#productivity

This is such great satire from McSweeney's on the state of AI company financing. We all know it's a bubble, it's just whether it's going to pop or slowly deflate...

Benjamin owns a farm. He employs 100 workers plowing his fields. His total payroll is $10 million/year. One day, he buys a mule, which provides the worker who uses it with a modest 10 percent productivity gain. Benjamin fires 99 of his workers and purchases 99 mules, expecting a 1,000 percent productivity gain. The driverless mules cause plow damage to his property in excess of $50 million. Benjamin loses another $5 million due to the loss of productivity from his one remaining employee, who no longer guides a plow but instead spends 100 percent of his time shoveling mule shit. Goldman Sachs builds an altar to Benjamin in their lobby and cuts out the heart of a junior analyst on it every Friday. They call it “Blood Sacrifice Friday.” The name isn’t catchy, but the event becomes a management favorite nonetheless.

…

We're used to the mantra that things that are measured get improved. But, also, if you put any sort of number next to someone's name, they will try and make it go up. That doesn't mean that they've chosen that as something that is good for them, their community, or their organisation. So we need to think about who benefits from the measurement.