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Initiatives like the Dot Collector and the Performance review system that has led to a toxic workplace culture I was curious about that "Dot Collector": Dot c

• ChrisRR 4y ago
  That sounds like a 360 degree review, but with less granularity.
• fatherzine 4y ago
• nowherebeen 4y ago
  > include values like positive energy There is so many things wrong with a system like this. It's asking coworkers to rat on each other. This is dystopian.
  • Cthulhu_ 4y ago
    I dunno, it only asks for a thumbs up or thumbs down - unless I misread it - which is a lot less invasive or "ratty" than most employee review systems I know. I prefer human feedback to be honest. And I've only ever given negative feedback on a direct co-worker once, who was a right smug prick.
    • otikik 4y ago
      I think "Black Mirror S03E01 - Nosedive" gives a good perspective on how such a system can go wrong, but on a country level. I think that the same would apply in a company though: it would exacerbate the misalignment of incentives instead of improving the situation.
      • parineum 4y ago
        I think the Dunbar Number plays a significant role in why those situations are different.
    • hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
      > I dunno, it only asks for a thumbs up or thumbs down Yeah, but why? Why would I even "rate" my coworkers? I would prefer not to. If someone is a prick, I talk to them first, and if it doesn't help and the case is serious, I go to the manager or file a formal complaint. What's the point of giving people thumbs up/down? Someone has a bad day, let's make it even worse by giving them a thumbs down, it's ridiculous.
      • itsoktocry 4y ago
        >Someone has a bad day, let's make it even worse by giving them a thumbs down, it's ridiculous. So giving them a thumbs-down is bad, but filing a formal complaint is fine? That seems like an extreme escalation. Maybe I'm far less cynical than others here, but as has been mentioned in other comments, I don't believe that people are going to down-rank people out of spite. And if you ask a broad question like, "Is this person a good teammate, yes/no?" and the person gets many no's...perhaps it's something to look into?
        • hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
          > So giving them a thumbs-down is bad, but filing a formal complaint is fine? That seems like an extreme escalation. No, on the opposite. If a coworker is just a bit unpleasant but I'm forced to rate them, I'm more likely to rate them negatively for reasons I have no idea about (maybe their dog died or are taking new medicine or whatever). If I'm not asked to rate them, I won't do anything, until it's grave enough I should intervene. In this case, I will contact them directly trying to understand them and solve the problem in an amicable way, without involving any external party. This helps in a vast majority of cases. Only in extremely rare cases, once in a few years, the problem becomes so grave that another person needs to be involved. In any case, giving anyone a thumbs down doesn't solve anything.
  • robocat 4y ago
    You have just written three negative sentences. You have a somewhat negative nick (nowherebeen). Your previous three comments on HN were negative. Perhaps coinbase doesn’t target employees like you. Maybe they like happy clappy medicinally-well-adjusted type employees?
    • my80thaccount 4y ago
      [dead]
    • nowherebeen 4y ago
      That's fine by me. I have never applied to coinbase nor intend to. I do agree I am a somewhat negative nick as well since I tend to comment on stuff I disagree with on HN. Thanks for the heads up though. I shall see if I can improve upon it.
      • my80thaccount 4y ago
      • noahtf 4y ago
        I think the comment you are responding to was sarcastic and in jest at Coinbase's dystopian system.
        • robocat 4y ago
          Yeah: my idea of funny is often not funny. I would fail the Dunning-Kruger test. I would like to say I occasionally write low quality comments to empirically test my personal self-judgement about my own metrics of reality.
  • tenpies 4y ago
    For what it's worth, this is progress. The previous default is a 24/7 inquisition trying to find and destroy any co-worker not on the cutting edge of woke - whether outside of work or at work. A silly 10 question yes/no survey from HR is a step back towards sanity.
    • ethanbond 4y ago
      Where was this woke inquisition happening that you saw directly? I’ve seen people complain about this much more than I’ve actually seen it happening.
      • flappyeagle 4y ago
        I lived it. It sucked. Only the dumb ones got cancelled. The smart ones kept their heads down or got new jobs. The team was defined by mediocrity. Mediocrity in hiring, in execution, in quality. But oh were they ever so woke.
        • antonvs 4y ago
          What kind of company was this? I do contracting and have worked a lot of places, big and small, but have never seen anything remotely like this. Perhaps it's a matter of perspective? Would you say e.g. James Damore was "cancelled", rather than being fired for discriminatory statements that an NLRB lawyer described as "so harmful, discriminatory, and disruptive as to be unprotected"?
