Re:Management by metrics leads us astray
by rusty-rust on Thursday January 21, 2021 @02:20PM
(#25862910)
If anyone is interested in reading about this topic in terms of late stage capitalism I would highly recommend a book by Mark Fisher titled Capitalist Realism.
In it he talks about “Stalinist Capitalism” I.e. a capitalist society that is obsessed with metrics which optimize for arbitrary goals at the expense goals which are intangible or hard to measure. It focuses on the metric obsessed cultures that have developed within many private organizations.
Two examples come to mind, universities prioritizing publishing count vs publishing impact and lines of code written vs impact of code.
In it he talks about “Stalinist Capitalism” I.e. a capitalist society that is obsessed with metrics which optimize for arbitrary goals at the expense goals which are intangible or hard to measure. It focuses on the metric obsessed cultures that have developed within many private organizations.
Two examples come to mind, universities prioritizing publishing count vs publishing impact and lines of code written vs impact of code.