Hey, wait – is employee performance Gaussian distributed? • Hacker News Board

Re: Hey, wait – is employee performance Gaussian distributed?

#121

Post by hemloc_io » Mon, Nov 25, 2024, 6:11 PM UTC

sangnoir wrote: post #70

> Performance management, as practiced in many large corporations in 2024, is an outdated technology that is in need of an update Author made a couple of fundamental mistakes: the first is they assume employees are (or should be) paid according to how much they "individually" earned the company. Employers strive to pay employees the minimum they can bear, on employer's terms. Those terms are information asymmetry and…

When I first heard of the Work Number, I thought there's no way they stay in business given the Real Page suit.

Re: Hey, wait – is employee performance Gaussian distributed?

#122

Post by sangnoir » Mon, Nov 25, 2024, 6:11 PM UTC

philipov wrote: post #105

sangnoir wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm being descriptive, bot prescriptive: I'm stating what the priorities are under a capitalist system without the rose-colored glasses offered by the Just-world fallacy.

In a well-functioning capitalistic system, the sell side of the labor market has equal power with the buy side. When the buy and sell sides of a market have a huge power imbalance, this leads to market failure, which is contrary to the goals of a capitalist system, as it results in inefficient allocation of capital.

Where can one find examples of such a well-functioning capitalistic system? Or is it a thought-experiment

Re: Hey, wait – is employee performance Gaussian distributed?

#123

Post by no_wizard » Mon, Nov 25, 2024, 6:15 PM UTC

diggan wrote: post #76

sangnoir wrote: post #70

> Performance management, as practiced in many large corporations in 2024, is an outdated technology that is in need of an update Author made a couple of fundamental mistakes: the first is they assume employees are (or should be) paid according to how much they "individually" earned the company. Employers strive to pay employees the minimum they can bear, on employer's terms. Those terms are information asymmetry and…

> the first is they assume employees are (or should be) paid according to how much they earned the company From the perspective of a employee and/or human, that does seem like the most fair way of distributing what the company earns, sans the money that gets reinvested straight back into the business itself. But I'd guess that'd be more of a co-operative, and less like the typical for-profit company most companies ar…

Even with sales based around commission, the most objective sort of salary determination, businesses still find ways to undercut payouts if they don’t think it’ll hurt the bottom line or employers won’t notice

Re: Hey, wait – is employee performance Gaussian distributed?

#124

Post by stonemetal12 » Mon, Nov 25, 2024, 6:16 PM UTC

haolez wrote: post #75

jedberg wrote: post #65

One of the things I loved about working at Netflix was that the base assumption was that everyone was a top performer. If you weren't a top performer, you were given a severance check. The analogy we used was a sports team. Pro sports teams have really good players and great players. Some people are superstars, but unless you're at least really really good you're not on the team. Performance and compensation were com…

How can 360 peer performance reviews ever work? The incentives are against a fair evaluation: the reviewers have the incentive to overly criticize others so that they can stand out more. I'm not saying that everyone on a 360 review process does that. But the incentive is there and it's working against fair reviews.

>The incentives are against a fair evaluation: the reviewers have the incentive to overly criticize others so that they can stand out more.

Wouldn't that(how you view and fit in with your team) be part of your review? If I was Bob's manager and all reviews he gave of his teammates were "Teammate M is a dumbass and the only reason they are productive is because I do 80% of their job for them", wouldn't leave me thinking Bob is great. It would leave me thinking Bob is a jerk who doesn't work well with others.

Re: Hey, wait – is employee performance Gaussian distributed?

#125

Post by michaelmior » Mon, Nov 25, 2024, 6:16 PM UTC

nradov wrote: post #13

michaelmior wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure this is the argument the author is making, but you could claim that the rest of the argument is true for any (or most) reasonable measure of employee performance that a company actually cares about.

You could claim anything, but is there hard quantitative data to support such a claim? Or are we just guessing?

The author presents some data in the article. Also, the absence of hard quantitative data doesn't necessarily make it a complete guess. (At least not any more than starting with the assumption of a Gaussian distribution.)

