[HN Gopher] Modern workers are at the mercy of ratings
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Modern workers are at the mercy of ratings
Author : edward
Score : 41 points
Date : 2020-02-07 18:24 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.economist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com)
| TurkishPoptart wrote:
| Sadly, this article is paywalled for me.
| emilburzo wrote:
| https://outline.com/JhCCJd
| makotech222 wrote:
| This is the unstoppable march of capitalism, turning even its
| workers into commodities; predicted quite accurately by Marx in
| the 1800s. Half of our workforce will be able to be completely
| represented by some number. No different than a bushel of apples.
| CiPHPerCoder wrote:
| ...does the "0.6 of a worker" bit remind anyone else of the
| "Three-Fifths compromise" from American History class?
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Fifths_Compromise
|
| Not sure if an intentional dog whistle
| Jaygles wrote:
| I get that its immeasurably frustrating for a person to be
| distilled into performance metrics, but how else can we measure
| one's impact? Using a trust based method where a supervisor leans
| on their personal biases to determine an employee's value is
| fraught with issues as well. A large enough corporation is a
| machine and we can't base decisions off of how we "feel" the
| machine's parts are working. Hard numbers will win over time.
| vraivroo wrote:
| Yes, you've described why large corporations are hated. It's
| quite obvious that a handful of numbers are incapable of
| measuring a person's true impact, yet by god, they insist on
| trying.
| WalterBright wrote:
| To be fair, metrics are often insisted upon by unions in
| order to not allow people to be fired based on the company's
| feelings about them.
|
| They're also insisted upon by courts to adjudicate wrongful
| termination cases as well as discrimination cases.
| hhs wrote:
| > I get that its immeasurably frustrating for a person to be
| distilled into performance metrics, but how else can we measure
| one's impact?
|
| I think it may also be useful to talk about the reliability and
| validity of all the things that are measured.
|
| Also, how useful is this stuff among the different fields? The
| article talks about gig workers and manufacturers. Would be
| interesting if these metrics were applied rigorously to other
| fields like politicians, talk show pundits, and forecasters.
| mjfl wrote:
| This was the basic premise behind the book "Expert political
| judgement" by Phil Tetlock.
| hhs wrote:
| Thanks for the reference.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > how else can we measure one's impact?
|
| This is a case of
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politician%27s_syllogism.
| We must do something This is something
| Therefore, we must do this.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| The alternative is management who knows the domain well enough
| to understand those they supervise. That is expensive and hard
| in itself to ensure reliably.
|
| It is a matter of the push and pull of scale advantages at
| varied sizes essentially which is essentially universal but
| varies by domain.
| jdc wrote:
| I think it really comes down to how well-designed the
| performance model is. And averaging a handful of survey answers
| sure as hell doesn't cut it.
| grawprog wrote:
| >A large enough corporation is a machine
|
| A machine in which the parts of are made up of humans with
| 'feelings'. Distilling human beings down to cogs in a machine
| is bad enough when it comes from executives. This belief that
| corporations are some kind of non-human machine like entity is
| part of why the world's so fucked today.
|
| Maybe the world would be a better place if corporations weren't
| run as inhuman machines with no care or regard to their
| employees or the world in which they operate.
| jiggliemon wrote:
| > This belief that corporations are some kind of non-human
| machine like entity is part of why the world's so fucked
| today.
|
| What point in history are you arguing was less fucked than it
| is today?
| lazyjeff wrote:
| Professors have been teaching and getting student course
| evaluations since forever. At institutions and roles where the
| admin knows little about the subject, they rely more on the
| course evals. At institutions with more engaged faculty and
| with more serious teaching, course evals are less prominent and
| defer to other forms of assessment (faculty observations,
| teaching statements, etc.).
| jld wrote:
| Historically professors have tenure (admittedly less so now,
| I believe), so how they score on evaluations has no real
| bearing on them keeping their jobs.
|
| I had a professor who was a terrible lecturer, and he knew
| his student evaluations were terrible every time. As he
| handed out the evaluations he would tell us that he did not
| read them, and did not care what we wrote.
|
| I graduated twenty years ago, but just checked the
| department's website. He's still employed!
| lazyjeff wrote:
| Fair enough, but even the tenured professors were untenured
| at some point before so they did matter and were not
| problematic enough to deny tenure. And tenure doesn't
| really apply the same for adjuncts or some lecturers, who
| are perhaps even more dependent on student evals. And of
| course it depends on the seriousness the university takes
| teaching, as there are R1s that are more research oriented
| and care less about teaching, but they account for 1% of
| all universities.
| endtime wrote:
| I'd rather be at the mercy of _relatively_ objective metrics than
| at the mercy of whoever my boss happens to be. (I happen to like
| my current management chain, but people come and go...)
| decebalus1 wrote:
| Meh.. you're still at the mercy of whoever your boss happens to
| be. They just need to put a little effort into framing the
| metrics the right way or to make sure you're getting work that
| doesn't touch on the right metrics. The idea that performance
| metrics are fair is just corporate propaganda designed to make
| you have the incentive to improve them, thus being easier to
| control and replace.
| allset_ wrote:
| >or to make sure you're getting work that doesn't touch on
| the right metrics.
|
| What? The metrics should be distilled from the overall
| company/org/team goals and mission and if you're working on
| things that don't align with those of course you're not going
| to have a good performance review.
| WalterBright wrote:
| There's nothing new about this. My first job back in 1979 came
| with ratings used to determine raises.
|
| Corporations are rated, as well, on all sorts of numerical
| metrics.
| [deleted]
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