alt Hacker NewsManagement loves numbers because they’re the only things you can objectively compare as X > Y.
It makes for pretty charts, extrapolations, and projections.
It doesn’t matter if the numbers are not particularly correct. As long as the data gathering step can be justified it’ll do. Though bonus points if making the number bigger is a good thing (v.s. tracking something like number of sev 1 issues).
Replies
delfinom • today at 5:11 PM
Yes, but also because management is largely unqualified to be managing the stuff they are hired for. So they regress to numbers because they otherwise cannot participate in anything technical.
Sounds a bit like a McNamara Fallacy [0] of over-prioritizing numeric measures, which--when taken "too literally"--becomes:
> The first step is to measure whatever can be easily measured. This is okay as far as it goes.
> The second step is to disregard that which can't be easily measured or 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 very important. This is blindness.
> The fourth step is to say that what can't be easily measured really doesn't exist. This is suicide.
— Daniel Yankelovich, "The New Odds"
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McNamara_fallacy