不一样的角度来看待科技的发展：I was wrong. Too much tech is ruining lives作者：Vivek Wadhwa
Distinguished Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University College of Enginee
Just four years ago I was a cheerleader. Social media was supposed to be the great hope for democracy. I know because I told the world so. I said in 2014 that no-one could predict where this revolution would take us. My conclusion was dusted with optimism: a better connected human race would find a way to better itself.
I was only half right: nobody could indeed have predicted where we have ended up. Yet my optimistic prognosis was utterly misguided. Social media has led to less human interaction, not more. It has suppressed human development, not stimulated it. As Big Tech has marched onward, we have regressed.
Look at the evidence. Research shows that social media may well be making many of us unhappy, jealous and – paradoxically – antisocial. Even Facebook gets it. An academic study that Facebook cited in its corporate blog post revealed that when people spend a lot of time passively consuming information they wind up feeling worse. Just ten minutes on Facebook is enough to depress – clicking and liking a multitude of posts and links seems to have a negative effect on mental health.
Meantime, the green-eyed monster thrives on the social network: reading rosy stories and/or carefully controlled images about the social- and love-lives of others leads to poor comparisons with one’s own existence. Getting out in the warts-and-all real world and having proper conversations would provide a powerful antidote. Some chance! Humans have convinced themselves that ‘catching up’ online is a viable alternative to in-person socializing.
And what of consumer choice? Don’t book your next city break via Google. Research shows that a typical search for a family vacation begins with “the best hotels in…” or the “top ten hotels in…”. Yet these searches return paid-for links from big identikit hotel companies and well-funded broker websites. Local bloggers, like the guy in Jaipur or the girl in Paris who make it their job to suggest the most interesting stays, don’t appear until search page ten (AKA nowhere). Discovering real places, recommended by locals and run by real people, got a lot harder in the internet age. Guidebooks used to do the job, but few buy them anymore.
We are becoming unthinkingly reliant – addicted – to ease-of-use at the expense of quality. We are walking dumpsters for internet content that we don’t need and which might actively damage our brains.
The technology industry also uses another technique to keep us hooked: feeding us a bottomless pit of information.
This phenomenon’ is the effect Netflix has when it auto-plays the next episode of a show after a cliffhanger and you continue watching, thinking, “I can make up the sleep over the weekend.” The cliffhanger is, of course, always replaced by another cliffhanger. The 13-part season is followed by another one, and yet another. We spend longer in front of the television yet we feel no more satiated. When Facebook, Instagram and Twitter tack on their scrolling pages and update their news feeds, causing each article to roll into the next, the effect manifests itself again.
Perhaps we should go back to our smartphones and, instead of playing Netflix or sending texts on WhatsApp, use their core function. Call up our friends and family and have a chat or – better – arrange to meet them.
Meanwhile, Big Tech could carve an opportunity from a crisis. What about offering a subscription to an ad-free Google? In return for a monthly fee, searches would be based on quality of content rather than product placement. I would pay for that. The time-savings alone when booking a trip would be worth it.
Apple pioneered the Do Not Disturb function which stopped messages and calls waking us from sleep, unless a set of emergency-criteria were met by the caller. How about a Focus Mode that turned off all notifications and hid our apps from our home screen, to ease the temptation to play with our phones when we should be concentrating on our work, or talking to our spouses, friends and colleagues?
In the 1980s, the BBC in Britain ran a successful children’s series called Why Don’t You? that implored viewers to “turn off their TV set and go out and do something less boring instead”, suggesting sociable activities that did not involve a screen. It was wise before its time. The TV seems like a puny adversary compared to the deadening digital army we face today.
This is based on my forthcoming book, Your Happiness Was Hacked, which will show you how you can take control and live a more balanced technology life.
