High-Quality Inputs

Focus on the things you can change

I used to obsess over the Amazon stock price.

My compensation at Amazon was mostly based on the stock's performance. It would go up and down. My mood swung with its seemingly random fluctuations, especially around vesting time.

“How’s it going Steve?”
”Not good. AMZN is down 3.5% in anticipation of the earnings call this week.”

You know when you refresh a page and nothing changes, so you refresh it again?

Output metrics show the results of your work, like page views or the AMZN stock price. Input metrics track what you put in, such as coding time or customer interviews conducted.

The fixation on output metrics isn't just an individual problem. Many tech teams obsess over results. They track user growth, revenue, feature velocity, and other KPIs. But this output focus can be a mistake. Why? Because you don't directly control outputs, just like when I was…