Companies that don’t have OKRs?

I understand why they're implemented, but IMHO they don't work. I don't even think that sprint planning works very well for certain functions. Even in a modern tech company with intelligent, motivated, hard-working individuals, its pure guesswork trying predict how long it'll take to implement some new system or code some new feature, or guess the length of a piece of string. As soon as the quarter is planned, suddenly you're committed to delivering your OKRs. I think that successful tech people tend to be optimic and confident. "Yeah, I think we could get that done in 2 weeks" people. Sometimes you get lucky, but more often than not, things are more complex and fucked up than you thought. The result is either extra work or a missed deadline (which means no bonus, poor rating or if you're in the US, getting fired). If you work your ass off and hit the target, that level of effort becomes the new norm. It's expected by your manager and even by yourself. Impostor syndrome is very real. You fight to stay afloat and blame yourself for the horrible complexity you keep running into.

I've worked at two companies that went from startup-mode to corporate mode. I've never experienced an increase in productivity or job satisfaction after OKRs were introduced. In fact, it has always been the opposite. Suddenly you're spending less time in first-person-shooter mode where you're slaying bugs and making progress, and more time in third-person watching yourself do your job from a fucking time tracking app.

Want productivity? Get all the people who want to monopolise your time into a room: product managers, security, incident managers. Let them decide what the priorities are. Not create 20 tickets that all have 'high priority ', but a single ordered list. Then you can just work through the list, and keep people informed about your progress via some stupid-simple ticketing system that doesn't eat half of your life. Rinse and repeat.