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It makes me question if I've ever seen a metric employed by a company that didn't have a detrimental effect on the happiness of the people involved. We are all unique but we're also really, really similar and it's in those uniquenesses that we find real happiness. But if we're only a number of sales/dollars/tickets/loc then the distinction is a zero-sum game; I only stand to lose a dollar that you make.

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Business is not a zero-sum game, especially not technology businesses that constantly innovate. All sides of the transaction can benefit. Optimizing for profit or similar metrics doesn't inhibit those benefits.

Not necessarily, but it does reorient the incentive structures so that the desirable outcomes become unlikely.

I personally have never seen a metric that was actually beneficial for a company. Because the moment a metric exists, all rationality and reason is thrown out the window in favor of optimizing that metric. It doesn't matter if it destroys the company or customer trust in your product or runs out valuable employees. None of those are part of The Metric.

It's the whole 'we increased shareholder value by 1% even if we won't exist next year' scheme. The notion of any sort of sustainability or long term planning has long vanished.

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