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My theory is that if you try to "manage by metrics", the quality of what you are managing will go down. Unhappily, this often leads to more metrics, since more

by jbert 18y ago

My theory is that if you try to "manage by metrics", the quality of what you are managing will go down. Unhappily, this often leads to more metrics, since more quality control is clearly needed... To me, the alternative of "managing by metrics" is knowing your staff and being familiar with their work. This is hard to do and harder to scale (say, to national level), since it requires that the managers are doing a good job. Metrics scale much more easily. But - those who care have to fight the measurement system to produce quality. This reduces their effectiveness or drives them to leave, leaving you with the less-motivated. Being a teacher, being a student and software development are areas which can and do suffer from this. (Students perhaps less so, they have to learn to play the system since they have fewer alternatives.)

timcederman 18y ago
Um, what?
- mlinsey 18y ago
  One of two possibilities: First possibility: Jbert was arguing that the reason students can get away with this is because classroom grading standards are too mechanical (did you fill at least X pages? Did you have a thesis statement? Did you cite at least Y sources). Furthermore, many teachers are themselves evaluated based "metrics" like standardized tests which don't test writing ability very well. I don't really think that this explains the paper mill business, but you could make the argument. Second possibility: Jbert is paying a starving blogger a couple of bucks to write his comments for him!
  - jbert 18y ago
    > I don't really think that this explains the paper mill business, but you could make the argument. I was thinking along those lines (then thought it relevant to the way students are judged too, as well as coders). Teaching used to be a well-regarded profession and has instead become much lower status (and low paid). Some random stats I googled for seem to support this (possibly biased source): http://www.nea.org/edstats/losingground.html http://www.nea.org/edstats/losingground.html I would think that you would be less likely to get away with the paper mill business if your teacher was a highly motivated professional. In the UK at least, teaching is rigidly controlled, with schools' success or failure being evaluated according to various metrics. These are can be easily gamed (e.g. # of pupils achieving 5 A-C grades at GCSE. You focus effort on the C/D students, and push kids towards 'soft' subjects) - but only by teachers who are prepared to put the score-against-metric above the quality of the education they give. Of course, if you don't perform to those metrics, the school suffers (lower in league table => fewer pupils => less cash for school => worse education for kids), so you're effectively screwed either way. Basically it's the old perverse incentive business, but yes, I do appear to have pulled a random rant out of thin air, so apologies to the regular HN readers. We now return you to your regularly scheduled viewing. HN question: given that management needs info to make decisions and metrics are often gameable/perverse, how does one approach this problem? Is it just "good metrics"? > Second possibility: Jbert is paying a starving blogger a couple of bucks to write his comments for him! Now that's a startup waiting to happen: karmachameleon.com - "building your online reputation" (name appears to be squatted).

by jbert 18y ago

timcederman 18y ago

Um, what?

mlinsey 18y ago
One of two possibilities: First possibility: Jbert was arguing that the reason students can get away with this is because classroom grading standards are too mechanical (did you fill at least X pages? Did you have a thesis statement? Did you cite at least Y sources). Furthermore, many teachers are themselves evaluated based "metrics" like standardized tests which don't test writing ability very well. I don't really think that this explains the paper mill business, but you could make the argument. Second possibility: Jbert is paying a starving blogger a couple of bucks to write his comments for him!
- jbert 18y ago
  > I don't really think that this explains the paper mill business, but you could make the argument. I was thinking along those lines (then thought it relevant to the way students are judged too, as well as coders). Teaching used to be a well-regarded profession and has instead become much lower status (and low paid). Some random stats I googled for seem to support this (possibly biased source): http://www.nea.org/edstats/losingground.html http://www.nea.org/edstats/losingground.html I would think that you would be less likely to get away with the paper mill business if your teacher was a highly motivated professional. In the UK at least, teaching is rigidly controlled, with schools' success or failure being evaluated according to various metrics. These are can be easily gamed (e.g. # of pupils achieving 5 A-C grades at GCSE. You focus effort on the C/D students, and push kids towards 'soft' subjects) - but only by teachers who are prepared to put the score-against-metric above the quality of the education they give. Of course, if you don't perform to those metrics, the school suffers (lower in league table => fewer pupils => less cash for school => worse education for kids), so you're effectively screwed either way. Basically it's the old perverse incentive business, but yes, I do appear to have pulled a random rant out of thin air, so apologies to the regular HN readers. We now return you to your regularly scheduled viewing. HN question: given that management needs info to make decisions and metrics are often gameable/perverse, how does one approach this problem? Is it just "good metrics"? > Second possibility: Jbert is paying a starving blogger a couple of bucks to write his comments for him! Now that's a startup waiting to happen: karmachameleon.com - "building your online reputation" (name appears to be squatted).