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xkcd #2899: Goodhart's Law
(imgs.xkcd.com)
Alt text:
[later] I'm pleased to report we're now identifying and replacing hundreds of outdated metrics per hour.
What's even better is when your metrics are based on last year's metrics so you better achieve exponential growth or start looking for another job.
The year before last we achieved 1% test error rate in an area, and the bosses were seriously considering having the following year's goal be 0%. Someone had to point out that if anyone had 1 error on Jan 1, we literally couldn't do anything to achieve the goal the rest of the year and may as well give up entirely.