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Comment by ballenf | Hacker News Reader

None of the attacks on your position really answer your question, which I think is a reasonable one.

If I'm hiring someone to stack boxes, what's wrong with hiring and keeping the best box stackers? Why should I be limited in the non-discriminatory tools I use to measure such performance?

The wristband isn't monitoring an employee's attitude or beliefs.

If anything, the tool would make racism or favoritism generally less prevalent. I'd say it's the managers who are affected most by this, not the workers.

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I think the measure of anything like this is whether you as "the boss" are willing to wear one too and make that data available to those work for you without restrictions. If you're willing to do that then OK - let's try this thing and see what happens.

Information asymmetry is a key concern that you have hit upon.

Will a manager release truthful aggregate information, such as averages and standard deviations so that individuals can see for themselves how they stack up against the group? Will this information also be correlated for height, weight, and other physiological parameters?

Or will a manager selectively hoard and release specific pieces of information to create fear, uncertainty, and doubt in the minds of the workers in an attempt to squeeze out more productivity?

>Will a manager release truthful aggregate information, such as averages and standard deviations so that individuals can see for themselves how they stack up against the group?

At the FC where I work, managers printed metrics out from spreadsheets and posted them daily (ish) to encourage competition and productivity but there was no real way to verify numbers weren't being fudged, or that favoritism wasn't being shown.

Workers often won't know their error rate or accurate stow rate until they generate enough errors to trigger a warning, because only managers are allowed to see a worker's metrics. Amazon's policy is that an employee who follows procedure will never generate errors, and therefore, giving employees access to their own metrics is unnecessary - good employees won't need them, bad employees will either become good, or be fired. It's only recently that they've been able to see their stow rates as reflected by Amazon's own system, rather than a vague and inaccurate estimate.

>Or will a manager selectively hoard and release specific pieces of information to create fear, uncertainty, and doubt in the minds of the workers in an attempt to squeeze out more productivity?

Yes.

If I bring you in to write code, what's wrong with hiring and keeping only people who write a certain amount of code every day?

Are you having a bad day because you're distracted? Too bad, you're receiving a reprimand for not meeting your quota.

Do you need to get up and walk around because your back is sore? Too bad, that's time you should be spending coding.

Are you stuck in the resolution of a problem? Too bad, prepare to be canned for repeatedly missing your quotas.

Time spent refining your tools? Nope, not allocated. Time spent learning? Nope, not allowed. Fixing a security issue unrelated to your code? You missed your quotas. Training the FNG? Sorry, but you didn't meet quota.

I hired you to write code, after all, and if you don't want to do that, I have a few dozen applications on my desk of people who do want to.

On a more meta note - these wristbands and things like them remove all judgement from the equation. Someone recovering from a hurt back is only viewed as unproductive for an extended period of time, and thus someone to fire. No matter what other things they do for the company, or how they performed prior to the injury.

...assuming total failure by the supervisor to account for these things. Which can happen anyway. I don't see it changing the game, at least not for that reason.

And the supervisor's supervisor.

"I see you had ten underperformers that you have kept on. Didn't you know our company is working hard to save money? I've taken the liberty to fire them, consider this your first warning."

Even the best managers will have a hard time trying to convince upper management that people who miss quotas are worth keeping on.

Again, nothing new here. Quotas are already measured by queues filled, boxes moved etc. This is not a game-changer, just a cost-saver.

Do you also hold the belief that it's OK for three letter government agencies to proactively collect intelligence on all US and foreign citizens, because they could do it previously using tails, phone taps, and cameras?

As you say, quotas have already decided many a employees fate. The difference now is the scale at which the lack of human judgement can be applied. Scale can only hurt affected employees; it can never help them.

You seem to have an unshakable belief in the people you have worked for and hired and their ability to treat their low-paid hires fairly. I've personally had that belief burned away by the realities of working in a minimum-wage job.

"I'm paying for their health insurance. Why shouldn't I be allowed to jam a device up their rectum that sends me a Slack notification whenever they drink alcohol?"

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