When I first heard of the Godhart’s Law it resonated with me, as I believe it did with many people, because it describes a common pain developers feel. However, the more I thought about it, the more I realised that that’s all it does - describes the problem. It doesn’t in anyway help you identify the core issue, nor solve it in any way. That’s why when I ran into this article I was glad that someone else felt the same way and even provided a more useful formulation:

When people are pressured to meet a target value there are three ways they can proceed:

  1. They can work to improve the system
  2. They can distort the system
  3. Or they can distort the data

Thanks, Cedric Chin!