Mediocrity drift: Difference between revisions

Mediocrity drift (view source)

Revision as of 23:30, 28 December 2022

32 bytes added , 28 December 2022

no edit summary

Amwelladmin

Bureaucrats, Interface administrators, Administrators

83,428

edits

@@ Line 9: / Line 9: @@
 '''Good staff leave by themselves''': Staff with [[lateral quitter|the gumption to leave]] tend to be ''relatively'' good employees, relative to what you pay them.
-'''Bad staff don't''':  Conversely: those who aren’t much chop — who are already overpaid for what they do — tend not to quit, because they are onto a good thing, would need to find an even more gullible employer to hire them: consequently they will only leave if you make them, by performance management or through a [[RIF]].
+'''Bad staff don’t''':  Conversely: those who aren’t much chop — who are already overpaid for what they do — tend not to quit, because they are onto a good thing, would need to find an even more gullible employer to hire them: consequently they will only leave if you make them, by performance management or through a [[RIF]].
-'''Subgroups are normally distributed''': That all personnel, however you categorise them, are evenly distributed relative to the [[cost-value threshold]], and that any given subgroup, however classified (except by reference to pure value) will be about as good as any other.
+'''Subgroups are normally distributed''': That all personnel, however you categorise them, are evenly distributed relative to the [[cost-value threshold]], and that any given subgroup, however classified (except by reference to pure value) will be about as good as any other. So, IT professionals as a group will be as good ''at what they do'' as will lawyers; young as well as old, men as women, and so on. Each group — IT pros, legal eagles, the young, the old, men, women — will ''within their own group'' have broadly similar distributions of outperformers and plodders.
+===System effects===
+Here is [[systemantics]] in its natural state.
+and secondly, notice how pernicious the idea of the ''average'' is here.
+How your incoming [[lateral hire]]s perform will remain to be seen but, remember, performance is measured relative to cost. Since by leaving they have marked themselves to market, overperformers leave their old slot in the [[quincunx]] where they were at the top, and enter their ''new'' quincunx at the median. The vicissitudes of random chance mean the new arrivals might wind up in any slot but, in any case, their slot on average will be normally distributed. Your arriving at a higher cost than the ones you are replacing, they start not as outlier good staff, but average ones.
+===Affirmative action bummer===
-So, IT professionals as a group will be as good ''at what they do'' as will lawyers; young as well as old, men as women, and so on. Each group — IT pros, legal eagles, the young, the old, men, women — will ''within their own group'' have broadly similar distributions of outperformers and plodders.
 If so, then a system which favours one group (group A) over another (group B) has a counterintuitive effect on the remaining populations of both groups: on ''average'', the unfavoured group will ''increase'' in relative value, and the favoured group will ''decrease'' in relative value, ''even though no individual performance, in either group, changes at all''.
+On average, the group A is paid progressively less. It looks like group A members are being systematically discriminated against on pay, but this is not so (in this model, ''no-one’s'' pay changes) in fact group A members are being ''favoured for poor performance''.
 On a second glance, you can see why this should be so. The process systematically weeds out ''underperforming'' members of group B and ''overperforming'' members of group A. The “good” side of the distribution will progressively become group B-dominated — they are not being bid away as frequently — and the “below par” section will becomes progressively group A dominated, as poor performing group B members are selected for eradication.
-Two observations: firstly, here is [[systemantics]] in its raw natural state; and secondly, notice how pernicious the idea of the ''average'' is here.
-On average, the group A is paid progressively less. It looks like group A members are being systematically discriminated against on pay, but this is not so (in this model, ''no-one’s'' pay changes) in fact group A members are being ''favoured for poor performance''.
-How your incoming [[lateral hire]]s perform will remain to be seen but, remember, performance is measured relative to cost. Since by leaving they have marked themselves to market, overperformers leave their old slot in the [[quincunx]] where they were at the top, and enter their ''new'' quincunx at the median. The vicissitudes of random chance mean the new arrivals might wind up in any slot but, in any case, their slot on average will be normally distributed. Your arriving at a higher cost than the ones you are replacing, they start not as outlier good staff, but average ones.
 {{sa}}
 *[[Lateral quitter]]
 *[[Reduction in force]]
 *[[Competence phase transition]]