Can not be customer satisfaction (by quality) or employee happiness or retention.

I wonder what those other metrics are.

A big one is that managers are de facto judged by the size of their team (and, for more senior ones, the size of the tree underneath them, too). It seems to be really, really hard to have middle management in an organisation without "maximise headcount" becoming an unofficial goal.

Edit: Employee happiness is an interesting one here. It's quite believable to me that being seen to cut down a few tall poppies might have a positive impact on (mean) employee happiness in some cases.

> It's quite believable to me that being seen to cut down a few tall poppies might have a positive impact on (mean) employee happiness in some cases.

This again... I dread to imagine going through the day around people that think like this. But people that think like this exist, and I imagine they concentrate somewhere. If some place makes them happy (and everybody else unhappy as a consequence), you'll probably find them there. This is really believable.