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Comment by hbn | Hacker News Reader

You want this until it gets integrated into Microsoft Teams, management gets ahold of it, and now these pie charts are treated as an indication of your contributions to the company. Everyone is itching to talk as much as possible, dragging meetings on forever, a bunch of people saying absolutely nothing as insurance against when layoffs come around and a manager has to choose between 2 people roughly as valuable except... Hm... Bill contributes 3.8% less than Fred in meetings...

Every time I get an email from Microsoft Viva telling me about my productivity last week, I can't help but feel that's the direction we're heading.

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I am a manager and am afraid of a future like this. To echo your point I caution everyone to be careful what kind of data you wish for because you just might get it. Over a long enough timeline the probability goes to 1 that it will be misused by management.

People that would make ridiculous decisions like that probably are already making insane decisions with the data they have currently. Why would one more data point hurt?

Slippery slopes aren't cliff sides, they are downward ramps.

I would disagree that the kind of data being talked about lends itself to misuse. Management in general, and especially in well run companies, tends to be responsible and judicious in their use of various metrics and getting a good, holistic view of employee interactions and engagements is vital to ensuring that high performers are identified and adequately mentored. Ideally, this type of data could be paired with a sentiment analysis engine and an emotional identifying model that could help coach negative employees toward more positive and beneficial interactions. This is an area that would require a delicate balance to prevent misuse, but, given most HR departments hesitance to act without strong background information, it would likely be a net positive in nearly every case.

'scuse me I need to go wash my mouth with soap. I just gamed the metrics that would be produced with this and I feel dirty.

Wow, I have been blissfully unaware of Microsoft Viva up until now. I guess Manna [1] came for knowledge workers first.

[1] https://marshallbrain.com/manna1

Viva doesn't tell you about your productivity. It reminds you about meetings you were in and commitments and follow-ups you might want to tend to.

In my 40+ year career I've never met a manager who would use such a vague 'metric' - even if it did exist - to choose between two hires.

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