I’ve led teams and then I’ve worked as an engineer, so I feel I understand both sides but have an informed take on how things go when OKRs show up despite/due to that.

I get as a leader that some form of goal orientation and niche engineering speak translation into outcomes must occur.

But, for every 1 leader who can do this well, there are 99 who can’t. For every 1/2 leaders who can do this faithfully, there are 99.5 who don’t care much beyond building fiefdoms or just plain don’t know how to do it in practice - the ex-consultant PM, the manager not the leader, the PM who holds zero authority over a team of skilled ICs, and so on.

Also, as an engineer, I have OKRs, I have ops, and I have the random stuff that shows up that blows a hole in my week to week plans. A good PM maybe can reduce this, but again see above. And: what am I measured on for my hearth and home paychecks: Answer - OKRs.

So, in practice, when OKRs show up, I believe earnest big picture effort (which people love going to startups for, I think), goes out the window overall because of the above.

You’ll only get people hitting OKRs, “hitting OKRs” has so much absurd flex in it because again see above, and so you best hope you have the 1 of 100 PMs that know how to do that well or else people start doing the silly dances engineers leave companies over.