Penny Arcade - Comic - Intentionality

dennis

Even with the best intentions in mind, there are some things you don't show the outside world. You don't want to tell people about how you've made a gun that can obliterate a cow brain in a microsecond, even if it's way more humane than the old one that took several seconds for them to die. That's just not someone anyone ever needs to hear. Or that you've created a new system to reduce the number of roach legs in your chocolate to near zero.

Sometimes you just need to let people judge you on the results, and keep your mouth shut about everything else. Take that inside baseball to your grave.

[Deleted User]

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Overkillengine

"Djiem wrote:

That's fair. I feel like a lot of the outrage, including part of my own "OOF" is that Blizzard/Activision is a huge corporation trying to make tons of money, like many others, and often via methods of discutable ethics. So when you see them show a chart or tool that quantifies human experiences and identities, there's definitely a visceral reaction; it feels disingenuous, like a bunch of suits going: "How do we attract the urban market?"

It just feels a little gross.

I mean...that's almost exactly how it actually is. They just showed off the new computerized tool to do it instead of the focus group meeting.

At Pander Corp LLC™, we endorse [Current Thing], so please show your support by [Consoom Product].

RatherDashing

Having worked in retail enough, I am going to stick to my bullheaded and unrealistic assertion that All Metrics Are Bad. Like, wanting satisfied customers is good. But Customer Satisfaction Surveys will always be a bad thing. Anything that reduces something unquantifiable to a number is inevitably going to lead to nonsense. I realize this is a pipe dream, but I really think the only way for a company to reliably achieve a vision and assess itself is to have upper management who share a moral vision, who appoint middle management whom they trust, and ask them, "are your underlings doing their best at x". And allow the character of the managers and staff to uphold this, and fire people with bad character or who don't share the vision.

Again, not possible in the corporate world. But I can dream.

Overkillengine

Corporate surveys are bad period, be they internal or externally aimed. The act of using them at all betrays that you have management that is fundamentally out of touch.

tastydonuts

RatherDashing89 wrote: »

Having worked in retail enough, I am going to stick to my bullheaded and unrealistic assertion that All Metrics Are Bad. Like, wanting satisfied customers is good. But Customer Satisfaction Surveys will always be a bad thing. Anything that reduces something unquantifiable to a number is inevitably going to lead to nonsense. I realize this is a pipe dream, but I really think the only way for a company to reliably achieve a vision and assess itself is to have upper management who share a moral vision, who appoint middle management whom they trust, and ask them, "are your underlings doing their best at x". And allow the character of the managers and staff to uphold this, and fire people with bad character or who don't share the vision.

Again, not possible in the corporate world. But I can dream.

Yes, this is a dream. Diversity, equity and inclusion are things that can be quantified; feelings and opinions are insufficient. A shared moral vision, trusted underlings, etc... are great for PR but without a true means of measuring it, it's just fluff. The very idea just firing someone with "bad character who doesn't share the vision" isn't realistic either even in "employment-at-will" states, because wrongful termination suits are a thing. Having actually built metrics that contributed to saving people's jobs... the notion that "all metrics are bad" is just absurd. And do you have any idea how worthless a response to the question "are your underlings doing their best at x" without some means of measuring X is?

A process that tries to address DEI, or really any kind of change is doomed to failure without baselines and a means of tracking progress. Data science and diversity analytics are things that exist. Now can a tool be abused? Sure. But really, they should have never did a general press release for this. >_>

RatherDashing

tastydonuts wrote: »

Yes, this is a dream. Diversity, equity and inclusion are things that can be quantified; feelings and opinions are insufficient. A shared moral vision, trusted underlings, etc... are great for PR but without a true means of measuring it, it's just fluff. The very idea just firing someone with "bad character who doesn't share the vision" isn't realistic either even in "employment-at-will" states, because wrongful termination suits are a thing. Having actually built metrics that contributed to saving people's jobs... the notion that "all metrics are bad" is just absurd. And do you have any idea how worthless a response to the question "are your underlings doing their best at x" without some means of measuring X is?

