Choosing your metrics, KPIs, etc...

there’s simply no way around the fact that we’re pretty fed up with a certain philosophical framework in Silicon Valley. It has many names: the growth mindset. OKRs. KPIs. Even Minimalism — the predominant aesthetic of our era. But at its core, it all comes down to one thing: the relentless optimization of everything in our world.

this mindset has... See more

Finding the right metric

Ted Merz, who used to be the Global Head of News Product at Bloomberg, has an insightful article about how the company's founder (Mike Bloomberg) uses metrics as a management tool. One metric that is prominently displayed around the office on TV screens is the number of Bloomberg terminals sold year-to-date.

This single... See more

“One of the reasons the tech industry is so creatively bankrupt is that people just focus on attributes you can measure,” said Jony Ive, when told of the insecurity Kushner had confided to Rick Rubin. “I was very lucky at Apple, because Steve [Jobs] showed me there was a way to articulate things like sensibility, intuition, taste, which all start... See more

In my six years at Google, I got to observe this force up close, relentlessly killing features users loved and eroding the last vestiges of creativity and agency from our products. I know this force well, and I hate it, but I do not yet know how to fight it. I call this force the Tyranny of the Marginal User .

Simply put, companies building apps... See more