[piva00]

I've seen similar patterns of behaviour at corporations that are extremely metrics-driven (I don't call it "data-driven" that's bullshit).

Management put up the metrics they care about and think they are doing well when those reach some thresholds. They stop thinking about the qualitative side of anything over the time, and truly believe if the metrics are going where they want to it's because people love the experience overall.

It's very McNamara fallacy-y. Even more when you get sycophants around to push whatever your vision is, even to the detriment of the overall experience.