Yes this is real, and even happens at larger companies.

The surface issue is that when somebody has an incentive to self-measure their success then they have an incentive to overestimate (I increased retention by 14% by changing the shade of the "About Us" button!).

Which means the root-cause issue is managers who create environments where self-reporting improvements without any rigor or any contrary perspective. Ultimately they are the ones foot-gunning themselves (by letting their team focus on false vanity metrics).