May 17, 2024 • Engineering
Large companies are inherently number-driven. This is not a bad thing per se: Aligning around measurable objectives has huge benefits and allows an organization to keep itself accountable.
However, if you work in larger tech companies, you will quickly come into contact with goals like this:
These numbers seem fine at first but once you start digging into it, you learn how extremely arbitrary these are, because:
When I worked on web performance at Meta, I came into contact with this very early and my rational personality was quickly overwhelmed: How can I come up with a number that is truly achievable? Do I need to scope out all exact work streams ahead of time and hope that they are all successful? How are goals like this made?
Luckily, I had an amazing colleague back then who told me the one secret about goals at Meta, which she called the 50-50 goal: Choose a target that feels achievable 50% of the time (so you will have an equal chance of not hitting it). At the time this was confusing but I've seen this used extensively at many platform teams at Meta and only now, after many years, I finally understand why this system works:
So, if you ever think about setting a target for your team, think about the 50-50 goal. Oh and don't forget to communicate that it's a 50-50 goal. You don't want to set wrong expectations.
Engineer at Tailwind Labs.
Prev: Engineer at Sourcegraph and Meta, curator of This Week in React, React DOM team member, and Team Lead at PSPDFKit.