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Big Data Knows When You Are About To Quit Your Job
HughPickens.com writes Quentin Hardy reports at the NYT that a leading maker of cloud-based software for running corporate human resources and financial operations has announced new products that provide the kind of data analysis that Netflix uses to recommend movies, LinkedIn has to suggest people you might know, or Facebook needs to put a likely ad in front of you. One version of the software, called Insight Applications, predicts which high-performing employees are likely to leave a company in the next year; it then offers possible actions (more money, new job) that might make them stay. In another instance, expense reporting software can predict which employee populations are most likely to exceed their budgets. "We've applied machine learning to affect consumer tastes," says Mohammad Sabah, director of data science at Workday. "Putting it to career choices, to pay and employment, have a huge upside if we do it right." Already, Sabah says, "we're surprised how accurately we can predict someone will leave a job." The goal is to predict future business outcomes to take advantage of opportunities and cut risk levels. One future product may be the ability to predict who will and won't make their sales quotas, and suggest who should be hired to improve the outcome. "Making an employee happy, improving the efficiency of a company these are hard problems that affect corporations."
When managers and supervisors know you're probably going to quit, it's a different story from "I hear he's gotten an offer from other companies". Data like this gets trusted implicitly, and if you weren't planning to leave this year, your new and improved toxic environment will make damn sure of it.
More likely though this software will be used to maximize everyone's ability to treat low level employees like machines.
I never quit, I just go bankrupt ; ).
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
Dont asks silly questions that you dont really want to know the answer to-- That's been one of the major reasons why HR drones have been looking up facebook accounts for many years now-- To see if you are naughty or nice.
So, YES. Big data knows that.
Big data knows who you voted for.
Big data knows what kind of hamburger you get from McDonalds.
Big data knows what fragrance your girlfriend/wife wears.
THAT IS THE POINT OF BIG DATA.
Big data takes shit loads of seemingly unrelated bits of information that people foolishly air in public, cross-references it, then uses it to make correlation based predictions.
Personally, I am opposed to the very idea behind big data.
(Then again, I harbor these "quaint" notions that things need to be allowed to be kept private.)
"Putting it to career choices, to pay and employment, have a huge upside if we do it right."
Yea especially the "if we do it right" part. Because if you do it wrong it could have very damaging personal consequences. Machine learning by definition generalizes across the population, so if you don't behave like others have before you, you are screwed. Especially in the USA where employers have very little power this will be used against people and cause serious career damage.
Thank you, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and so many others, for courageously defending humanity, my freedom and more!
All this software does is make predictions based on averages. It explicitly does not recognize outliers. This is the road to tyranny. It looks great, and offers us much better efficiency than before. We use it to get things done, there is no time lost with needless discussions. If it's wrong 10% of the time, then so what! We consider 90% to be acceptable.
And then, people start altering their behavior because they know they're being watched. Articles start appearing about how to conform to the mandarins' idea of a model citizen. Viewing these articles is, of course, a black mark against you. And on and on it goes, led by society's best shouting the battle cry, "it's for your own good!"
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
A: Top performers usually leave because they are top performers.
Know the sun will rise does not give one a means to prevent it. Nor death or taxes or progress. It has never been hard to predict top performers leaving.
B: Sabah says, "we're surprised how accurately we can predict someone will leave a job." Never, ever buy prediction software from a place that is surprised with the result. Quality prediction is the result of hard work and statistical analysis, results should almost NEVER come as a surprise to anyone working in the field statistics or data-modelling. This is one field where "surprise" is a sign of incompetence.
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
I take it the algorithm looks something like this:
If EMPLOYEE WEBSURFING equals EMPLOYMENT WEBSITE then output "Employee is thinking of leaving" else output "All good, nothing to see here"?
You can learn a lot about a person if you just take the time to inject them with sodium pentathol
Why would you be opposed to big data finding out when you take a dump in the morning, as long as its voluntary?
If you do all your internet activity through tor, and don't subscribe to cable TV, and find non-identifiable ways to obtain your video entertainment, the only thing big data can work with is your bank account, credit card, library card, and social security number. (And cash payments can limit what your credit card can say about you.)
It won't keep you safe from the NSA, but big business isn't holding a gun to your head (yet).
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
if (subjective.IsActiveOnLinkedInLastThirtyDays()){ThinkingOfLeaving = true};
Why would you be opposed to big data finding out when you take a dump in the morning, as long as its voluntary?
Voluntary to what extent? If privacy becomes insanely expensive to have (because all major appliances start violating your privacy in some way or another, and the one's that don't come at a premium), then it doesn't seem so voluntary anymore.
Not using Facebook, Google, etc. is easy, so at least for now, I don't think we're at that point in most cases.
It won't keep you safe from the NSA
To some extent, it will. If you avoid giving out data, then they have less to work with.
but big business isn't holding a gun to your head (yet).
