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Comment by noasaservice | Hacker News Reader

I work in system engineering/architecture. My job is some of hardest to even tell if we work.

I've been back and forth with multiple managers and C levels that any metric chosen can and will be gamed. But they again and again want some quality assessment to use.

For a while, they used tickets closed. So we all started submitting BS tickets to do tasks like "send email". You all can imagine the inanity of that.

From my experiences there is no good way to track... Well, perhaps having a grab bag of conflicting performance metrics, and then choosing one at random? (But again, even that can be gamed)

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At the level you're talking about, it sounds like you should use similar metrics those managers use. Revenue/expense of the systems they oversee or business value of initiatives under your purview.

Not that that would be useful for anyone. Managers will get away with saying they "grew revenue by $10 million per year" or "reduced expenses by 20%" despite that being mostly BS unconnected with their actions or choices. I don't see why you couldn't get the same level of credit.

The solution is to never reveal the metrics used and to rely on many metrics to evaluate.

Singular metric evaluation, like the growth model insanity, is how we end up with massive companies making no profit but somehow subsidizing their services to users.

In my experience metrics aren't used to evaluate. They are used to justify decisions management has already made.

Management will never tell you, but they almost certainly have hidden metrics (or, simply, biases). But the discovery of such hidden metrics would destroy the image of the egalitarian work environment they like to promote. Much like in The Wire, you come to a conclusion and then work backwards with the metrics to find your support.

Yeah, I can see that.

Golden parachute, just gotta get some nice stats on the resume

I'm convinced at this point that the real way to manage an organization is to only manage some small number of people you can track in your head, maybe 10, and they do the same. Instead, I see all these insanely complicated work-tracking tools that are somehow supposed to tell someone levels up who I've scarcely met how I'm doing.

You could look at my team's tickets all day and never understand how things are going. Or you could interview anyone on the team for 5 minutes and get a real answer. Massive projects are inputted as full-on DAGs of tickets, but the real tracking is done in a way simpler text doc or spreadsheet somewhere, or in someone's head.

"they again and again want some quality assessment to use"

It sounds like they want something quantitative not qualitative. They both have their place, and one sort of measure without the other is missing a big part of the picture.

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