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This reminds me a lot of a book I read a while ago called "Disciplined Minds" by Jeff Schmidt. It focuses on the sociological aspects of hiring practices & per
by bootsz 9y ago
This reminds me a lot of a book I read a while ago called "Disciplined Minds" by Jeff Schmidt. It focuses on the sociological aspects of hiring practices & performance evaluation measures in the knowledge economy. It's a rather obscure book but I found it fascinating.
Basically, one of the central conclusions is that many of the metrics by which knowledge workers are evaluated are really less about measuring actual technical competence or domain knowledge and much more about detecting the propensity for conformity and obedience.
Maybe that's not too surprising for some, but what's even more interesting is that this can often be the case without the evaluators/managers/people in power even being aware of it. In many cases they genuinely believe they are evaluating for domain mastery / technical skill, but are fooled by the hidden signal that correlates to what they see as "desirable" outcomes.
- mc32 9y agoDo we know that people with degrees conform at greater rates than people without degrees? Is an uneducated blue collar worker, for example less likely to conform to authority than a person with a degree or advanced degree?
- braythwayt 9y agoI think we have to ask that question _in the context of a job where degrees are the norm_ (whether justified or not). It could be, for example, that a person with a degree working nights as a security guard is less likely to conform, while a person without a degree who gets a job that traditionally requires a degree is less likely to conform. Maybe it's all about being "intentionally different."
- bootsz 9y agoI'd be interested to know if anyone has attempted to research that. I'd imagine it might be hard to accurately measure levels of "conformity"