficiency and the related failures in today corporate and institutional world is driven by too much management. The map has become the territory.
digitalsushi 3y ago
We have this 5,800 line long shell script that does our testing. The framework records the exit code. They started logging the exit code to a dashboard. So now line 2 is exit 0.
- quickthrower2 3y ago
  You have a … wat?
- mrweasel 3y ago
  So you're not testing anymore, because a failed test would show up on someones dashboard?
  - david-gpu 3y ago
    This has to be a joke. One way or the other.
    - mrweasel 3y ago
      I would hope so, but I can see it in an environment where you're penalized for "incidents". Take the AWS dashboard, it almost never show any downtime and based on comments on HN that's because it would have a negative on the team in charge of the failing service.
    - tgv 3y ago
      The anxiety in your comment is almost palpable. Let me heighten it a bit. Some time ago, there was a post about obtaining minimal code coverage. They achieved this by adding a number of useless statements for every increase in code size. I also really hope that's not true. http://reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/11dou0s/found_this_at_work_someone_padded_a_repo_with/ http://reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/11dou0s/found_t...
      - david-gpu 3y ago
        TIHI. I refuse to believe it for my sanity's sake.

Goodhart's Law: “when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law

dpq 3y ago

It sounds like a profound wisdom and on a very surface level it does make sense, but think of this: if you can assess that a measure is a bad one, this means that you have your own intrinsic preferences, otherwise you wouldn't be able to tell that! Therefore, if you are unhappy with a measure, it means solely that it doesn't capture all of your preferences properly. Which is a technical problem rather than a philosophical one.

OJFord 3y ago
It ceases to be a good measure: it captured your preferences properly prior to becoming a target.
digitalsushi 3y ago
good == honest in this context
constantly 3y ago
What your saying sounds like profound next level wisdom and on a very surface level does make sense, but think of this: an org can create a measure that captures the relevant preferences properly, and everyone is quite happy with the results because the team continues or slightly modifies what they’re doing and lifts up the product to lift up the measurement and life is good. And then over time they start realizing they don’t have to lift up the whole product, but just a small piece to increase the measurement. So they do that and the measurement goes up, but the product doesn’t get better because they’ve found the path of least resistance to raising the measure. This is really the underlying crux of Goodharts Law. So it was a good measure probably until it became a target. So what is a manager to do? “Capture all [the] preferences properly” as you put it? Probably not because that quickly devolves from measurements to long form status reports, not even measurements, because it’s impossible to capture all dimensions of this with measurements, so one has to reduce the dimensionality a little. This is a philosophical problem not a technical one. Though your point does seem superficially correct, in practice with real teams the second and third order effects from the measure becoming a target dominate.
xavxav 3y ago
> It sounds like a profound wisdom and on a very surface level it does make sense, but think of this: if you can assess that a measure is a bad one, this means that you have your own intrinsic preferences, otherwise you wouldn't be able to tell that! That assumes that the ones working towards a specific KPI are both the ones noticing the metric is bad and that their are noticing it before the negative consequences have destroyed their product / company. Often when the issue of optimizing to KPI comes up, it seems that exterior people notice the problem but not interior ones, or otherwise the issue is noticed after the fact but not before a meaningful change could be affected.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
littlestymaar 3y ago
> Therefore, if you are unhappy with a measure, it means solely that it doesn't capture all of your preferences properly. Which is a technical problem rather than a philosophical one. Here, you're assuming that the space of possibilities is an ordered set. But it's probably not, so your “technical problem” is in fact a mathematical impossibility. With KPIs, you push people to maximize a very-straightforward-but-fundamentally-flawed metric, instead of relying on their own judgment. Or when not trusting your employees end up having them behave like brainless bots.
grey-area 3y ago
The aphorism is pointing out that if something is made a target, people will game the target, even if that has very bad effects on the company or product. So even a good measurement is vulnerable to this problem.
mordae 3y ago
You can't really align (hahahaha, hahahahaaaaaaa, align, anyway) stated goals of a company under capitalism with actual goals, because there are multiple competing games being played at various levels and when you actually pick a level and make their goals explicit, an actual class war would quickly ensue.

sph 3y ago

Also related, the perverse incentive and the cobra effect. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive

Ialdaboth 3y ago
Both are almost unavoidable when your management layers grow beyond a certain level. Most of the complexity, inefficiency and the related failures in today corporate and institutional world is driven by too much management. The map has become the territory.

digitalsushi 3y ago

We have this 5,800 line long shell script that does our testing. The framework records the exit code. They started logging the exit code to a dashboard. So now line 2 is exit 0.

quickthrower2 3y ago
You have a … wat?
mrweasel 3y ago
So you're not testing anymore, because a failed test would show up on someones dashboard?
- david-gpu 3y ago
  This has to be a joke. One way or the other.
  - mrweasel 3y ago
    I would hope so, but I can see it in an environment where you're penalized for "incidents". Take the AWS dashboard, it almost never show any downtime and based on comments on HN that's because it would have a negative on the team in charge of the failing service.
  - tgv 3y ago
    The anxiety in your comment is almost palpable. Let me heighten it a bit. Some time ago, there was a post about obtaining minimal code coverage. They achieved this by adding a number of useless statements for every increase in code size. I also really hope that's not true. http://reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/11dou0s/found_this_at_work_someone_padded_a_repo_with/ http://reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/11dou0s/found_t...
    - david-gpu 3y ago
      TIHI. I refuse to believe it for my sanity's sake.