4 ms·

This is a bit scary. Imagine your employer using machine learning on your git commit patterns (or swearwords per comment) to check when you might quit.

by praptak 14y ago

yummyfajitas 14y ago
I can imagine it. Why is it scary? Would it also be scary if your manager observed your attitude/emotions through personal interaction and deduced you might want to quit?
- dagw 14y ago
  I'd be all for a tool like that, assuming it actually worked and it was used in a productive way. Imagine if you're getting tired of writing RoR code all day and pondering quitting and all of a sudden your boss comes up to you and says "hey how would you like stop coding Rails for a while and join a team that's about to evaluate Clojure for an upcoming project". That's just the sort of thing that could make everybody happy.
  - xradionut 14y ago
    You're assuming that managers may actual care about the intellectual and professional needs of the staff instead of fulfilling their bosses goals. (Or maybe I'm just jaded and need to find some greener pastures... :) )
  - sillysaurus 14y ago
    Most bosses in the US would use these metrics to more quickly replace those who were about to quit.
    - Evbn 14y ago
      Only if the boss has replacements lined up, which is rare in professional jobs.
      - GFischer 14y ago
        When I took a HR course (for MBAs), I learned that Human Resources is supposed to have a replacement roster (it's part of their job), I guess that's not common in practice, but they should.
  - GFischer 14y ago
    The problem is, at least in my experience, the ratio of people who would use it for good vs those who would misuse it would be very bad. Of course, it's also the employee's fault for getting into such an environment in the first place, but sometimes you just need the job. I use ManicTime Tracker, if my boss got hold of all the data contained in there, he would probably consider firing me - I average more than 2 solid hours of surfing the web on any given workday... wait, I have the exact data :) , that's the point! I was at my work PC for 1059 hours so far this year. Of those, I spent 325 hours on Firefox and 95 on Chrome, that averages about 13 hours a week of web surfing (probably 10 hours procrastinating or reading and 3 actually researching problems). I also spend a shocking 8 hours a week reading and replying to mail (to be fair, we don't have any bug tracking or project management, so mail becomes both), and 5 hours a week on SQL (I do a lot of querying and reporting). I'm less than 4 hours a week actually on a development environment, split between VB6, .NET and Forte4GL (our ugly legacy system). And I was hired to be a "systems analyst"... And that's only time spent at the PC, it doesn't count time wasted on meetings and stuff. This is a real-life example of why they say that on a large corporation, you only do actual work 1 or 2 hours a day (as opposed to a startup where you might do code or programming-related stuff 6 or 7 hours, I hope :) ). It's really depressing to put it in numbers. Fortunately, I'm going to quit next year and dedicate full-time to my startup (which is just getting started right now :) ).
    - JoeAltmaier 14y ago
      It's called Short Timer's Syndrome. When you know you're leaving, your dedication and work ethic plummet. You don't need a lot of statistics to notice it; you just have to be looking. Many managers are too busy looking up the management tree, sucking up to superiors, working their own career to actually manage their subordinates. If you're expecting to leave then you're in luck, they won't notice. But that's probably the reason you're leaving too!
      - GFischer 14y ago
        I didn't know it had an official name :) . There are papers and everything (example: http://www.opus12.org/uploads/O12-SCI-V02-N01-P30.pdf http://www.opus12.org/uploads/O12-SCI-V02-N01-P30.pdf ) I guess surfing the web is a form of short-timing - I can't actually leave early or come in late, since I'm heavily penalized for those, like any self-respecting bureaucracy, my company equals time at the desk with productivity, and heavily penalizes lateness.
- yarrel 14y ago
  A manager who has time to log all my actions throughout the day then study them to try and guess whether he's doing such a bad job that I'm thinking of quitting has probably answered the question before they even start.
- praptak 14y ago
  For me the difference is between expected and unexpected. I expect bosses to observe my attitude/emotions through personal interaction and even review my commits by hand (it's even mandatory where I work.) I do not expect them to compute extensive statistics on what I do in the repository and draw deep conclusions from that, it's somehow too close to what I consider private. It's obviously subjective.
  - Evbn 14y ago
    Well, now it is expected. Welcome to the post-privacy era.
benkant 14y ago
Google does something like this, apparently: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124269038041932531.html#mod=testMod http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124269038041932531.html#mod=...
cadr 14y ago
If your boss needs machine learning to see that you aren't happy, there are much bigger issues.

