Hacker News Reader

> Now on the issue of people gaming metrics, that is a real concern and I typically address it with "counter metrics" intended to protect against gaming.

From the article:

> In an attempt to staunch the flow of faulty metrics through gaming, cheating and goal diversion, organisations often institute a cascade of rules, even as complying with them further slows down the institution’s functioning and diminishes its efficiency.

View on HN

This reads to me like a culture problem. A good engineering culture should help a lot to insulate against people who just want to game the system and aren't really invested in the success of the project.

Of course, how you get there is anything but simple.

So, "people who do good things well, will do good things well".

It always boils down to what to measure, how to measure it, and how to deal with gaming that. "Boils down to culture" is just weasel words.

The problem is: what is success of the product?

>The problem is: what is success of the product?

Agreed. If it's measured in a metric, like bugs for every check-in or number of check-ins or numbers of lines of code, then reducing it down to metrics doesn't do anything to achieve the goal of the success of the product.

I'd - cautiously - argue it actually favours success of the individual over success of the product.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com