5 ms·

The author seems keenly unaware that all of this fake rigor in HR exists primarily so the company can say they have a process that is objective. This is not the

by throwway120385 3y ago

The author seems keenly unaware that all of this fake rigor in HR exists primarily so the company can say they have a process that is objective. This is not the same thing as actually having a process that's objective. More to the point, objectivity may not actually matter much because so much of how a team performs is down to how individuals within the team gel, and you can't train someone into having a personality and work style that gels if they don't. Your coworkers can learn to handle criticism but they can't learn to be brash and assertive if it's genuinely not in their personality.

vundercind 3y ago
My experience has been that some variant of this is at play in all “data-driven” business, not just in HR. You can play spot-the-fatally-flawed-data/analysis all day long—but nobody cares, accuracy isn’t the point at all. It’s entirely a political tool.
- hirvi74 3y ago
  I am not going to claim my experience applies to everyone, but I think calling it a political tool is, at the very least, on the right track for many workplaces. I like working for my manager, and think he is a very rational and no BS kind of person. However, I have butted heads with the upper management above him at times for what I believe are good and legitimate reasons. During my last performance review, I had to fill out all the typical questions and surveys that us grunts are forced to answer. While reading/answering some of the questions, I just get this sinking feeling that it's all just a dog and pony show. So, in a moment of distraction while filling out all the questions, I decided to go talk to my manager directly. I simply asked him to his face, "Is there any answer I can supply to these questions that will change the opinions of upper management about me?" All my manager said back was a simple, "Nope!"
numbsafari 3y ago
Someone I know quite well works in aerospace. The team they were on was identified as outperforming all the other similar teams. Rather than making all the other teams more like that team, they broke up the team and spread its members around like some kind of FTE pixie dust. Most of that team left the org within the next 24 months, and none of the teams they joined got better. Some got worse. Applying the “promote your best IC to be a manager” mindset applies to teams as well, and it’s a damn shame, because in both cases it usually results in the opposite of what anybody desires.
- michaelmrose 3y ago
  The truly ironic thing is that they could have mined that effective team for people to move with meaningful raises/promotions in other areas slowly, moved new folks into that team to be trained by them, had that team work with other teams, studied that team or dozens of ways of actually spreading around the pixie dust. They just decided to get the golden eggs by cooking the goose if I can switch to another metaphor midstream.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
reaperman 3y ago
> so the company can say they have a process that is objective. I think it makes sense to spend some money on this kind of charlatan "rigor" from a legal CYA perspective. But I think the amount of energy and time and resources spent on it far exceeds what is reasonable for CYA, and that money would only be spent the way it is if either/and/or 1) the people making the decisions to do all this extra analysis benefit from it personally in some way, or 2) the people making the decisions truly believe that the data/analysis will yield productive results, or 3) that the people making the decision believe that this much charlatan-rigor is actually necessary for legal "CYA" purposes. I just feel that #2 and #3 reflect such a broad lack of understanding that I'm surprised there are no major corporate leaders bucking the trend. For hiring, specifically, I believe it's proven in mathematical theory that the best thing you can do is to have a two-stage hiring process: 1) only eliminate/select candidates based on provably strong signals. This will result in a massively large pool of candidates who "pass" the screening for each position. 2) use a random number generator to pick someone from that pool. A lot of people would propose using the algorithm from the secretary problem[0], but that algorithm assumes that you can "grade" on a candidate's quality on a continuous scale. I don't believe we have the ability to judge a candidate that is "60% likely to be amazing" vs. "80% likely to be amazing", so that algorithm won't work. We can, however, measure in a binary way whether we were happy or unhappy with a hiring decision, and determine which pre-hiring signals had any actual strong correlation to being happy with the hiring decision. Filter candidates based on that, then pick a candidate at random. Any additional filtering will result in systemically picking worse candidates at scale. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem
- throwway120385 3y ago
  Consider for a moment that HR both identifies the rules by which a person's value to an organization is decided, and that they also must demonstrate their own value to an organization and you can see that a lot of this arises from a conflict of interest. HR really wants 2 to be true because many companies have drunk the "metrics" kool-aid and believe that the only things that matter are measurable. Metrics are a technical solution, and as organizations are social constructs HR is making the classic software engineer mistake and trying to solve a social problem(how do we identify high performers) with a technical solution(generate numbers and use those to identify high performers). The reality is that team performance doesn't yield to analytic techniques because it's so markedly a result of all of the people together and not specific individuals that it's not even funny.
drewcoo 3y ago
This. HR defends the company against legal attacks from outsiders and employees alike. Not all people working in HR have this as a prime motivation, but that's why HR exists.