This is a bit scary. Imagine your employer using machine learning on your git commit patterns (or swearwords per comment) to check when you might quit.

by praptak 14y ago

This is a bit scary. Imagine your employer using machine learning on your git commit patterns (or swearwords per comment) to check when you might quit.

yummyfajitas 14y ago

I can imagine it. Why is it scary? Would it also be scary if your manager observed your attitude/emotions through personal interaction and deduced you might want to quit?

dagw 14y ago
I'd be all for a tool like that, assuming it actually worked and it was used in a productive way. Imagine if you're getting tired of writing RoR code all day and pondering quitting and all of a sudden your boss comes up to you and says "hey how would you like stop coding Rails for a while and join a team that's about to evaluate Clojure for an upcoming project". That's just the sort of thing that could make everybody happy.
- xradionut 14y ago
  You're assuming that managers may actual care about the intellectual and professional needs of the staff instead of fulfilling their bosses goals. (Or maybe I'm just jaded and need to find some greener pastures... :) )
- sillysaurus 14y ago
  Most bosses in the US would use these metrics to more quickly replace those who were about to quit.
  - Evbn 14y ago
    Only if the boss has replacements lined up, which is rare in professional jobs.
    - GFischer 14y ago
      When I took a HR course (for MBAs), I learned that Human Resources is supposed to have a replacement roster (it's part of their job), I guess that's not common in practice, but they should.
- GFischer 14y ago
  The problem is, at least in my experience, the ratio of people who would use it for good vs those who would misuse it would be very bad. Of course, it's also the employee's fault for getting into such an environment in the first place, but sometimes you just need the job. I use ManicTime Tracker, if my boss got hold of all the data contained in there, he would probably consider firing me - I average more than 2 solid hours of surfing the web on any given workday... wait, I have the exact data :) , that's the point! I was at my work PC for 1059 hours so far this year. Of those, I spent 325 hours on Firefox and 95 on Chrome, that averages about 13 hours a week of web surfing (probably 10 hours procrastinating or reading and 3 actually researching problems). I also spend a shocking 8 hours a week reading and replying to mail (to be fair, we don't have any bug tracking or project management, so mail becomes both), and 5 hours a week on SQL (I do a lot of querying and reporting). I'm less than 4 hours a week actually on a development environment, split between VB6, .NET and Forte4GL (our ugly legacy system). And I was hired to be a "systems analyst"... And that's only time spent at the PC, it doesn't count time wasted on meetings and stuff. This is a real-life example of why they say that on a large corporation, you only do actual work 1 or 2 hours a day (as opposed to a startup where you might do code or programming-related stuff 6 or 7 hours, I hope :) ). It's really depressing to put it in numbers. Fortunately, I'm going to quit next year and dedicate full-time to my startup (which is just getting started right now :) ).
  - JoeAltmaier 14y ago
    It's called Short Timer's Syndrome. When you know you're leaving, your dedication and work ethic plummet. You don't need a lot of statistics to notice it; you just have to be looking. Many managers are too busy looking up the management tree, sucking up to superiors, working their own career to actually manage their subordinates. If you're expecting to leave then you're in luck, they won't notice. But that's probably the reason you're leaving too!
    - GFischer 14y ago
      I didn't know it had an official name :) . There are papers and everything (example: http://www.opus12.org/uploads/O12-SCI-V02-N01-P30.pdf http://www.opus12.org/uploads/O12-SCI-V02-N01-P30.pdf ) I guess surfing the web is a form of short-timing - I can't actually leave early or come in late, since I'm heavily penalized for those, like any self-respecting bureaucracy, my company equals time at the desk with productivity, and heavily penalizes lateness.
yarrel 14y ago
A manager who has time to log all my actions throughout the day then study them to try and guess whether he's doing such a bad job that I'm thinking of quitting has probably answered the question before they even start.
praptak 14y ago
For me the difference is between expected and unexpected. I expect bosses to observe my attitude/emotions through personal interaction and even review my commits by hand (it's even mandatory where I work.) I do not expect them to compute extensive statistics on what I do in the repository and draw deep conclusions from that, it's somehow too close to what I consider private. It's obviously subjective.
- Evbn 14y ago
  Well, now it is expected. Welcome to the post-privacy era.

benkant 14y ago

Google does something like this, apparently: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124269038041932531.html#mod=testMod http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124269038041932531.html#mod=...

cadr 14y ago

If your boss needs machine learning to see that you aren't happy, there are much bigger issues.