[kazanz]

The comic in the article is the literal purpose of a KPI. The comic:

"John your commit frequency dropped 25%, are you quiet quitting?" "Sorry boss, I was on sick leave. Next time I'll be more active."

If we had the next box of the comic it would say:

"You're good John, you don't have to be more active, and I'm glad you are feeling better. If you need anything let me know."

The KPI is a leading indicator of something potentially going wrong (or right!) and a signal for management to look deeper. A good manager would connect with the human-being behind the metric, get the full picture, then help.

If management is treating a KPI as a source of truth and ignoring the complex people behind them, then it's a manager problem.

KPIs are not destroying business, bad managers are.