vundercind 3y ago

My experience has been that some variant of this is at play in all “data-driven” business, not just in HR. You can play spot-the-fatally-flawed-data/analysis all day long—but nobody cares, accuracy isn’t the point at all. It’s entirely a political tool.

hirvi74 3y ago
I am not going to claim my experience applies to everyone, but I think calling it a political tool is, at the very least, on the right track for many workplaces. I like working for my manager, and think he is a very rational and no BS kind of person. However, I have butted heads with the upper management above him at times for what I believe are good and legitimate reasons. During my last performance review, I had to fill out all the typical questions and surveys that us grunts are forced to answer. While reading/answering some of the questions, I just get this sinking feeling that it's all just a dog and pony show. So, in a moment of distraction while filling out all the questions, I decided to go talk to my manager directly. I simply asked him to his face, "Is there any answer I can supply to these questions that will change the opinions of upper management about me?" All my manager said back was a simple, "Nope!"

numbsafari 3y ago

Someone I know quite well works in aerospace. The team they were on was identified as outperforming all the other similar teams. Rather than making all the other teams more like that team, they broke up the team and spread its members around like some kind of FTE pixie dust. Most of that team left the org within the next 24 months, and none of the teams they joined got better. Some got worse. Applying the “promote your best IC to be a manager” mindset applies to teams as well, and it’s a damn shame, because in both cases it usually results in the opposite of what anybody desires.

michaelmrose 3y ago
The truly ironic thing is that they could have mined that effective team for people to move with meaningful raises/promotions in other areas slowly, moved new folks into that team to be trained by them, had that team work with other teams, studied that team or dozens of ways of actually spreading around the pixie dust. They just decided to get the golden eggs by cooking the goose if I can switch to another metaphor midstream.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

reaperman 3y ago

> so the company can say they have a process that is objective. I think it makes sense to spend some money on this kind of charlatan "rigor" from a legal CYA perspective. But I think the amount of energy and time and resources spent on it far exceeds what is reasonable for CYA, and that money would only be spent the way it is if either/and/or 1) the people making the decisions to do all this extra analysis benefit from it personally in some way, or 2) the people making the decisions truly believe that the data/analysis will yield productive results, or 3) that the people making the decision believe that this much charlatan-rigor is actually necessary for legal "CYA" purposes. I just feel that #2 and #3 reflect such a broad lack of understanding that I'm surprised there are no major corporate leaders bucking the trend. For hiring, specifically, I believe it's proven in mathematical theory that the best thing you can do is to have a two-stage hiring process: 1) only eliminate/select candidates based on provably strong signals. This will result in a massively large pool of candidates who "pass" the screening for each position. 2) use a random number generator to pick someone from that pool. A lot of people would propose using the algorithm from the secretary problem[0], but that algorithm assumes that you can "grade" on a candidate's quality on a continuous scale. I don't believe we have the ability to judge a candidate that is "60% likely to be amazing" vs. "80% likely to be amazing", so that algorithm won't work. We can, however, measure in a binary way whether we were happy or unhappy with a hiring decision, and determine which pre-hiring signals had any actual strong correlation to being happy with the hiring decision. Filter candidates based on that, then pick a candidate at random. Any additional filtering will result in systemically picking worse candidates at scale. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem

throwway120385 3y ago
Consider for a moment that HR both identifies the rules by which a person's value to an organization is decided, and that they also must demonstrate their own value to an organization and you can see that a lot of this arises from a conflict of interest. HR really wants 2 to be true because many companies have drunk the "metrics" kool-aid and believe that the only things that matter are measurable. Metrics are a technical solution, and as organizations are social constructs HR is making the classic software engineer mistake and trying to solve a social problem(how do we identify high performers) with a technical solution(generate numbers and use those to identify high performers). The reality is that team performance doesn't yield to analytic techniques because it's so markedly a result of all of the people together and not specific individuals that it's not even funny.

drewcoo 3y ago

This. HR defends the company against legal attacks from outsiders and employees alike. Not all people working in HR have this as a prime motivation, but that's why HR exists.