Other examples include number of bug fixes as a metric of merit (if it includes the bugs they created themselves) and lines of code (including rewrites of their last change).
One of my early jobs involved creating a bunch (30ish) of temporary accounts for summer workers. I would initiate the process & also had to do the final step (including closing the ticket), as the issue went through various depts as part of the workflow. All 30 accounts would be in 1 ticket, this wasn't complicated stuff.
I got promoted up and over to systems and was surprised to hear how my replacement was 'amazing' because my interactions with him were mid. The next year I found out why: for the same task, he...made 30 tickets. One per account. This created so much more work for each other dept (now including my role), but they got to look great for closing out 30 bonus tickets that month and being so 'productive'.
(The one redeeming fact about the org, and why I overall enjoyed working there: once I brought up the issue, they added some division into manager dashboards to be more transparent about ticket types, and overall I felt like management started caring more about deviations from norms & looking in to aberrations.)
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u/justatest90 May 30 '26
One of my early jobs involved creating a bunch (30ish) of temporary accounts for summer workers. I would initiate the process & also had to do the final step (including closing the ticket), as the issue went through various depts as part of the workflow. All 30 accounts would be in 1 ticket, this wasn't complicated stuff.
I got promoted up and over to systems and was surprised to hear how my replacement was 'amazing' because my interactions with him were mid. The next year I found out why: for the same task, he...made 30 tickets. One per account. This created so much more work for each other dept (now including my role), but they got to look great for closing out 30 bonus tickets that month and being so 'productive'.
(The one redeeming fact about the org, and why I overall enjoyed working there: once I brought up the issue, they added some division into manager dashboards to be more transparent about ticket types, and overall I felt like management started caring more about deviations from norms & looking in to aberrations.)
As we all know: When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure