[mlthoughts2018]

But how do you get anyone up the food chain to care? I’ve never witnessed that anywhere I’ve worked. If you took things like team surveys, code review load, meeting load, etc., and tried to make a case that changes are needed, you’ll get laughed out of the room.

The only metrics that will matter are “did you get the stuff done that we wanted?” (where “stuff we wanted” is defined vaguely and the meaning shifts to suit product leaders ever changing political landscape), “did you get it done really fast?” (where “fast” is vaguely defined according to product political circumstances and never puts any weight on engineering estimates, staffing needs, or resource limits) and “did you get it done cheaply?” (where “cheap” is defined vaguely based on various internal politics and budget turf wars as well as larger company financials - and when the money is good and no one looks too hard at this, it allows sweeping other issues under the rug, no one cares if you burnt a quarter working on the wrong problems).

Assessing effectiveness, in principle, is purely a political concept that operates from the top down.

This has been true in every company I’ve worked for or knew a colleague or friend who worked there - from tiny “lean” startups to extreme cultures like Bridgewater to every mid-sized or large tech company.