2 ms·

I'm not saying that social media doesn't exist and that anything you say can't and won't be used against you in a court of law. It will be. What I am saying is

I'm not saying that social media doesn't exist and that anything you say can't and won't be used against you in a court of law. It will be. What I am saying is that relying on a complex model based on this is just rank silliness. Still, I guarantee that that rank silliness will be a product, it will be sold and and it will be bought. For a big market with small bets (ads) this makes sense. For a small market with big bets (employment) it doesn’t make sense, to me at least.

21 9y ago
I think you make the mistake of not thinking in statistics. It doesn't matter if it's not always right, it only matters if it's better than what they have at the moment (ie: almost nothing). Like the quoted bank said in the article, improving retention by 1% can lower costs by 100 mil per year. Offering a raise to people polishing their Linked in page sounds like low hanging fruit to me. And of course, employees will try to game the system, which will become smarter and so on.
- CalChris 9y ago
  A statistician went duck hunting. His first shot was a foot high. His second shot was a foot low. When asked about it he said, On average, that's a dead duck. As I said, there are markets, large markets like ad auctions, where this approach makes sense. But for HR, I'd have to see this being a demonstrable success story before I'd touch it. I think there are better and easier approaches to retention like treating your employees well rather than looking at a statistics dashboard and following its sage if soul-less advice.
s73ver_ 9y ago
I'm not willing to take that chance. There are enough shitheads in management that would see something like this and pounce on it, to where it might become an actual problem for lots of people. Remember, we live in a world where coffee shops and Jimmy Johns (sandwich shop) decided that they needed to subject their employees to pretty draconian non-compete agreements.

21 9y ago

I think you make the mistake of not thinking in statistics. It doesn't matter if it's not always right, it only matters if it's better than what they have at the moment (ie: almost nothing). Like the quoted bank said in the article, improving retention by 1% can lower costs by 100 mil per year. Offering a raise to people polishing their Linked in page sounds like low hanging fruit to me. And of course, employees will try to game the system, which will become smarter and so on.

CalChris 9y ago
A statistician went duck hunting. His first shot was a foot high. His second shot was a foot low. When asked about it he said, On average, that's a dead duck. As I said, there are markets, large markets like ad auctions, where this approach makes sense. But for HR, I'd have to see this being a demonstrable success story before I'd touch it. I think there are better and easier approaches to retention like treating your employees well rather than looking at a statistics dashboard and following its sage if soul-less advice.

s73ver_ 9y ago

I'm not willing to take that chance. There are enough shitheads in management that would see something like this and pounce on it, to where it might become an actual problem for lots of people. Remember, we live in a world where coffee shops and Jimmy Johns (sandwich shop) decided that they needed to subject their employees to pretty draconian non-compete agreements.