Metrics, Incrementalism, and Local Maxima

Metrics Are Poisoning You

This isn’t just about bad ideas, poor execution and apathy — it’s about the broader culture we’ve created around innovation. It’s become too hard to stop, reflect, interrogate and interject with fresh ideas, while KPIs run the show.

We’re not solving real problems; we’re searching for validation .

As marketer and author Rory... See more

All of the effort spent deliberating on edge cases and long tails stems from the fact that many junior devs are not actually thinking hard enough about what the experiment should be, and what the metrics should look like.

The goal of building out these probabilistic software systems is not a milestone or a feature. Instead, what we're looking for a... See more

In the last few decades we have seen tremendous technical breakthroughs in the latencies and tooling possible to remove these constraints. Across the world, whether in productivity apps or in national governance, there will be a transition period as our norms and processes adapt to this tightening of the collaboration feedback loop. But perhaps I r... See more

I think another driver of this sentiment and behavior is that chasing scale strips you of some humanity. It puts your head too high up in the clouds. It removes you from what happens in the real world with real people. Pursuing something that can’t scale does the exact opposite: it grounds you. It’s a comforting and healing next act.

Incrementalism is squandering Silicon Valley’s potential. Many of the nation’s most talented people are iterating on a tiny product surface area. First principles thinking is being replaced by shortcuts like NPS optimization and bookings-to-burn ratios.