People need a metric shitton of things to do their job well

That’s hyperbole. There’s a lot of things that would help a great deal, but can he done without.

When you’re told what to do, that’s a goal

No, thats a brief. A goal is “the dashboard released on time”

If you’re told a deadline to fulfill, that’s a metric

That’s a goal. A metric is “1000 lines of code” or “300 sprint points”

But you need minimum those two things to do any job

Nope. That job where a team of 3 was running like 5 websites was self-run. The CEO came to us with questions and briefs and the rest of the team made requests, and we prioritised them and did them in the most efficient order possible.

paid for parading around an office and you’re the piece of shit interfering with the people who actually do have jobs to do.

Sounds like management to me. Nothing produced but complaints, meetings and powerpoints.

Middle managers like to set targets and goals because it counts towards their bonus, and it looks less like they’ve got their dick in their hand when the boss comes calling.

No one “needs” anything to do their job. A brief is helpful, a deadline is worth taking note of, but anything else is just interfering with people who are genuinely there to just do the job.

Most productive jobs i ever had? The ones where i was asked to do something and then allowed to do it.

As to the latter part of your message, it feels like you’re just trying to process something so i think I’ll just leave you to it. It’s a bit too non-specific to respond to though.

Giving devs metrics and targets is just so dumb.

Their job is to learn the rules to manipulate systems to their benefit.

If you hand them some half-cooked system they’re going to work out how to (best case scenario) bend it out of their way.

Worst case scenario is that they bend it to their benefit, and find a way to do less work for the same “score”.