Comment by cdavid

I am not saying mature companies are "YOLO-ing" this randomly, but that many assumptions are made about how the input metrics trickle back to revenue/profits, and those can change. The attribution exists, but how it is done is far from an objective thing. E.g. how do you translate CTR into revenue ? How do you value an additional user ?

This can also be seen with cost saving. There are numerous examples on HN when people wonder why reducing the cost of something by X millions was not recognized (e.g. https://x.com/danluu/status/802971209176477696). Based on my own experience, most likely explanation is that's because there was no item related to this in the financial planning to be recognized.