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by afarrell 1634 days ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McNamara_fallacy

“The first step is to measure whatever can be easily measured. This is OK as far as it goes. The second step is to disregard that which can't be easily measured or to give it an arbitrary quantitative value. This is artificial and misleading. The third step is to presume that what can't be measured easily really isn't important. This is blindness. The fourth step is to say that what can't be easily measured really doesn't exist. This is suicide.”

2 comments

Related is Goodhart's Law: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law

My favorite story related to this, because the managers thought LoC would be a good measure of productivity, is "-2000 lines of code": https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Negative_2000_Li...

Thank you for this very interesting share, I had not heard of this before!