alt Hacker News> I’m a backend engineer. I sit in the weekly sprint planning meetings where Product Managers (PMs) discuss how to squeeze another 0.4% margin out of "human assets"...
This is what made it feel fake to me. Even the most naive startups don't discuss these kinds of details with the dev team (or sometimes even the senior management) because it's not relevant to getting the work done. This alleged business is likely much larger and naturally siloed. Intent is not a success criteria, and things are always subject to change so why bake it into the code? Sounds like a terrible idea.
What would make way more sense is asking the dev team to expose configuration and stats. Dashboards are not suspicious because they are genuinely useful to the entire business, not just some evil inner group trying to squeeze a few percent.
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It's Reddit; of course it's fake.
I do congratulate this author, though. If posted it to a different site, I would believe it.
While management usually tries to hide the evil parts of the business, the nature of eyeing incremental gains is very typical of silicon valley where data cited numbers is the requirement for promotions
I have had PMs and POs spend hours with the dev team spilling all the tea because they think it will help the devs better craft their vision. This particular aspect is very plausible to me.