          • deleted 4y ago
            [deleted]
          • flappyeagle 4y ago
            This is a venture backed enterprise software company. Cancelling was never so straightforward as being fired. It was social ostracism and the soft understanding that no promotions were going to come their way, because the whole HR team was against it and their managers were never going to spend the social capital to fight that fight. Their offense was objecting to a specific point being made in “implicit bias training”. I was high enough in the org chart that I was privy to these conversations.
  • d4rkp4ttern 4y ago
    Right. I’m reminded of Travis Kalanick’s “super pumped” metric at Uber. And of course that Black Mirror episode. Constantly evince a super positive energy or else.
    • throwaway_1928 4y ago
      episode: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosedive_(Black_Mirror) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosedive_(Black_Mirror)
    • doktorhladnjak 4y ago
      There was no "superpumped" metric. It was one of their Amazon-style leadership principles.
  • papito 4y ago
    Did this as far back as 18 years ago - but in a team of four people. You can see the problem with that.
• boardwaalk 4y ago
  Man, every time I hear something about Dalio and Bridgewater I'm glad I didn't get that job.
• paganel 4y ago
  Even on paper sounds dystopian, to be honest.
  • rgoulter 4y ago
    Bridgewater's approach sounds interesting, albeit not for everyone. Ideally, you want to catch mistakes sooner rather than later. People don't want to admit they made a mistake; or people don't want to sincerely criticise others. One way of fixing this is creating an environment where people feel safe about making mistakes. AFAIU Bridgewater's approach is the opposite; everything gets exposed. e.g. Modelling different personalities that people have, or whatever, so that these can be taken into account. The upside is stuff like you can tell the CEO you think he did a bad job. The downside is just how exposed it feels compared to normal social/political interaction.
    • is0tope 4y ago
      Yeah, I highly doubt that any line employee is going to tell the CEO they did a bad job. These happy clappy "systems" usually fail to take into account (almost biological) realities of how power structures work.
      • rgoulter 4y ago
        The story I was thinking of was where a director sent him the criticism, and he shared the criticism within the company. From this summary of a TED talk Dalio gave in 2017: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/employee-sent-hedge-fund-giant-ray-dalio-critical-email-chip-cutter https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/employee-sent-hedge-fund-gian... I'm not familiar with other companies that have the same reputation of using a system like this the same way Bridgewater does.
        • antonvs 4y ago
          That's a cherry-picked example by a person promoting himself and his own system. Not really a useful data point, more an example of an aspirational goal.
• systemvoltage 4y ago
  On surface, it sounds like 360 feedback which is pretty standard, am I missing something? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/360-degree_feedback https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/360-degree_feedback
  • spade 4y ago
    360 feedback usually happens a few times a year while Dot Collector feedback seems like it's for every meeting [0][1]. This reminds me of the Black Mirror episode "Nosedive" where everyone is rating everyone for every social interaction (e.g. saying "hi" or paying a cashier). [0] https://www.businessinsider.com/coinbase-asking-staff-rate-each-other-thumbs-up-down-report-2022-5 https://www.businessinsider.com/coinbase-asking-staff-rate-e... [1] https://qz.com/1071749/bridgewater-associates-ceo-ray-dalio-explains-the-dot-collector-feedback-tool-his-company-uses-to-rate-employees/ https://qz.com/1071749/bridgewater-associates-ceo-ray-dalio-...
    • systemvoltage 4y ago
      > This reminds me of the Black Mirror episode "Nosedive" I shall check it out!
• misja111 4y ago
  Like others already said, this is just another variant of the commonly used 360 degrees feedback system. I don't think that system is bad in itself, I've been in companies where it worked very well. I've also seen a company where it was being used by some to rat on colleagues, but in that company there were lots of things wrong already and the reviews just made it worse. So I guess there were many underlying problems in Coinbase already.
• mimsee 4y ago
  Isn't this exactly what was made fun of in the show Pied Piper? Piper score or metrics if I recall correctly.
  • PhillyG 4y ago
    The show was called "Silicon Valley" but yes they did explore/mock that concept
• jackweirdy 4y ago
  I think this idea must have been taken from Miaow Miaow Beans https://youtu.be/CI4kiPaKfAE https://youtu.be/CI4kiPaKfAE
• tsimionescu 4y ago
  > how well they demonstrate the 10 crore Values at coinbase I wonder if these are the 10 core values, or Coinbase actually has 10 crore (100,000,000) values they want employees to think about... Doesn't seem impossible given some HR departments I've seen.
