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Data Mining Moves To Human Resources
theodp writes "Just when you thought annual reviews couldn't get worse, BusinessWeek reports that HR departments at companies like Microsoft and IBM are starting to use mathematical analysis to determine the value of each employee. At an undisclosed Internet company, analysis of (non-verbal) communications was used to produce a circle to represent each employee — those determined to generate or pass along valuable info were portrayed as large and dark-colored circles ('thought leaders' and 'networked curators'), while those with small and pale circles were written off as not adding a hell of a lot. 'You have to bring the same rigor you bring to operations and finance to the analysis of people,' explains Microsoft's Rupert Bader. Hey, who could argue with what Quants did for finance?"
"run each different division as a separate company, responsible for one thing - the bottom line. If they don't produce, then close them down. "
You are no better than the environment you disqualify. Both of you are members of the "see this complex problem? it's not complex but simple and here you have the solution for 100% of the cases" brotherhood. Your solution fails on the locale optimum side and it is visible at all levels. With your proposal you are guaranteed to never look for projects with returns of benefits outside your division scope, exactly as current corporate culture avoids for the most part projects that go far beyond next quarter.
It is said so many times it's boring but a company's best asset is people, specially while despite being said so many times management always seem to benefit "machinery" above people to cover their asses. If you put your focus on local optimus you'll lose a lot on sinergies; if you only look for far reaching goals day-to-day bussiness will take you out the game and it makes *people* to properly judge a situation and find the most profitting middle ground.