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Dev.to
7/20/2026
Design AI Productivity Metrics That Survive Goodhart’s Law

Design AI Productivity Metrics That Survive Goodhart’s Law

Short summary

Rewarding teams for 'AI-assisted PR' percentages invites gaming—trivial PRs get labeled, work gets split, and review scrutiny drops. The author proposes consequence-mapping sessions before launch, pairing each intended behavior with a plausible adaptation and a counter-metric. A metric card should expose its definition, known games, and retirement criteria, and teams must be able to challenge it without career risk.

  • •Map intended behaviors against plausible gaming adaptations before launching AI metrics
  • •Pair every metric with counter-metrics like rollback rate and task-mix distribution
  • •Teams must be able to inspect, challenge, and retire metrics without career risk

Generated with AI, which can make mistakes.

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