I get written objectives from my boss, although they tend to be more subjective than objective. I’m a software engineer, and it’s impossible to predict what projects I’ll be working on in a year, and so impossible to quantify things. It’s also very difficult to set up quantitative performance metrics for software development that cannot be gamed somehow, and so it’s preferable to set subjective or qualitative goals instead. The point of any management system is to get the employee’s goals for his time at work to line up with the team’s goals, and to get the team’s goals to line up with the company’s goals. The more transparent this is, the better.