Hitting OKRs vs. Doing Your Job
Linking objectives and key results (OKRs) to compensation and promotion is widely seen here as pushing employees to game metrics instead of doing the work that actually helps customers or the business. Commenters describe OKRs, KPIs and similar frameworks as often misused in large organizations: goals are set top‑down, rewritten retroactively, or optimized in ways that satisfy dashboards while degrading product quality, morale and intrinsic motivation. A minority view holds that OKRs can work when they stay at a high level, are tied to genuine customer outcomes, and are used as a communication and alignment tool rather than an individual performance yardstick.
Role of OKRs vs. Real Work
- Many describe OKRs as diverging from “doing your job,” especially for reactive or specialized roles (support, infra, internal tools) where work is driven by incoming issues, not quarterly goals.
- When compensation, stack ranking, and promotions are tied to OKRs, people optimize for the appearance of impact, self‑promotion, and “visible work” rather than customer value or core responsibilities.
- Some note that in practice people rewrite or massage OKRs retroactively to show success.
Metrics, Goodhart’s Law, and Gaming
- Multiple comments invoke Goodhart’s and Campbell’s laws: once a metric becomes a target, its link to real value degrades and it is manipulated.
- Examples: suicide prevention metrics, GPU FPS targets, bug-report counts, or engagement scores becoming disconnected from genuine outcomes and user well‑being.
- Metrics can become a psychological game: people chase high scores, not impact; important unmeasured work gets neglected.
When OKRs/KPIs Work (According to Supporters)
- Some argue OKRs can be useful if:
- Objectives are customer- and business-centric, not “ship feature X.”
- Key results are loosely coupled metrics, used as feedback and “political cover” to say no to distractions, not as strict quotas.
- They operate at team/product level, not at individual IC level.
- They drive alignment and conversations across large organizations rather than micromanage individuals.
- A few share positive experiences where metrics were used only for visibility and learning, not for bonuses or performance ratings.
Organizational Scale, Culture, and Management
- Many see OKRs as a response to scale: once companies grow beyond ~80–100 people, informal alignment fails and processes arise.
- Critics say the real problem is poor management: lack of trust, overreliance on dashboards, and avoidance of hard judgment calls.
- Some see OKRs, KPIs, and similar frameworks as consulting cargo cults that absorb time (“planning palooza”) and entrench bureaucracy.
Alternatives and Nuanced Views
- Suggestions include: conversation-driven management, high-level qualitative goals, empowered teams with transparent metrics, and managers with “good gut” supported (not replaced) by data.
- Several emphasize that intrinsic motivation, local judgment, and decentralized problem solving often outperform rigid metric systems—if leadership is competent and trusts teams.