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>If you can put simple numbers and KPIs on everything, you can tell right away who is valuable. Everyone now knows who is valuable.

>It cuts down politics dramatically as everyone is now pulling in the same direction.

"Cutting down politics dramatically" is definitely not the effect I see out of a system that uses an algorithm to quantify each individual's value. These are fundamentally qualitative judgments that have far-reaching organizational and industry impact.

"Never trust a statistic you haven't faked yourself". When you tie success to a single metric (like PageRank, for instance), humans WILL find ways to game it. Important decisions should be computer-assisted, but humans are still needed to make real judgments.

You seem to be justifying the existing system that's been artificially manufactured by accountants, lawyers, and MBAs to keep them in a revolving-door of highly-paid executive and VP-level positions.

That we see nothing unusual about an accountant, lawyer, or academic being brought in to lead something he/she doesn't actually know anything about speaks volumes to how silly things have gotten. I would say that's a strong signal that we need to re-evaluate how we calculate value and qualifications.




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