Re: Hey, wait – is employee performance Gaussian distributed?

#126

Post by uoaei » Mon, Nov 25, 2024, 6:16 PM UTC

I suspect you can dig into any metric here and find that they are explicitly determined in terms of an assumption of underlying normality.

Re: Hey, wait – is employee performance Gaussian distributed?

#127

Post by boothby » Mon, Nov 25, 2024, 6:19 PM UTC

KK7NIL wrote: post #60

jlawson wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All polygenic traits would be Gaussian by default under the simplest assumptions. E.g. if there are N loci, and each locus has X alleles, and some of those alleles increase the trait more than others, the trait will ultimately present in a Gaussian distribution. i.e. if there are lots of genes that affect IQ, IQ will be a Gaussian curve across population.

Very interested point, this is a close corollary to the central limit theorem, no? Doesn't this assume a linear relationship between relevant alleles and the given trait though?

The missing assumptions are that the number of genes is large, independently distributed (i.e. no correlations among different genes), and identically distributed. And the whopper: that nurture has no impact.

You can weaken some of those assumptions, but there are strong correlations amongst various genes, and between genes and nurture. And, one "nurture" variable is overwhelmingly correlated to many others: wealth.

Unpacking wealth a little, for the sake of a counterexample: one can consider it to be the sum of a huge number of random variables. If the central limit theorem applied to any sum of random variables, it should be Gaussian, right? Nope, it's much closer to a Pareto distribution.

In summary: the conclusion of the central limit theorem is very appealing to apply everywhere. But like any theorem, you need to pay close attention to the preconditions before you make that leap.

Re: Hey, wait – is employee performance Gaussian distributed?

#128

Post by _vaporwave_ » Mon, Nov 25, 2024, 6:21 PM UTC

> a helpful order of magnitude estimate is that the hiring process all told costs the company approximately a year’s salary

It feels weird to gloss over this since transaction costs this high have a huge impact on how the system should be designed.

Re: Hey, wait – is employee performance Gaussian distributed?

#129

Post by exe34 » Mon, Nov 25, 2024, 6:22 PM UTC

jajko wrote: post #120

exe34 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's safe to assume gp has drunk the koolaid. I spoke to somebody from the army once, and they too had the top 10% and it's difficult to imagine that every employer employs the top 10%. it's a cultural meme really, like everybody tells themselves they are good people really.

At some point, people invest into their work/employment so heavily and tie it to their identity tad too much, they internally need to feel this is the right and best choice, which for many top talents may mean working with "top 10%", whatever that means. So otherwise smart folks will start parroting official company policies and become a 'good boy'. Suffice to say I don't look kindly on this, but it highly depends on…

I love my job, but I'm careful not to give the impression at work. Best to keep them on their toes. I'm also good at weaving the corpospeak into conversations, but very few can hear the sarcasm.

Re: Hey, wait – is employee performance Gaussian distributed?

#130

Post by dangus » Mon, Nov 25, 2024, 6:24 PM UTC

jonas21 wrote: post #93

dangus wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In summary, Netflix told all their employees that they are so amazing at their job, they are the top 10% of the whole world, they are like NFL athletes. If they don't perform to top tier levels, they'll be shown the door. Here's a thought experiment: pretend that Netflix is lying and that their employees are not actually made up of the top 10% of talent industrywide. Let's for this thought experiment assume the reali…

Most Netflix employees have worked at other places and can make the comparison for themselves. They don't have to take Netflix' word for it. Also, since when is telling people they're good at what they do "worker-harming psychological manipulation?"

The employees are making that judgment in an environment that has been tainted by the psychological manipulation itself.

How many people have brains that are going to seriously put up a fight for objective truth when other people talk them up like that? If you tell me my team is full of excellent talent I’m not going to self-sabotage my ego and question it.

It’s negative psychological manipulation when it’s being used as an excuse to fire and replace reasonably productive people.

The employment contract is highly lopsided. An employee is harmed far more when they are fired than a business, and Netflix exploits that advantage with this organizational culture.