I'd love to ask anyone who's worked on present day Instagram/Facebook what the long term effects of data driven decision making is. My understanding is that it's been a toss up.
I think PG has a tweet a while back like "some decisions are so bad, no one in their right mind would agree to this if there wasn't data to back it up". More of less saying, you can find data to support any decision, so why even be data driven?
I'd say their experience is an outlier. They are not the norm.
I'm speaking from a 20 year background designing medical devices and other critical infrastructure. In my world, like with airliners, it's important to get decisions right or people can be killed. Therefore, data driven decisions.
Yes, if safety and livelihood are on the line, get the data and be sure.
But most companies have to implement purchase flows, marketing sites, software onboarding, etc. Examples like this are where folks are more likely to cherry pick data to justify whatever their biased to believing.
I think PG has a tweet a while back like "some decisions are so bad, no one in their right mind would agree to this if there wasn't data to back it up". More of less saying, you can find data to support any decision, so why even be data driven?
EDIT: Found the tweet, which pg responded to but didn't actually create: https://x.com/dadiomov/status/1553474933010755584?s=20