Maybe not directly, but big business hands over tons of information to the government. If big business has your information, the government likely does too.
Well, if we're replacing all resources for machines, we will have machines hiring, firing, promoting and fluffing other machines.
On a thinly related topic, I still struggle with the concept of automation of work creating poverty instead of wealth. Imagine an alien being coming to Earth and saying
"We decided to make contact because you finally achieved the milestone of eliminating the need to work."
To which the humanity replies:
"Yep, we're all jobless, poor and hungry now."
...I think that we should study the algorithm, and adopt behaviours that can deliver us more money from our employer :-)
It's as much about cookies as it is about ip address. Just so I understand your position(speaking as someone who buys prepaid cell phone/sim card/and minutes in cash):
It is voluntary because it doesn't effect you if you:
-don't subscribe to tv
-log in to any website with user generated content(almost all of them have tor exit nodes banned)
-use incognito mode + ghostery to consume all streaming media
-make all purchases in cash(forgoing all the efficiency benefits of online shopping)
In a similar vein:
DUI checkpoints are voluntary because you consent to them when you get in your car and drive somewhere.
Property taxes are voluntary because you don't live in a cave in the woods.
Taxes are voluntary because you have to have a job and use money for them to apply to you.
If you do all your internet activity through tor, and don't subscribe to cable TV, and find non-identifiable ways to obtain your video entertainment [...]
Then you're one of those unemployable privacy-obsessed nutjobs. You've probably got heaps to hide, and NSA suspicion algorithms mark you as suspicious.
Thanks for playing!
I have a degree from a Top 25 school.
I have maxed out my annual merit raise, annual bonus, and have received 2 small performance bonuses.
My performance reviews are near perfect.
I make slightly less than median for my title and location, mostly because my peers have a few more years experience than I do.
I work for an employer that is widely known and respected in the industry that I work.
For the past 6 months:
I've been vocal about my displeasure for the working environment.
I've posted publicly viewable resumes on all the big hiring boards.
I've added dozens of recruiters to my LinkedIn connections.
I've been on numerous call screens and interviews.
I've been so brazen as to upload resumes and cruise job listings FROM MY WORKSTATION
Today I turned in my 2 week notice.
I've not once heard from HR or a manager about my career path.
Management is split between angry and befuddled about this.
Big Data seems legit
Why can't you just talk to the people that work at a company? They might just tell you what you want to know.
Here are some of the problems that affect corporations.
-Indirect Communication
-Gossip
-Immaturity
If employees happiness and company efficiency are really important than why do you need the cloud and some software?
When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.
So, yeah, as soon as people figure out what it is that is being measured, expect them to alter their behavior to make that measure useless.
If you're taking a dump in the morning and it's not voluntary, you should see a doctor.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I'm guessing that their "algorithm" is more like:
X% change jobs after 1 year.
Y% change jobs after 2 years.
Z% change jobs after 3 years.
etc.
In my experience, people tend to change jobs because of something happening at their current job (or a personal/family situation change). And that's not something that can be predicted with any degree of accuracy.
I've been a top performer at several companies. I before leaving each of them, I discussed my issues with a manager more than once, which were usually pay + one other issue.
In each time before I left, neither were addressed.
In each time after I left, management was either "shocked" or angry, and made attempts to keep me. I flatly refuse to accept offers after I have accepted a job elsewhere, I should be taken at my word and not forced to demonstrate that I am leaving to be taken seriously.
I have no idea why any company would waste money on this. Either they care, and they'll know when someone is leaving without software, or they don't care, and the software will be ignored as well.
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
Yeah, the program will probably just generate another daily email blast to management/HR that will get lost or ignored
For PR reasons, the sellers of this system pretend it's about highlighting certain employees to get raises, but HR meetings are much more often about the problem of cutting costs than about the problem of how to give out more raises, so it's easy to see how this will really be used.
When a company wants to cut its workforce, they will use this software to find which low- or medium-productivity employees are most likely to leave and then make some policy change they know will frustrate those employees so that some of them quit and the company doesn't have to pay any severance packages etc. This will generally lower employees' quality of life, but the company doesn't care because those employees were leaving anyway.
Help build the anti-software-patent wiki
"I make slightly less than median for my title and location, mostly because my peers have a few more years experience than I do."
Stop accepting this bullshit line when you hear it. If you regularly out perform your peers that have more experience, then you get more pay than those slackers.
I really hate it when people buy that bullshit line when managers trot it out.
Also, giving you a 10-20% raise is NOTHING to the company. And honestly it's almost nothing to you when you look at your paycheck. Yet they act like you are asking hem to cut off their legs when you demand to be fairly compensated for your work.
