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by may_mccheese 823 days ago
It's a flawed premise, the whole thing, worthless. In like any science, even half-baked science, there's a case and a control. Every drug, treatment, test you're given by the doctor... there was a phase trial, cases and controls, outcomes, statistics, etc

Here we're saying "okay, our case is n=1 samples, no control, we're going to need to lean on our gestalt experience and knowledge based on the virtues of this company saying we're good at managing and/or our HR credentials" (this type of thinking also exists in medicine and is equally unsettling - usually wielded by people with experience AND power so it's difficult to disrupt due to the latter)

The lack of control means you can't compare Peter to Paul because maybe Peter likes to stick his neck out and/or take one for the team as a show of teamwork and humility, maybe Paul is cautious and wants to maximize revenue from this position and loves to play politics. Peter is willing to go the extra mile for the company, but Paul will be the one with the perfect record. Now, if there were decent controls for either, they would show Peter is outperforming a control given challenging tasks, and Paul is underperforming by minimizing work done.