  • IfOnlyYouKnew 4y ago
    To paraphrase the economics joke: Coinbase doesn't have any value(s). It has ten prices, none of which are correct, and it doesn't know the difference. Even with slightly less snark: you try to come up with a list of ten "core values" and "positive energy" is one of them? Does anybody notice that "positive energy" is a completely empty shell of a phrase? It's "why are you sad? When I'm sad, I decide to be happy instead" in buzzword-form. Then again, I sort-of get it: if Coinbase had "intellectual rigor" and "help society, and capitalism will reward you" as guiding principles, the cognitive dissonance could shatter a Tesla Cybertruck window at a distance. Better to just cut the chase and go with "for the lulz" and "privilege is our edge" from the get-go.
    • FBISurveillance 4y ago
    • vianneychevalie 4y ago
      I disagree, emotional work is work, and « positive energy » sums it up quite well. Edge cases exist, but when I’m sad, I just stop being sad at work, because it’s been clearly stated, from the first interview, that positivity was a requirement of performance. One edge case: colleague lost her mother last year, of course we didn’t expect her to perform excruciating emotional work.
      • phillu 4y ago
        This sounds like a company I would never want to work for. No one is positive and happy all the time and having to fake it "as a job requirement" sounds wrong on so many levels.
• ur-whale 4y ago
  > Sounds like hell. Sounds like standard corporate usistan.
  • permo-w 4y ago
    i.e. hell
    • ur-whale 4y ago
      > i.e. hell Fair enough, but why single out Coinbase when the same kind of BS goes on in pretty much every large corp over there?
      • datashaman 4y ago
        Because the OP is about Coinbase?
• meerita 4y ago
  Sounds like hell. I can't believe companies use such systems to manage their own employees. It tells a lot how bad managers do their work, which is basically know every employee and care for them.
  • antonvs 4y ago
    A lot of what larger companies do is find ways to take mediocre or bad staff and make them more useful by giving them structure and tools that help them do their jobs even if they're bad at them. This is an example of doing this for managers. A good, thoughtful manager wouldn't need to do this, but it's difficult to find such people, and they tend to be expensive.
• thrwyoilarticle 4y ago
  There are a lot of replies to this comparing Dot Collector to TV shows. Can we not judge these things on their own (de)merits with more nuance than just saying it reminds us of some popular media? This happens in a lot of tech discussions - usually using 1984 - to argue that a surface-level resemblance means something is bad. I agree that I don't want to work in a place like this but if this is an acceptable line of reasoning then it extrapolates to good-boy-points used for children being dystopian. Using stories whose morals we agree with as a gotcha enables the use of stories whose morals aren't agreeable or sensible - perhaps democracy reminds me of the senate from the Star Wars prequels so we should revert to feudalism? There are famous examples of these kind of rating systems being negative in the real world in our very own sector. We don't need to use fiction.
• DonHopkins 4y ago
  Sounds like something that happened at Sun around 1990, which I described earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15660759 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15660759 At Sun, during the dark days of Solaris, when everyone was depressed and wanted to quit, our manager sat down with each of us and asked: "I want to know your happiness index, a number from 1 to 10. You can use any algorithm you want to come up with it, just use the same algorithm each time so we can track how it changes over time." I had a BS degree in Computer Science, but I was never taught an algorithm for calculating my happiness index, not even in my Artificial Intelligence class. So I had to wing it. To protest, one of my cow-orkers made "rpc.happyd", a Sun RPC server whose function it was to track the happiness index of the team members over the network, and "HappyTool", a graphical user interface to rpc.happyd which drew a face for each team member, with a slider under your own face for adjusting the face from happy to sad. Here's a demo of the HyperNeWS version of HappyTool, which I wrote in NeWS PostScript, and which lets you copy an encapsulated PostScript happy face to the clipboard that you can paste into other HyperNeWS applications (like pasting into the customizable clock face to make happy and sad clocks): https://youtu.be/avJnpDKHxPY?t=13m24s https://youtu.be/avJnpDKHxPY?t=13m24s
  • jonahbenton 4y ago
    OMG, incredible, never heard about this.
  • shanusmagnus 4y ago
    I don't get why this is viewed as beyond the pale? Sounds like your manager cared about how you all were doing, and wanted a way to observe trends in how you were doing in order to help you, which is the same exact thing a manager does implicitly every time she talks to you. Obviously this isn't reproduceable psychological science, but is there more to the story to explain why you found this to be objectionable?
    • pjc50 4y ago
      Because you don't know how this information is going to be used and whether it's going to be used against you? Because it's weirdly reductionist: no longer happy or unhappy with or about anything, just a number in a vacuum?