Understand that Paying you an additional $10,000 a year is absolutely nothing to a stable and healthy company. Now understand why no company deserves any loyalty from an employee.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
It's because our economic system originates from before Industrial Revolution, and was designed to get everyone to "bust their ass" working. It was designed to maximize production in a situation where labour was the limiting factor, and breaks down spectacularly when raw materials (including energy) are.
Total demand = (demand of labour of previous timestep) * (fraction of GDP paid as wages) + min((fraction of GDP paid as profits), constant)
Demand of labour = (avg((total demand), (total demand of previous timestep)) / productivity
As long as productivity stays low, production is limited by workforce, and economy tends towards full employment. If productivity increases faster than wages, as has happened, you eventually hit a situation where total wages of all workers can no longer create enough demand to buy the entire supply. Market prices fall, and companies need to invest on increasing efficiency rather than increasing production to keep their profits up. Since a physical product will always require a certain amount of raw materials, eventually they reach the point where the only thing they can cut is workforce. This causes demand to fall (you can only spend money you have), and thus the economy enters a stall.
This is also why stimulus isn't working: investment now goes to cutting workforce - and thus demand - further, not expanding production. The only way to actually fix the economy would be to increase the buying power of Joe Average. This, in practice, means drastically increasing wages and unemployment benefit, in other words, to move income from the rich to the poor. That seems unlikely to happen, especially under a Republican government, so I guess we're seeing the twilight of capitalism.
Of course, it's also possible to keep demand up and economy working by giving credit with reckless abandon and hope you can keep juggling an ever more complex web of financial instruments to obfuscate that. But who would be stupid enough to risk the fate of their country - and their own golden goose, and possibly the entire Western civilization - for that, rather than just ensure people are paid enough?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
The real use of this software is so that companies can monitor the likelihood of a departure of their critical employees as they slowly cut benefits and stagnate wages across the board.
LinkedIn has $5,312 revenue per employee. That's revenue, not profit. So giving a $10,000 raise to an employee means that employee puts the company in the negative.
If they had a revenue of $5k per employee they'd be bankrupt. They've got a profit of about that. From http://investors.linkedin.com/financials-statements.cfm the revenue in 2013 was about $1.5 billion, profit about $27 million. From http://press.linkedin.com/about they have about 6,000 employes. So profit of about $4,500 per head, revenue about $250,000
If you find it hilarious, you've been fortunate. I tried opening a online CD with Nationwide Bank by calling them, and they asked me questions about my background which they believed the "real" me could answer, and I couldn't. I later realized that the questions were based on Trans Union's error years earlier, when they were incorrectly convinced I had a certain second name and address several states away. I (after much willful stupidity and/or incompetence on TU's part) had gotten that sorted out, but the error had apparently propagated (with further garbling) to whatever source Nationwide was using and unwisely treating as gospel.
I'm always disappointed and not surprised by the points taken by debaters here on slashdot.
It's the same f*CK1ng thing every time...Black and White - either/or - up or down.
There is really no such thing as:
"I'm going to volunteer EVERYTHING and firehose my datasets everywhere..."
VS
"I live in a cave in the Yukon with a picture of the unibomber on the wall"
Give me a break people, WE ALL to varying degrees share things, whether with financial, government or online entities.
We've been doing it for years, just like here on slashdot.
I really get sick of the "Oh, you want privacy, what's wrong with you? Why aren't you posting to FB every ten minutes like "normal" people"
VS
"I change my route to work every other day, only pay for food with gold bullion and hack my neighbors wifi to connect to Tor" etc;
We can pretty much assume that groups like the NSA, with their vast resources and ability to pretty much data mine whatever they want, have the goods on most Americans, and have the nefarious ability to blackmail anyone they want. Why else would they datamine? Their mandate about terrorism is really just a facade for the concentration of power through knowledge.
With that being said, I sure as f*ck don't give out my info readily to Target, FB, Wal-Mart, or the vast array of businesses trying to datamine the f*ck out of every peon they sell a widget to.
It's bad enough knowing the NSA is doing that already.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
I'd like some software that will tell me how likely my company is to give me a raise vs tell me to get lost. This would be especially nice when it comes to companies I'm considering applying to.
As for the software under discussion, it is obvious that it will be used to deny raises to anyone except those who are both marked as willing to leave the company and whom the company sufficiently values (and by values I mean that it would cost the company more to replace them than to give them a raise).
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Policy is only there for lying to the employees.
The job offer for my current job, I shot back that I wanted to start at the MAX vacation time on day 1. Yes, A new hire starts with 5 weeks of vacation every year, the audacity! I have 20 years of experience, I'm not a newbie, I get full vacation.
I had a response that it was against policy to do that, so I responded with "then I decline your job offer."
Suddenly they were able to "break policy" and make that change for me.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The way to fix the economy is for the government to stop meddling with it by picking winners and losers.
Oh, you mean like the current practice of taxing capital gains and dividends at a lower rate than income?
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