--- title: What You Measure | daily.dev description: A workplace anecdote describes joining a manufacturing company obsessed with a single output metric (widgets produced per unit time) while ignoring the... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/what-you-measure-5j5nzazyc twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: What You Measure | daily.dev og:description: A workplace anecdote describes joining a manufacturing company obsessed with a single output metric (widgets produced per unit time) while ignoring the... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/what-you-measure-5j5nzazyc og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/5J5nzAZyC.png og:image:alt: What You Measure og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # What You Measure **[The Daily WTF](https://daily.dev/sources/thedailywtf)** · 5 min read · 2 upvotes · 1 comments ## Summary A workplace anecdote describes joining a manufacturing company obsessed with a single output metric (widgets produced per unit time) while ignoring the underlying data needed to understand why that metric moved. The team's dashboard was a Google Sheet pulling from six databases, yet no subsystem logged why defects occurred or how many were rejected. Software changes were judged solely against noisy top-level metrics, making even simple fixes take weeks. The engineer eventually compromised by quietly adding instrumentation alongside every feature that touched the key metrics, without convincing management that root-cause visibility mattered. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Community discussion Top comments from developers on daily.dev. **@agustinbarrientos** · 0 upvotes > I wouldn't tie instrumentation to unrelated feature work. It hides observability debt inside roadmap luck and makes teams wait for the next convenient project. --- Tags: [#observability](https://daily.dev/tags/observability), [#company-culture](https://daily.dev/tags/company-culture) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/what-you-measure-5j5nzazyc) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"What You Measure","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/what-you-measure-5j5nzazyc","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/what-you-measure-5j5nzazyc"},"datePublished":"2026-09-02T11:03:55.063Z","dateModified":"2026-09-02T11:09:32.092Z","description":"A workplace anecdote describes joining a manufacturing company obsessed with a single output metric (widgets produced per unit time) while ignoring the...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--0_ODbtD2--/f_auto/v1722860399/public/Placeholder%2008","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--0_ODbtD2--/f_auto/v1722860399/public/Placeholder%2008","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"The Daily WTF","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"The Daily WTF","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/d21a6aa61a7244d893a3b3284df8e2ef","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/thedailywtf"},"commentCount":1,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/what-you-measure-5j5nzazyc","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":2},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":1}],"keywords":"observability,company-culture","timeRequired":"PT5M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The Daily WTF","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/thedailywtf"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"What You Measure"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/what-you-measure-5j5nzazyc","comment":[{"@type":"Comment","text":"I wouldn’t tie instrumentation to unrelated feature work. 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