• kstenerud 4y ago
  I've been in situations like this before. The end result is one giant popularity contest, with the beautiful people clique getting the highest ratings, and everyone else getting varying degrees of shit based on how unpopular they are and how much intrigue is currently going on. They didn't even have to actively collude; humans come with very sensitive popularity meters built-in, so they instinctively know where to place others, and it pretty much governs itself. Just imagine if all companies were run like your high school social hierarchy, except that this also determined whether you kept your job or not.
  • u385639 4y ago
    You don't have to imagine it, it's already the way it is. A company social hierarchy is just a little more forgiving than a high school.
  • vijucat 4y ago
    > humans come with very sensitive popularity meters built-in, so they instinctively know where to place others, and it pretty much governs itself. Great insight! It's like an ouija board. It feels like you're making independent decisions and a gestalt outcome "appears", but it's much more social than we perceive.
  • itsoktocry 4y ago
    >with the beautiful people clique getting the highest ratings, I don't think you're wrong, but it's also a cynical interpretation. Another way to look at it is that people who other people want to work with get high ratings. Is that bad? From a company culture standpoint, I'm not sure it is. In fact, I often see posts and comments on these very boards about the toxicity surrounding "really good programmers" who are jerks, but tolerated. That's not a great outcome, either. Where is the middle ground?
    • kdomanski 4y ago
      > Another way to look at it is that people who other people want to work with get high ratings. Is that bad? From a company culture standpoint, I'm not sure it is. Depending on who is it that people do and don’t want to work with, we might call it “discrimination against a protected class”, which is at least bad enough that it’s illegal in many countries.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• subhro 4y ago
  Very similar to what I found in Amazon. Hell indeed.
• moron4hire 4y ago
  Had a similar thing at Deloitte that they called "Scatterplot". There were questions like, "if the money were yours, would you give it to this person to work on projects?" They take your rankings from multiple people over time, plot them, then generate a trend line. The thinking is that, in an org like Deloitte, you'll end up working with so many people that any interpersonal friction will winnow out as noise. This is said to be "scientific". It indeed was hell. The primary problem with it was that most people in my business unit (I don't remember the numbers, but the business unit was originally a large startup that got acquired and then multiplied 10x as similar work Deloitte already did got folded in) didn't operate like the rest of Deloitte. Our business unit performed more like a software consultancy than a management consultancy, so most people who weren't director level never interacted with anyone other than a core group of people and a single, direct manager. That manager was also responsible for your assignments, whereas the rest of Deloitte is much more unstructured, people move around on assignments and don't necessarily have a fixed management structure. On top of that, my particular group was in a very niche field, with only two other groups in the entirety of Deloitte doing similar work (one in Australia and another one in Chicago, I believe, whereas I live near DC), which compounded the "you only work with a small set of people and have no chance of escaping personality conflicts". I got drummed out pretty fast by a boss who was pissed off that I was more internet-famous than him. Not that I'm actually internet-famous, but what little following I have on Twitter occasionally gets me invites to give talks at conferences. All of their marketing was centered around one person being the "genius" behind our group, and I wasn't that guy (hell, I never once met him in the year-and-a-half/6 projects I worked on while I was there), so I was accused of trying to undermine the org. It ultimately worked out in the end. I got to milk the system a little bit. One of the only advantages of working in a gigantic corporation is that HR is systematized. If you have an issue that is strictly limited to yourself, and can figure out the right levers to pull, the machine will engage and you will eventually get what you want. You are entitled to your benefits. So I was able to take advantage of some very generous family leave and childcare benefits at a rough time in our lives. It also looked good on my resume, which helped me land my current role, which is the best job I've ever had.
  • lupire 4y ago
    That makes sense, though, for the business. Consulting companies sell a brand image. If Justin Bieber's backup singer got more famous than Bieber, it would mess up the brand dynamics.
• buitreVirtual 4y ago
  Ok, but how are the results used? For improving work behavior or for employment decisions? Are they disclosed to the employee or the manager or everyone?
• bena 4y ago
  The 9 core principles at the place where I work are: Vision, Verve, Wit, Cheer, Humility, Benevolence, Nimbleness, Probity and Wiles. Normally, I try not to value any principle over the others, but today, I'd have to say Cheer is my favorite.
• chaostheory 4y ago
  This is how Bridgewater, Ray Dalio’s company, is run. The app is based on his philosophy https://www.principles.com/ https://www.principles.com/
• krnlpnc 4y ago
  Thumbs up on communication, thumbs up on completeness of work on time. But, like major thumbs down on their vibe. They need more positive vibes.
