LinkedIn has a Glint in its eye and cash burning a hole in its pocket Microsoft-owned LinkedIn has announced it is acquiring Glint, a Human Resources outfit, which produces software to tell employers why workers keep leaving. The deal, which was for an undisclosed sum (although insiders reckon it could be as much as $500m or more), is expected to close before the end of the year and will see …
I'm inclined to think that an employer that doesn't already know why it is losing employees hand over fist probably won't want to hear the cold hard truth of the matter. The more sadistic companies who know why people are leaving and don't care will only want to know so they can use it again in the future (coughs, IBM, coughs).
Even if someone does pipe up the courage to tell the HR droids and PHBs why people are scrambling for the exits, it'll be dressed up as if nothing is wrong and likely the employees are wrong/at fault. My place commissioned a survey of all employees to find out why morale was at Dilbert levels and people were leaving in droves. Unusually the results were published in all their gory details showing a happiness level in the 50s% (While I'm surprised it got that high - it should have set off major warning klaxons). This of course had nothing to do with historically poor pay, then three years of pain starting with a boardroom coup, deep cuts in everything, a long bitter restructuring, and masses of redundancies which all culminated in the break up and sale of the company. How did the company deal with this crisis it was facing? They introduced a reasonably generous bonus scheme which most people got fiddled out of making the problem worse. Then they went for the big guns: a series of emails offering the opportunity to get to know the executive team.
And then in the distance, in the direction of the board room, a shot rings out, followed by someone screaming they can't find their toes.
details showing a happiness level in the 50s% (While I'm surprised it got that high
In my experience across various businesses, the main driver of unexpectedly high scores is that many employees believe that they either will be factually identified for negative comments or scores, or that results will be broken down to team level, and vindictive PHBs will conduct a witch hunt to assign the blame for poor scores or comments that are not welcome.
I've not personally come across of the survey "unmasking" individuals, but I've routinely come across PHBs conducting witch hunts. Sometimes the "guilty" are blamed, just as often the blame is pinned on the innocent. Invariably the PHB exerts pressure for everybody to participate next time round, and to make sure they give the "right" answers, without company or PHB changing the behaviours that earned poor scores.
In my case the background questions were sufficiently granular to identify people (Business Unit, Group, age range IIRC). It's not clear if the ability to narrow down answers to individuals was baked in or just a consequence of having relatively small groups (I'd opt for the occam's razor explanation). I answered honestly regardless and I suspect the morale level meant I wasn't the only one who didn't care about the witch hunt potential. That said, as mentioned above, I don't see Paulf & Co changing a damned thing as a result of that survey.
There is a Dilbert to cover every situation - including this one.
Once management knows someone is looking at the door they tend to start making things look like the employee wasn't doing their job. That way they can say " good riddance he left, we were going to get rid of him anyway", rather than look like they caused a valuable employee to leave.
I use it to keep track of when the people I know move to new jobs ... in fact that's about the only use I have for it... OK, so I'm not a big fan of anti social media, I have accounts with Linkedin and Google+ ... you know, with all this renewed interest maybe I'll make a post this year.... I'll think about it.
"Dear John,
As a result of recent activity on LinkedIn, your Corporate Social Credit score has been re-evaulated. As a result of this you may notice some minor changes in your employment conditions to ensure a harmonious workplace and to strive for enlightened relationships in your career.
Your data allocation has been slightly reduced from 20 Gb to 200 Mb. Please ensure that any large files you require are downloaded from the network before Friday!
Your assigned corporate environmental footprint has been somewhat reduced. You may wish to make alternative arrangements for personal hygiene purposes while at the office premises.
Your period of notice upon leaving the company has been optimised and now consists of a two year period to allow for succession planning. Of course, all salary and bonus due will be fully honoured over this time.
If you feel these changes are unreasonable then please engage with Pris, our cloud based AI HR assistant who will be happy to help you achieve serene acquiescence during the transition period.
Thanks for your time!
Cortana, HR head"
LinkedIn was a good idea. Then it stagnated. Then MS bought it and is slowly doing what they did to Skype namely, F**K it up.
LinkedIn is well past it's use by date and should be consigned to the Software Museum.
Posting AC just in case those clever dicks at MS associate me with my hopefully deleted LinkedIn account and decide to resurrect it. Mind you, it still had me working at a company that went belly up in 2008.
I have to say that when I first joined LI (as a favor to a friend who was looking for a new position), it would fairly often recommend posts I actually was interested in. I probably read on average about one post a day.
Over the past couple of years, I've read maybe one LI post a month. Either their recommendation system has gone to hell, or the quality of the content posted to LI has.
There have also been various ill-considered UI changes - someone at LI has a pathological z-order fetish - and other problems. And I dislike many LI "features", such as the endorsements, which I feel are worthless (some random person claims I have skill in some area - so what?) and tacky.
I've kept my account, again because I have friends who occasionally use LI for job-hunting, and because I now have a friend who's a developer there. But I have to admit that I make very little use of it myself, and it does not tempt me.
"LinkedIn contributed $5.3bn to the pot along with 575 million members."
I thought I had a handle on this 'the user is the product' thing, which is why a linkedin profile is pretty much the only social media footprint I have, and even then only because I created it long before linkedin got big enough to be assumilated by MS ...
...but 5.3 Billion?? How on earth are they making that sort of money of the sh*t platform that linkedin has become?
My interest in participating in their platform may have finally diminished enough to actually delete my old profile. I already removed my 'uploaded contacts' some time ago, so time to leave for good.
@AC: "How on earth are they making that sort of money of the sh*t platform that linkedin has become?"
I can only assume that those "premium accounts" that HR droids use are fairly expensive, and that there are enough HR/marketing/sales/whatever users who pay for them.
Disclaimer: no LinkedIn account here, premium or regular, so I woudn't know how sh*t they are.
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