The Ouroboros of KPI

Or, how metrics make the board go round, and round, and round.

“Image generated using OpenAI’s DALL·E.”

I have a background in mathematics, a great interest in physics, and a life long love of astronomy and I do sometimes wonder how on earth I ended up in the Grand Game of Software Engineering.

It was an accident, of course. I don’t mind it really. Can’t change the past.

To cheer myself up, aside from the red wine, I rationalise it all in terms of programming being really quite important in all of those aforementioned subjects, so I’m kind of working on something cross-functional. At least that’s what I keep telling myself as I read fun astronomy papers, look all starry eyed at physics equations, then cry inside when asked to change the colour of some text to a lurid shade of yellow to match the company branding.

Besides, maybe there’s an escape route there if an academic project needs a real programmer¹ (cough), or I decide to just grow my hair again and get a blackboard, some quality chalk, and try and remember the nuances of differential calculus.

Something to look forward to in the retirement home, or sanitarium. I wonder if they allow chalk with health and safety and all that? But, I digress. As usual.

Anyway, having a knowledge of physics comes in incredibly handy when you’re watching some project management droid…