• qgin 4y ago
  I have a hard time not imagining the shoe Community (season 5 episode 8) where the college starts using an app that rates every interaction between people. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/App_Development_and_Condiments https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/App_Development_and_Condimen...
  • willcipriano 4y ago
    "Really big shoe." - Johnny Carson
• Thr0wawayDocs 4y ago
  You don't know the half of it: I worked on Dalio's HR system, and what is really "interesting" is how the dots are put together. First off: All dots are public. You know who is grading you well, who is grading you badly, and who is liked and disliked by each executive and manager you want. Imagine giving Ray Dalio a low score in Critical Thinking, one of the many categories. It's not going to be easy. The dots are also put together to create a baseball card: An accumulation of what the company thinks of each person. And those scores are basically the review system, as you will be kicked out with a low enough average. You can, and should, look at the baseball card of someone you have to meet with, but you don't work close to, and act accordingly. But the baseball card score is not just an average: Then two groups of people with different ideas of someone would give a middling score. Instead, scores are weighted with a sigmoid kernel. Said kernel takes, as its other parameter, the rater's score in that category. If the company believes that you are bad at something, your opinion doesn't matter. And since votes are public, you probably want to agree with the majority, as otherwise your lack of skill at evaluating that category could lead to people voting you lower in that category. This mechanism is, as you might have noticed, pretty unstable. As my personal score changes the value of the dots I provided, every scoring iteration changes scores in ways that might never converge. Some people's scores would change wildly, as the people that rate them high, or low, had scores near the critical point of the sigmoid. Therefore, some determining mechanism was required to decide the final scores. Let's just say it stacks the deck in favor of executives. So when you look at the Bridgewager version of this system, what you got was all kinds of little mechanisms that pushed really hard towards having the leadership being rated as the best at everything, and then having the leadership's rating be the most powerful force of them all. So every rating is performative, and you better be directionally agreeing with the top forces in the company. Rating honestly is something for only the naive and the politically powerful. I wonder how far down this road Coinbase is going: Every little bit of the system matters to optimize for toxicity.
  • nebula8804 4y ago
    Isn't Bridgewater a very high performing organization? How has the company not completely collapsed at this point? Or is there a ticking time bomb coming that will end up destroying Dalio's supposed "reputation for excellence"?
• FredPret 4y ago
  The modern tendency is to codify and systematize all management decisions. In the old British Empire, the upper class learnt the classics (as in, ancient myths) and were packed off to go rule the world. It didn’t go so badly (for Britain). Perhaps we can combine the two - managers to study human nature, and then study the problem, and then use regular brainpower to come up with good solutions.
  • gradschoolfail 4y ago
    If your classics included the Greek ones, that probably led to the aristocrats getting shipped to their demise in WWI. There might have been something akin to single combat bwtween champions in India, but that was something probably too much to expect in Belgium.
    • FredPret 4y ago
      They were fighting in the infantry in every British war until then; it worked very well for a long time
      • gradschoolfail 4y ago
        (: I guess you realized that they should have joined the nascent airforce— it was the last truish example of single combat between champions, one, ironically, enabled by technology—- the continental aristocrats did :) (eg Baron von R) (maybe they had a better-faith classical education, considering their generally more accurate transmission of the classic pronunciations) BTw Kerala supposedly.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_combat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_combat “ The Kerala practice was discontinued in the 19th century under the British Raj.”
• isthispermanent 4y ago
  This is not what the Dot Collector was intended for. It was intended for live discussions debating market conditions. Bridgewater would use it so participants could rate and then aggregate. For instance there are 10 people in a meeting and Person 1 is talking about the Bank of Japan effect on the EUR/USD. The other 9 would rate that person on this specific topic in terms of "credibility, experience, etc...". The results would then be displayed after all people talked and were given so the team could come to a consensus on correct action. Brilliant if used correctly. Does not sound like it's being used as intended.
• hemloc_io 4y ago
  loooooooool sounds like the type of thing a company that hires a bunch of former Amazon people would love
• thaway2839 4y ago
  Sounds like a better, potentially more useful, form of peer review?
• catsarebetter 4y ago
  It's not as simple as this rating system, there's a lot more principles and frameworks that they used in their culture at Bridgewater outside of just this dot collector piece. You can find deeper material on this in Ray Dalio's Principles book. But yeah that alone sounds like hell. Also, Bridgewater associates were being paid ridiculous amounts (I think, haven't run specific nubmers on this) by someone widely regarded as a visionary, so they were much more incentivized to stay and deal with this stuff. I suspect that there wasn't a comparable job opportunity for them at the time, whereas with Coinbase in a market downturn...