Mastodawn

Building a Soviet Nail Factory: how KPIs killed efficiency. A story that I often tell. It is now old enough to not upset my former colleagues. https://vincent.bernat.ch/en/blog/2026-kpi-goodhart

Building a Soviet Nail Factory: how KPIs killed efficiency

How an obsession with KPIs at Orange led people to game them, slowing service delivery to a crawl. A cautionary tale about Goodhart's law.

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Marcos Dione Jun 16

@vbernat

> they asked to do the same for the next year

WTF

"OK, gimme double the people".

Seems like we were colleagues for a while, but I was in Sophia (2011-12). I don't remember much of KPIs at the time, but my French back then was terrible (I learned it while on the job, no the best experience :)

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Vincent Bernat

@mdione by the time, we were pretty deep into the new system. I suppose that if you discover it once it is running, you don't notice the inefficiencies that much.