Posted by dlx 2 days ago
Don't get me wrong. It is not to applaud here, it is simply fascinating looking through a factual lens here.
And maybe there will be more questions than answers. And I bet this is going to be funny, when there won't be a clear picture in the end. What are high performer, low performer anyway? There are many pieces missing. I for example do a lot of visuals using a notebook with a pencil. To this day I find Miro etc. distracting and for my creativity to distracting. Hand writing is different to typewriting. I am way faster in the last case and associate through everything until I lose track of the main thing. Not with notes on paper. I utilize this fact, don't go for one thing over the other, but bloat is the result of doing everything virtually.
So how would my keystrokes then look like? I don't know. Highly efficient, maybe, but lots and lots of gaps without hitting the keys.
Low performers? I was overlooking over 500 engineers, did over 400 interviews, build departments from the ground up, watched people do work and helping them via inhouse developed tools to work better while having more fun.
So I think in Gauss often times and low performers, a term, I despise, but it is used for simplicity, aren't really doing nothing, in fact they work a lot, it is just the content or method that is so bad.
My best devs but a lot of consideration into architecture and communication - I trained them. They fell key decisions and helped teams get better.
The industrious low performers complained about them, that they rarely are doing "the work" on their PC. Well, well.
So, would I feel comfortable? No. And don't do to others - as the saying goes.
But if there won't be any consequences just data which cannot be tight to a worker, or and if, it can only be used to benefit them, I would happily take part in such a data gathering, because we all do personal optimization and I am curious about what the data "says" vs. subjective feeling.
On the other hand, tracking might be inevitable - hear me out - if these people are working on NDAs etc. Leakage is monitored anyway, make no mistake. So it sounds like closing a gap.
Tough, very tough.
I tend to say no one gets ousted in corporate companies for their mistakes but by their foes. So data is one thing, the one stabbing you another.
Really though it seems reasonable to me. They want data to train AI, and their employees are obviously a large source.
They could already track your every click. They have root on your work MacBook. Most employers do.
A cynic would say this has nothing to do with AI since meta owns employee machines anyways and has always been collecting data. Perhaps voluntary attrition > layoffs thinking in action.
But I’m having a lot of trouble envisioning how my keystrokes could actually train something you could use while you’re typing. Latency between keystrokes and seeing things appear would kill my productivity way more than a tool could recapture. Heck, when VS Code fell in love with agent suggestions it took me a week to fix my editor so I could be productive again.