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As the interview was further and further analyzed by both The Company and the proletariat, an arms race developed. The Company asked esoteric questions and the
by zwkrt 8y ago
As the interview was further and further analyzed by both The Company and the proletariat, an arms race developed. The Company asked esoteric questions and the proles studied. The proles learned to FizzBuzz and The Company developed FooBaz. Whiteboards gave way to take home interviews which gave way to probationary offers. Personal questions were supplanted by a form of subtextual sparring in which small facial movements, pauses, and hand movements spoke volumes.
By 2034 the majority of proles were on illegal performance-evaluation enhancing drugs, necessitated by the fact that the average prole was also on The Company's indefinite performance improvement probation. They occupied over 20% of their working hours proving their worth to The Company, which had hired Prefects to wander the endless halls. The Prefects started administering the Voight-Kampf employee aptitude tests on proles, but soon began testing each other on their own effectiveness in administering the test.
Before The Fall, the end state of the system was that The Company existed only to vet its own employees, all of whom were in charge of secretly monitoring other groups of employees. They had their nominal tasks such as programming or planning, but employee evaluation was based solely on the ability to evaluate others in their nominal tasks.
- jacobkg 8y agoThis is the best thing I’ve seen on HN in a long time
- avip 8y agoYou should either write more, or (assuming you already write more), lmk somehow next time you write something.
- patientplatypus 8y agoYou're not crazy, just ahead of the curve :P.
- jammygit 8y agoNot looking forward to when captchas get replaced by the Voight-Kampf
- Derek_MK 8y agoSolid piece, I'd give it a B+. We'll see if there's any improvement at our next review.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- invalidOrTaken 8y agoThis says everything I wanted to say, but better.
- throwawaywriter 8y agoJane Adeline Jones was 27 and has already been evaluated as an adult by both State and Federal governments. Not a probationary adult. Full adult. She was even allowed to drive during the day. As a Level 4 Artificial Learning engineer with Gamazo people always assumed that she was a Perfect. She wasn’t. She was a hard working proletariat. “That’s actually a funny way to put it” she thought to herself as the words came out of her mouth. “Hard working proletariat”. Not perfect. Just hard working. “Interesting concept” she thought and stuck a fork in a salad bowl. The salad was a 13 out of 10. The restaurant could do better. The sauce was a solid 15, the bread here was always over 100. But the lattice was soggy. Could it evaluate to less the 100%? She, obviously, wasn’t certified to evaluate that but Danny was. “Danny, what you think of the lattice?” she asked. Danny looked up from his own bowl of salad and gave her a thoughtful stare. She put her head down and kept munching. It was a nice day. The sky was blue. The sun was warm. Warm but not too warm. “17 at least”. Jane cleared her mind and laid back, as she waited for Danny to answer. “Life was good with high probability of getting better” she thought. She smiled. Closed her eyes. When she opened them again, Danny has yet to answer. Instead there was a man standing there right in front of her.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- sjg007 8y agoThis is basically the 360 review.
- mixmastamyk 8y agoGetting a job has not quite reached this Vogon-level dystopia you describe, but it's damn close.
- aaaaaaaaaab 8y agoNot bad, but you need more visibility for your promotion. Maybe you could put it up on Confluence and highlight which Company Value each paragraph supports?
- Latteland 8y agoThat is something amazon really does i think. Think of the writing samples.
- TheOtherHobbes 8y agoAnd then the AIs took over.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- zshrdlu 8y agoReminds me of the film Brazil