
The Measured Worker - luu
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/541531/the-measured-working-man/
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bcassedy
This is an interesting article, yet I believe it largely misses the issues
people have with income inequality. The article seems to focus on pay
discrepancies between people with the same role, missing a lot of the big
picture.

Completely missing from the article are any references to differences between
jobs with easily measurable output and those with difficult to measure value.

Software engineers and management are two great examples of professions where
value is very difficult to measure. In the opinion of many, software engineers
tend to be underpaid compared to the value they produce. Managers on the other
hand, tend to be viewed as overpaid or at least better compensated compared to
the value the produce. I believe that managers do a better job of capturing
their value primarily because they (or someone just like them a step up the
chain) hold the purse strings.

Back to what the article focuses on for a moment. Sure a superior producer
might be able to capture more of their value than their low-producing
counterpart. That's a drop in the bucket compared to C-level compensation vs
salaryman pay.

In summation, people aren't upset that the guy in the next cubicle makes 20%
more money because he's more productive. They're upset that the CEO makes 100x
more than they do even in bad times for the company.

~~~
vtlynch
>software engineers tend to be underpaid compared to the value they produce

I think comparing salary to the value produced is a slippery slope. Software
engineers are certainly not paid below the average or median salary. Their
"value" is just a function of the job, not a measure of its worth.

~~~
jstanley
> comparing salary to the value produced is a slippery slope

Can you elaborate? Surely the efficient-market ideal is that everybody gets
paid an amount equal to exactly the amount of value they produce.

~~~
InclinedPlane
I understand your point, but there's a glaring error in what you said. People
need to get paid _less_ than the value they produce, otherwise their employer
would just be a passive participant gaining no advantage from their
employment.

~~~
itsybitsycoder
If the employers produce no value, then we should get rid of them. If they are
producing value, then the overall value produced should be greater than the
sum of the value produced by their employees.

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pm90
Great article. I don't think we will ever stop in finding ways of measuring
productivity. In a sense, measurement is fundamental as it helps us determine
the truth. Look at how important measurement is in the sciences and in
engineering.

But the prospect of an employer using previously collected data to make an
employment decisions seems rather scary. People do a lot of things when
they're young and immature and it seems paranoid to rely on that information
when they would probably grow out of it. How accurately can past information
predict future productivity? I feel like we can't (yet) measure the effects of
external factors on human nature, such as new ideas, new habits, new
relationships and so on.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _I don 't think we will ever stop in finding ways of measuring productivity.
> In a sense, measurement is fundamental as it helps us determine the truth.
> Look at how important measurement is in the sciences and in engineering._

Beware of cargo-cult :). I'm not saying it to you personally - but I can
imagine some manager or marketer saying those words and meaning that "if
measuring is so important in science and engineering then it must be good,
therefore let's use measuring!". Measurements are only as good as the
questions you want them to answer; ask about wrong things, and even the best
data will lead you astray.

~~~
DannoHung
Measurements are also only as good as your experimental design, your data
collection tools, your methodology, and your statistical analysis.

Which is my way of saying, "Doing good science is actually pretty hard."

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glup
If we accept Cowen's premise regarding what constitutes value, Kant and Hegel
were crappy authors because they had a small number of pageviews. We probably
should have valued their contributions less; it's great we have such objective
measures now, and we probably won't make that mistake again.

From the article:

 _Today a digital media company knows exactly how many people are reading
which articles for how long, and also whether they click through to other
links. The exactness and the transparency offered by information technology
allow us to measure value fairly precisely._

There are two different logics at play here, with incommensurate notions of
value. The firm's primary goal is to make money; as such a story's value is
largely a function of page views (or click-through on ads, etc.) However, we
can also assess the value of some produce (article, etc.) at a longer-term
societal level. In this case a good story is one that helps policymakers
reconceptualize an issue or foment some sort of social change (e.g. a New
Yorker article like this one [1]). Within the language of free-market
economics these longer-term positive effects might be called "externalities"
or "intangibles"; intuitively they are much harder to measure, especially with
capital flows. But think about it— do we really want to incentivize firms, and
by proxy employees, to maximize value as measured by immediate capital flows?

More generally, there isn't a natural law that says that compensation should
be proportional to output—quality of life may well be better even at the top
if this relationship is somewhat dampened. The cognitive cost may be lower,
for example, of not continually switching jobs based on market conditions
(this is certainly true in the limit) or of reducing anxiety about losing the
ability to produce (e.g. health and psychological wellbeing). These are issues
we need to think about and discuss at length, not take as premises.

[1] [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/06/revenge-
killing](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/06/revenge-killing)

Edited to fix italics and to correct the spelling of Cowen's name.

~~~
anigbrowl
Kant and Hegel were not journalists. In the context of philosophy, value (
_qua_ influence) is more easily quantified by the breadth and depth of
citation networks, which are already the object of some study in academic and
legal circles.

I agree with your overall argument that we should be careful about which
premises we begin with, as they can easily become axiomatic and stifle
thinking (a perennial problem in politics). But I think Cowan in choosing his
premises here to illustrate how technology that liberates capital flows has
the potential to undermine capitalism by limiting people's ability to freely
participate in it.

