Vanity Metrics

Data leaders are tempted to chase all kinds of vanity metrics.

• Speed of pipelines.

• Amount of data.

• Number of cool technology logos.

• Team headcount.

They are shiny.

They go on resumes.

You can compare them against peers and competitors.

And boast about on Linkedin/X/Reddit.

These are vanity metrics.

They are fun to count. And there might be real reasons why you are tracking them. Perhaps a faster pipeline is worth the developer hours it will take to optimize it. Perhaps ingesting more data will improve a business team’s process. Maybe a few more headcount will allow you to invest in a key priority. Maybe that fancy Modern Data Stack tool will improve your processes around data transformation.

Tracking those metrics will only matter if they are helping you track something else. Something more important.

How valuable you are to the business.

That's a metric worth your time.

I’m here,

Sawyer

from ​The Data Shop