Slashdot Mirror
Netflix Algorithm Tells You When Your Best Employee Is About To Leave You
An anonymous reader writes "Former Netflix data scientist Mohammad Sabah has used the basis of the video-streaming company's movie-recommendation engine to create a new system to predict when valuable employees are likely to leave your company for pastures new. The new application 'Workday Talent Insights' uses the basis of the engine to correlate diverse factors such as interval between promotions and current length of tenure with equivalent job opportunities at employment websites, in order to gauge 'corporate restlessness', and provide options for employers who identify potential leavers."
- Have they turned up in a suit one day when they normally where jeans and t-shirt and disappear off for an extra long lunchbreak?
- Have they started arriving late and leaving early?
- Do they skip meetings more often?
- Have they hinted about a payrise in the last assessment?
- Has their work quality gone off a cliff and they spend most of the day on social media or youtube?
If YES is the answer to 2 or more of those then yes, probably they're looking to leave.
Combine this with Googles new automated interview techniques and you can have people being moved automatically from company to company!
Imagine waking up and getting a message saying
Dear OzPeter,
We are sorry to hear that ABC Widget company has let you go. But don't worry, overnight you details were submitted to 14 different companies in your area who subscribe to Googles "Match Me" recruiting service. Based on information automatically provided by ABC Widget co through their Netflix firing algorithm, 9 of those companies bid on you, and we are happy to announce that you are now employed by XYZ Financial services.
Congratulations on your new position!
Please see the attached map to find your way to your new place of work.
Would you like us to update your:
Facebook status y/n?
Linked In profile: y/n?
Twitter account: y/n?
MySpace page: y/n?
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
You dislike it and the employer likes it for the same reason: it makes you position on the job market worse. And since they already have a stronger position, there's little you can do about it short of unionizing. But unionizing makes above average talent relatively - though not necessarily absolutely - worse off, and everyone likes thinking they're better than average. That combination of ego and selfishness is easy to turn into a weapon to make people act against their own best interests: all you have to do is tell them they deserve it better than someone else, and will get their due if they only forget solidarity with them. And when it's their turn to be eaten, there's none left to stand with them, so they fall.
Not that it really matters. The revolution of the proletariat failed, but it seems the bourgeoisie is perfectly capable of destroying the entire superstructure their might depends on without anyone's assistance. You can't have a business without customers, you can't have customers if people don't have money, and they can't get money without wages or social security. The only real question is: with communism discredited, what happens when the downward spiral reaches the point of no return? You can't maintain social cohesion without any kind of ideology when bread and circuses stop coming. Will we see the return of fascism, will someone come up with something entirely new, or will civilization simply collapse?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
If you give an employee an awesome review, but tell him that due to your budget, you can only give a cost of living increase.
Or here's one the really pissed me off. I was working for a body shop and coming off a contract. The sales/recruiter/commissioned guy asks what kind of rate would I like for the next contract. OK.
So, I go up to computerjobs, type in my skills, experience, area and find that other W-2 contractors/temps were getting at least $5/hr more than I was. So, that's what I told the sales/recruiter/commissioned guy.
"That's a pretty big increase."
Excuse me. THEY are going to bill at market rates so why shouldn't I get market rates? My next contract was with another company that gave me $11/hr more. Yeah, this was in the late nineties - so, keep that in mind.
Here's another one that kills me.
You're working 12 hour days and ask your boss about getting more help - and entry level guy. And you explain that it will also develop more talent for the company.
He says, "No, see we can't get anyone qualified."
Now, I like getting my ego stroked as well the next guy, but frankly what I was doing wasn't rocket science. Then I overheard the stuff about the minimum ROI they have to make on a developer. That's right, they need to make 45% over your total compensation (salary, benefits, SS payments, etc ...). Some companies it's even more. So, they work you to death, tell you your awesome and that everyone else is too stupid to do what you're doing so, keep working hard you genius. Why hire two developers for when you can get one guy to kill himself?
All of us were eventually canned and the work sent overseas.