[baliex]

Truly terrifying. I'll admit I was expecting one of the near-15.62 options to be "acceptable". How wrong I was; I should have seen that coming.

As one of the below comments says, you just don't know what level of snooping is going on. If you're reading this $CEO, hi!

[lovich]

If you can meet their goals, that just means there is more they can squeeze out of you. The incentive structure for our corporations means there is literally never enough and they will always demand more.

[reactordev]

This. All KPI’s are meant to move the carrot just beyond reach.

[trhway]

Reminds how in USSR - a planned economy - your achievements sweet spot was like 103-105% of the plan. Achievement below plan were punished, financially and by some form of public shaming. Hitting exact 100% looked like you don't have the genuine enthusiasm of a communism builder. Achievements above plan were encouraged, financially and by public recognition. Yet achievements well above plan meant that the plan was set too low.

Wrt. the original article - any META employee should be capable of running some xClaw to imitate reasonable activity satisfying whatever KPIs are established for them including submitting of the off-tracking requests following a reasonable pattern.

I remember how almost 30 years ago at one moment the only guy in our team who filed the status report was the one on vacation - he had a cron-script which didn't take vacation into account.

[notnaut]

This dynamic might not even been so bad if there was some honesty and graciousness behind it. Some friggin humanity. It’s not so cold to understand and systematize the natural tension between expectation and reality and effort.

Once again at the end of the day the problem is more likely the profit motive above all else

[bluefirebrand]

These dynamics exist specifically to wring the humanity out of any and all processes

If we leave things up to humans they might be generous instead of ruthless, and generosity doesn't make money

[notnaut]

These kinds of claims always throw me off…

“These dynamics exist specifically to wring the humanity out of any and all processes”

Who designed the processes? Reptilians?

Whatever the flaws of the dynamic, I would guess there is something innately human and organic about it, not designed. Just another weird outcome of the efficiency machine of social evolution.

[sidereal1]

I've heard stories of current day federal employee performance reviews where, unofficially, no manager is permitted to give out a perfect 5 out of 5.

[_djo_]

I've seen that same policy in regular corporations. Giving any member of a team 5/5 meant a personal phone call with HR and your skip level to justify it, while the message was sent unofficially beforehand that having that meeting would be bad for a manager's career.

[lovich]

when I had >8 direct reports I was usually allowed to give a single 5/5, greatly exceeds expectations, etc, but it was also made clear to me in unrecorded formats that I also better have someone with a failing score if I did that.

[PaulHoule]

It's the kind of list an LLM might make up.

[dredmorbius]

Stephenson's tokens were expensive, which explains the skipped endings.

[xkcd-sucks]

Ha, I agree most of his books evoke having been written during stimulant binges; rich and detailed world building in the beginnings transition to incoherent plot driven action at the endings

[drzaiusx11]

I enjoyed snow crash probably up until 2/3rds through, same with cryptonomicon. I truly wish he would stick a god damn landing. I don't know what happens after the halfway marks. It's like a different writer takes over and it jumps the shark. I stopped reading his books after a while when they all seem to go off the rails. Damn shame really.

[dredmorbius]

I'd argue that Anathem and Seveneves had actual conclusions.

Possibly The Baroque Cycle though it's been a while since I'd re-read it.

His political fiction (Interface and The Cobweb) were also fairly traditional, though he had a co-author on those.

[nixon_why69]

I love all his books, no hate.

Anathem had perhaps the biggest deux ex machina in literary history, and seveneves had an entirely separate novella for an ending.

[InitialLastName]

> Seveneves

Seveneves had a conclusion, and then an extra book...

[scantron4]

Diamond Age is the most important science fiction book of all time... until you get to 2/3 of the way through and the guy in the ... underwater? hippy? drug dream? It never recovers.

[mikestorrent]

...because it was fucking trained on Neal Stephenson, not the other way around, guy.

[dredmorbius]

That's the awesome thing about Neal Stephenson being a timelord: He could train his own LLM on his own output and then go back in time and write LLM-generated fiction before it was cool.