“People analytics” — the
assessment of whether particular workers are suitable for particular kinds of
employment or performing well at their jobs — is booming like never before.
Everything that can be measured about us, whether via personality tests, biometrics
or the big-data trails we leave in the cloud as we go about our work, is being
captured and analyzed.
Proponents
of “people analytics” say this new number crunching will lead to a fairer, more
efficient workplace, in which employees are better suited to their jobs. They
may be right. But critics worry about what happens to all the people who don’t
make the grade in an algorithmically driven pure meritocracy. And they ask: In
the long run, will it be healthy for society to run everything by the numbers?
.
. .
Max Simkoff, Evolv’s
co-founder and CEO, told me that his company’s big-data crunching had revealed
a stream of intriguing, contrarian results. For example, “people with a
criminal background stay longer on the job and perform better at entry-level
hourly jobs,” he said. Having “relevant experience” for a job didn’t track with
later productivity. Indeed, the relative quality of a manager or supervisor was
more important in influencing worker attrition and productivity than the
background of the individual workers. Other useful insights — as reported by
the Atlantic’s Don Peck in a comprehensive recent feature story, “They’re
Watching You At Work” – include the nugget that educational
attainment is not as big a factor in job success as the conventional wisdom
believes. Another interesting data point: Being unemployed for a long period of
time does not make you a worse worker, if hired.
Put
it all together, says Simkoff, and you end up with a better world: Listening to
the wisdom of the algorithm, he believes, results in a fairer workplace, less
tainted by bias and discrimination. (“Your boss wants to be Nate Silver,”
Andrew Leonard, Salon.com)
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Classica American
I own the business.
I am the boss. I took all the risk and did years of upfront work to
create the business that employs YOU and makes me money. If you work hard
and smart, you will be rewarded. If you don't, I will fire you. I
don't owe you a job. And, I really don't need an expensive computer
program to tell me if you are "good" or "bad" worker.
I already know.
Emporium
@Classica
American You own the business. You
are the boss. But somewhere deep down in you was a little boy who was bullied
by his parents, who's reply was to decide to never let himself feel that way
again, and to find others he could rage at unaccountably and upon whim.
We
Salon readers recommend you stick to your sandbox; you wouldn't do well with us
because we'd read the therapy you need, which would make you feel uneasy. And
to fire us, you'd suddenly find excuse to buy that expensive computer program
to find metrics and leverage to take down those who's crime was just to see you
properly.
Classica American
@Emporium@Classica
American Wow...psychological counseling
in the comments section.
Randy Stone
@Classica American @Emporium
Take advantage of it while
you can. You need it.
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Classica American
I started the
business. I am the boss. I took all the risk. I put up my
money. I worked hard for over 20 years to build it up. If you work
for me, and you work hard and smart, I will reward you. If you are lazy,
late, high maintenance, embarrass the company, or provide no value added, I
will fire you. The boot. I guarantee the liberals who read this
will focus on my heavy handedness and complete ignore the "reward"
part. Why? They only see other people's money though the green eyes
of entitlement. I do not owe you a job. I do not owe you a raise.
But, if you are loyal to my company, you and your family will prosper.
Emporium
@Classica
American I don't think so — they're
focusing on the reward part too. Rewards and punishment are a paradigm out of
being only conditionally loved. Parents punishing their children when they act
out of line, and rewarding them when they conform with their wishes. It was
just everywhere in the 19th-century, and a solid portion of the 20th — and
obviously it's still just plain normal to a heck of a lot of people. But it's
not what a lot of liberals knew at home, and they gaze at it — both parts
— like they're looking at History.
Theirs
was more complicated — and certainly the punishment part was way less stressed,
and much less scary! The best even had it ideal, where rewards were given when
their kids showed up their parents, revealed how limited, how stuck,
they were — but as well, just how open their own growth would prove. Not just
in what we normally think of as accomplishments — but in emotional tensility,
in overall maturity, as well.
Of
course, these types aren't really all that attracted to Capitalism anyway. They
see it as out of only a conditional acceptance of people, as as interested in
seeing people fail as succeed. They go more the Socialism route, which
actually wants everyone to live rewarding lives. I don't mean USSR, I mean
60s communalism.
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Emporium
The
fear of more metrics is that it's part of a need to make managers akin to the
likes of Zuckerberg or Nate Silver — that is, on the autistic spectrum, able to
detach themselves from well registering other people's emotions.
I
have no idea if there is a limit to what metrics might measure. Usually in
history when I hear talk of them, it's always "the German psychologists
vs. the humanist William James" – that is, one side being suspect because
you can't trust that they're not actually afraid of human emotions and
feeling, and it's that that has them so involved with emotion and human
color-stripped numbers rather than their ability to reveal truths otherwise
missed.
But
truth is, the hippies were opposite of that — plenty emotion-registering, that
is — and plenty has been written about how they're the ones responsible
for the great 20th century computer/web development, so I don't necessarily think this
must always be the full picture. In a genuine Utopia, metrics might be just an
unambiguously helpful tool. But people like the above who's talking about its
humanistic possibilities, we wouldn't see much of in Utopia. They're guards in
a prison camp seeing all the improvement the new management measures are
effecting. They'll be detached from experiencing the effects of their torture,
as it's been normalized as simply ideal comportment — the best and most
innovative, carry themselves exactly like that.
"We" obviously want to
live in an environment for awhile where our leaders cannot feel our pain. We
want them to be autistics who could be right up close, studying everything
about us, but still be amazed later to learn that their subjects weren't happy
as pie about the experience. McDonalds telling its employees how to budget for
their nannies — managers doing this even, those up close. This is what concerns
me.
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