[piloto_ciego]

I doubt that any company actually cares about what any of the myriad of metrics they collect mean at the C-suite level. I mean, "maybe" I just think it is unlikely. I bet 9/10 times someone just makes a decision about how things "ought" to be and then that's the way it is going forward.

The assumption that this is a triangulated and well researched strategy doesn't match my experience in "real-job" world. I mean, maybe Apple is different because of their history, but I am not convinced anyone listens to anyone that articulates any math ideas beyond Algebra outside of some niche specialties because they don't understand it. And it's not that I'm some math god - I mean, that's what I studied, but there are people SO much more knowledgeable and capable, and they seem to get ignored too.

Like, I'm sure the guy who runs an insurance company listens to the actuaries about relative risk, but mostly, what I've just seen is someone makes a decision, and then finds post hoc ergo proctor hoc rationales for why this was a good decision down the line when they have to account for their choices.

For instance, it took my like a year at my old job, but I finally got most of the KPIs we were using to set strategy cancelled. The data we were using to generate those KPIs? Well in a few cases, after you seasonally differenced the data was no different than white noise. No autocorrelation whatsoever. In ALL the cases the autocorrelation was weak and it was all evaporated after a month or 2. You could MAYBE fit an MA model to it, but that seemed dodgy to me. And like, I'm not a major expert - I took 1 time series class in gradschool, and frankly, time series is kind of hard. But management had ZERO idea of what I was talking about when I was like, "hey, I don't think these numbers actually mean anything at all? Did anyone run an ACF?"

Then each month someone higher up the chain would say, "why is this number low?" And then they go out and search through the reams of data they had to come up with an answer that plausibly explained things. Was the number particularly "low?" No, it was within expected statistical noise thresholds, you are probably going to have at least have 1 number out of whack every 20 cycles or so... You still had to spend an hour in a meeting coming up with reasons for why it was low that went beyond "ummm, well, this is kind of random, and we'd expect to see this sort of thing ever couple years once or twice, we won't know if it's a trend for a few more months."

Anyway, this is a long anecdote to explain why I have no confidence that most companies do any sort of actual introspection. CEO creates targets and underlings build models that show how they're meeting or not meeting those targets. Now, hilariously, with Apple in particular I might be wrong, because in Tim Cook's defense, I'm pretty sure his education is in Industrial Engineering? So if any CEO is thinking about that stuff, it's him. Still, I am totally and completely unimpressed with the C-Suite sort of thinkers.

They're not dumb - like I've never really had a straight up dumbass manager outside of shitty lower jobs or small-mom-and-pop businesses? But I have seldom met any company that actually cared about the numbers - most say they do, but most just use those numbers to justify decisions they've already made.

Am I just unlucky? I'm I the witch in church here?

[Jweb_Guru]

This comment expresses how it feels to work in a corporate environment better than anything I've ever seen on this site.

[piloto_ciego]

This is validating, thanks.

The environment is why I quit my job and started working for myself in January. I hated it. And not to sound like an arrogant ass because there were a LOT of way smarter people than me at $PREVIOUS_EMPLOYER, but having to have meetings to set our meetings, having to explain things that aren't statistically meaningful to people who don't understand stats anyway, and getting code reviews (when I could get them scheduled) from dudes who hadn't touched a keyboard in 5 years was... soul sucking? I'm not doing that anymore. Or ever again.

I mean, maybe it's because I had a more hands-on blue-collar adjacent job before I got into tech? Maybe it's because I'm a fool and couldn't play the game of "pretend to work and look busy. But - and I know this might be kind of messed up - I really like not having to explain things in a series of emails to people other than the customers. I really like not having to answer to anyone but my self and my customers. If I want to do something, well, I just do it now? That's a nice place to be. Riskier for sure, but I think the prior environment would have killed me, so maybe not.

Also, I have time to do shit that's interesting? Who would have guessed how much more time I'd have in the day when I didn't have 4.5 hours of meetings per day? Hell, I'm taking 2 classes at the university for fun (weird right?!) - I never could have done that before because I would have had to make a slide deck for Thursdays All-Hands or whatever and couldn't have missed the SUPER IMPORTANT MEETING that Jake has on the schedule that he'll show up for unprepared or just not show up to.

Nah, the hell with that. I'm never going back.

[plagiarist]

We are all witches holding our breath in the Church of the Line