A process that tries to address DEI, or really any kind of change is doomed to failure without baselines and a means of tracking progress. Data science and diversity analytics are things that exist. Now can a tool be abused? Sure. But really, they should have never did a general press release for this. >_>

If it can be abused it will be abused. Metrics like this are invariably used to terrify the people doing the work into making the numbers go up for fear of reprisal, and the company goal becomes to make the numbers go up in whatever way possible, regardless of the actual intention behind the metric in the first place. Now, the consequences of trying to please an algorithm like this are comparatively harmless and tame: the worst scenario is just coming up with nonsense characters churned out by a computer to make the area on the radar chart bigger. Not really a problem. But when the metrics are things like sales quotas, credit card signups, etc. That's where relying solely on numbers does actual harm to the company, the customer, and the employee. The point is that a metric that would otherwise be a useful tool for middle management to assess their employees becomes a bludgeon by which upper management can bully middle management, deny them raises, and have a looming threat of termination until the middle manager is willing to cross any line to satisfy the metric, instead of intelligently assessing performance using the metric as one of many tools to gather data.

tastydonuts

RatherDashing89 wrote: »

tastydonuts wrote: »

Yes, this is a dream. Diversity, equity and inclusion are things that can be quantified; feelings and opinions are insufficient. A shared moral vision, trusted underlings, etc... are great for PR but without a true means of measuring it, it's just fluff. The very idea just firing someone with "bad character who doesn't share the vision" isn't realistic either even in "employment-at-will" states, because wrongful termination suits are a thing. Having actually built metrics that contributed to saving people's jobs... the notion that "all metrics are bad" is just absurd. And do you have any idea how worthless a response to the question "are your underlings doing their best at x" without some means of measuring X is?

A process that tries to address DEI, or really any kind of change is doomed to failure without baselines and a means of tracking progress. Data science and diversity analytics are things that exist. Now can a tool be abused? Sure. But really, they should have never did a general press release for this. >_>

If it can be abused it will be abused. Metrics like this are invariably used to terrify the people doing the work into making the numbers go up for fear of reprisal, and the company goal becomes to make the numbers go up in whatever way possible, regardless of the actual intention behind the metric in the first place. Now, the consequences of trying to please an algorithm like this are comparatively harmless and tame: the worst scenario is just coming up with nonsense characters churned out by a computer to make the area on the radar chart bigger. Not really a problem. But when the metrics are things like sales quotas, credit card signups, etc. That's where relying solely on numbers does actual harm to the company, the customer, and the employee. The point is that a metric that would otherwise be a useful tool for middle management to assess their employees becomes a bludgeon by which upper management can bully middle management, deny them raises, and have a looming threat of termination until the middle manager is willing to cross any line to satisfy the metric, instead of intelligently assessing performance using the metric as one of many tools to gather data.

While we are deviating from the subject-diversity analytics and their tool-yes, anything can be abused. However the notion of allowing fear of abuse to prevent the development of tools to tangibly represent progress just ain't it.

Showsni

H3Knuckles wrote: »

Here's the other main image I can find, which is just the chart with a few more categories (braking ability into cognitive and physical, adding socioeconomic class & facial beauty):

So being a woman is more diverse than having one eye, but less diverse than being Egyptian?

dennis

Considering how many eye-patched characters we've seen in videogames/anime, it should probably be weighted at 0.

V1m

Showsni wrote: »

H3Knuckles wrote: »

Here's the other main image I can find, which is just the chart with a few more categories (braking ability into cognitive and physical, adding socioeconomic class & facial beauty):

So being a woman is more diverse than having one eye, but less diverse than being Egyptian?

There are more women than Egyptians QED

Hexmage-PA

I saw this pointed out elsewhere, but it's interesting that despite having a body type metric most of the female Overwatch characters would probably rank a 0 on that tool.