Of course such observations summon the ghost of Karl Marx to whisper 'I told
you so.' I wonder how many thoughtful observations of that philosopher are
overlooked because of a misplaced reification of his labor theory of value.

~~~
anigbrowl
I forgot to mention that I think the labor theory of value is a complete crock
and I can't understand why the radical left keeps punching itself in the face
with it.

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Hermel
> As we get better at measuring who produces what, the pay gap between those
> who make more and those who make less grows.

In other words: the incompetent are increasingly discriminated against. Maybe
they should be protected by law? ;)

~~~
mc32
You jest, but it's worth considering. I mean, if productivity is uneven among
contributors and contributions ate now measurable and poor contributors are
numerous and can be identified and taken out of the workforce, we could end up
with perennially a jobless class of people.

What do we do with them, do we distribute their load across employers (as we
do now, for the most part) or do we allow discrimination but make up for this
by allowing them income vouchers, knowing under this scenario they'd be hard
pressed to hold a job, or do we fabricate work suitable for them?

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JamesBarney
The author forgets to mention that using genetic information for hiring
decisions is illegal. It has been since 2008 when Bush signed the Genetic
Information Nondiscrimination Act.

~~~
LesZedCB
Gattaca[1] is a fun sci-fi movie depicting a world where gene selection is
predominant and workforce selection is based on genetics. It's pretty
entertaining, and not a half bad look at the problems of that society.

[1]
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119177/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119177/)

~~~
anigbrowl
A very underrated film, whose central conceit serves equally as a metaphor for
our own society even if you ignore the rapid advancements in genetics.

~~~
bro-stick
It is ominously-possible, in limited, but plausible, degrees. Our genomes will
no doubt end up being used for indirect discrimination in dating, friendships,
child care, school acceptance, certain military/clandestine work,
frat/sororities, social clubs, exclusive event invitations, [insert activity
here]. It's already used in healthcare and gamete donation.

~~~
anigbrowl
Quite, and think how for some people their criminal record already serves this
purpose. There was a nauseating story on my local news last night about a 12
or 13 year old autistic kid who was placed under arrest by police officers who
contract with the school district for the hideous crime of scraping his
initials on the sidewalk concrete of his middle school campus with a handy
stone: [http://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigations/Thousands-of-Bay-
Ar...](http://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigations/Thousands-of-Bay-Area-
Students-Sent-to-Police-329858661.html)

(sorry about the autoplay video, but there's a full text transcript at the
link)

The notion that a moment of juvenile whimsy is now a permanent part of a
person's digital footprint and could turn up in background checks for the
remainder of their life is hideously Orwellian; we are busily crafting the
sociopolitical infrastructure of a totalitarian state at the same time as we
have 'serious' candidates for the highest national political office expressing
unbounded enthusiasm for running such an entity.

~~~
bro-stick
Evil is not some spiritual or abstract concept, it's the banality and
legitimization of common-place BS injustices, spanning the gamut of great to
small.

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mbostleman
I'm not sure I see much compelling here. First off, all he's saying is that
technology provides more information about the market. But technology has been
doing that forever. Second, he's chosen a very simple example that has a
measurement that maps directly to a single person and their economic value
(journalists and how often their material is read). Try to apply that to teams
(like software teams) in which a productivity is created by a diversity of
personalities and specialty skill sets that are focused collectively on a
problem - things get muddy real fast when you're trying to measure individual
productivity in that environment. And that environment is where to the truly
high value work is being done the modern global economy.

~~~
jfoutz
You won't believe these ten tips for being a more effective journalist, #6
will blow your mind. Doctors hate him! Learn this one weird metric busting
trick.

Yeah, i don't really know how people get stuff done. Metrics can be nice
bumpers, to go see if someone needs help. But actual productivity is pretty
nebulous. (to me anyway)

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ricksplat
This guy is a professor of economics. Says it all really. He presents his
utopian vision absent of any connection to reality.

He completely ignores data protection legislation. Most of the KPIs he
describe measure presentation, not productivity.

There are so many instances here of selecting evidence (anecdotal, fanciful)
to suit your hypothesis here he would make a first year social studies student
blush. What was the hypothesis anyway? That inequality is linked to value
production and that will be borne out by measurements gathered at some future
time?

Just goes to show, Economics is a field of study (not a science) where
learning the "right" answers and courting of research grants trump cold hard
empirical analysis.

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ScottBurson
Dang, can we do something about the sexist title? I've already complained
about it on their site; I have no idea if they'll do anything about it, but
seems to me we could change it here to "The Measured Worker" with no loss of
intelligibility.

~~~
dang
Ok, I don't have a problem with that. (The title struck me as a historical
reference of some kind but obviously people read these things differently.)

Btw it's better to email questions like this to hn@ycombinator.com. We only
saw this one by accident.

~~~
ScottBurson
You're probably right that it's some kind of historical reference that I
didn't catch, but I still think it's ill-considered.

I will email in future. Thanks!

