// Perverse Incentives

Every metric you optimise for is a proxy. The moment you forget that, the proxy becomes the goal.

A short one about a bounty on dead cobras, a surgeon’s scorecard, and what happens when a product team optimises for “conversion” without asking what it’s supposed to be standing in for.

Also: Goodhart’s Law, a shed full of snakes, and why Google moved its own head of search out of the job.

I'd love to tell you more.