deleting the product
it's funny how you can sometimes tell if a team culture is dysfunctional just by looking at how their app is laid out. behind every feature, or tab in a sidebar likely lies a PM or someone responsible for an OKR.

the problem is when individual performance is measured by these metrics. it becomes the singular focus of the responsible person to make those numbers look good, since it determines whether they get rewarded or axed, even if it comes at the detriment of the overall quality of the product. this is why you mostly see features get added, but rarely removed. if you own a feature, then it being removed feels like an aura loss.

this is even worse in the agentic era when the cost to add features has become so low. you can simply will a new feature into existence overnight and add another tab. but users will notice that you ship your org chart.

teams that make people play silly games under the guise of performance management rarely build great products.

to build a great product you need to first fix your culture