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In a kind of counter intuitive argument in this article in The Wall Street Journal , Uber drivers may now have to battle with the fact that no human is actually telling them what to do. Most of the tasks are now being automated. The study by Researchers at the Data and Society research institute at New York University point out that Uber uses software to exert similar control over workers that a human manager would.
The world looks more and more like the Manna short story, where every aspect of our employee life is used to classify our performance. Another interesting discussion point: Is the middle manager role disappearing?
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Meet your New Boss: The Algorithm
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You are a fluke of the universe; you have no right to be here.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday November 06 2015, @01:15AM
Metrics are only as intelligent as who or what generated them, and for the time being humans are pretty damn good at gaming metrics.
A simple example would be what I've encountered plenty of times in the electronic repair industry - techs cherry-picking the easy fixes and/or the gadgets with the highest profit-margin fixes to pad numbers.
And don't forget about the bottom-line: If you make enough numbers and/or money, managers will be more than happy to ignore everything else, even glaring personnel issues.
Mangers who implement such metrics are usually idiots with the "only tool is a hammer, everything else is a nail" attitude. They see what their manager buddies are doing or they read about something in PHB Monthly and do something because all the other middle-managers are doing it.
Lowly mouth-breathing, glue-sniffing techs don't even need to be intelligent to beat the metrics, all they need is a strong survival instinct.
So yeah, this algorithm is just another series of metrics to beat. Even if you don't have access to its internals you can poke and prod it and note the results, and come up with the optimal strategy.