You can pre-order the book, coauthored with Alex Salkever: https://www.amazon.com/Your-Happiness-Was-Hacked-Brain/dp/1523095849
人才招聘AI巨头入场：Google前搜索专家成立Eightfold.ai公司，获得超过80多个专利，2400多万美金的投资
Google前搜索专家Ashutosh Garg，联合Facebook新闻推送团队的Varun Kacholia，共同成立Eightfold.ai公司，致力于融合检索与人工智能技术，变革人力资源行业。团队声称拥有80多个专利，已获得Lightspeed Ventures和Foundation Capital超过2400万美金的投资。
Eightfold (fka VolkScience)是行业的第一个人才智能平台，为企业建立，以整体的方式处理人才的获取和管理。
平台上有三大支柱:
*首先，我们相信人是每个企业最大的资产，我们想把他们放在中心。
我们将企业内所有人的数据(从申请人到校友)聚集在一起，这些数据目前被广泛应用于许多不同的解决方案中。这成为每个企业最丰富、最全面的人才网络。
第二，我们使用数据来提供人们能够做什么，而不是他们过去做过什么。这使得企业能够更有效地将人们与合适的机会匹配起来。
最后，利用AI平台不断从企业和个人的表现中学习，预测未来的角色、表现和职业选择。
Eightfold.ai已经拥有超过100名客户在不同行业中使用其工具。 据一份声明称，其软件迄今处理了超过2000万个应用程序，其客户响应率比行业平均水平提高了700％，同时将筛选成本和时间减少了90％。
Eightfold (fka VolkScience) is industry’s first Talent Intelligence Platform, built for enterprises, to address Talent Acquisition and Management in a holistic fashion. Platform is built with three pillars in mind:
* First, we believe that people are every enterprise’s greatest asset, and we want to put them at the center. We aggregate all people data within an enterprise - from applicants to alumni - which is currently siloed across many different point solutions. This becomes the richest & most comprehensive Talent Network for each enterprise.
* Second, we use data to provide intelligence on what people are capable of doing instead of just what they have done in the past. This allows enterprises to more effectively match people to the right opportunities.
* Finally, using AI the platform continuously learns from enterprise and individual performance to predict future roles, performance and career alternatives.
硅谷
2018年04月18日
硅谷
自动化背调公司Checkr宣布获得1亿美金的C轮融资，扩大行业，加强技术投入
图为搬入旧金山的新office
Checkr 今天官方宣布已经筹集了1亿美元的C系列基金，由T. Rowe Price Associates公司管理的基金和账户，以及现有投资者Accel和Y Combinator的参与。这对我们来说是一个重要的里程碑，我们很高兴能把这些资金投入到帮助我们的客户更快地雇佣更多的人上。
自成立以来，我们一直致力于提供快速、无偏见的背景调查，同时通过公平的机会为7000万有犯罪记录的美国人争取更公平的未来。
现在，四年来，我们每月为一万多名客户进行一百万次的背景调查，并帮助这些公司雇佣了数百万人。
扩大客户进入新行业。
通过这种投资，我们正在加快向企业部门(包括人员和零售)的扩张，以帮助这些高规模的招聘行业在当今日益增长的灵活劳动力市场中展开竞争，在这些领域，招聘速度至关重要。
我们很高兴能帮助Adecco和Allstate和rideshare leader Lyft这样的公司，使他们在新工作领域的筛选实践更加现代化，为他们的招聘带来速度、透明度和公平性，最终为员工创造更美好的未来。这只是最近三家公司加入成千上万人的例子，他们依靠我们的背景调查平台来支持他们的招聘需求。
提升我们的技术和团队。
今天的资金也将允许我们扩展我们的背景检查技术，在我们的核心平台中进一步发挥人工智能和机器学习的作用，以提高我们的客户的速度、数据洞察力和准确性。
为了帮助我们实现这些目标，我们将在2018年将员工人数增加一倍。我们将通过工程和产品招聘，帮助扩大我们的平台、销售和合规，以推动我们的企业增长，以及其他许多业务。作为我们团队成长的一部分，我们也力争在年底前实现在Checkr上实现5%的招聘目标。
更多的未来
在Checkr的核心，我们致力于为员工建立和支持一个更美好的未来，让被忽视的员工有公平的就业机会，并为公司提供寻找最佳人选的洞察力。有了这笔资金，我们将能够继续这个使命，并帮助塑造这个新的工作世界的未来。
虽然这是令人惊奇的四年，但我们才刚开始。我们迫不及待地想分享下一个。
We’ve Raised $100 Million to Help More Companies Accelerate Hiring
We are thrilled to announce that we’ve raised $100 million in Series C funding led by funds and accounts managed by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc. with participation from existing investors Accel and Y Combinator. This is an important milestone for us, and we’re excited to put these funds to work to help our customers hire great people faster.
Since founding Checkr, we’ve been focused on providing fast, unbiased background checks, while championing a fairer future through fair chance hiring for the 70 million Americans with a criminal record. Now, four years laters, we’re running one million background checks per month for more than 10,000 customers and have helped these companies hire millions of people.
Broadening customer reach into new industries
With this investment, we’re accelerating our expansion into enterprise sectors, including staffing and retail, to help these high volume hiring industries compete in today’s growing landscape of flexible workers, where speed to hire is critical.
We’re excited to help companies like Adecco and Allstate and rideshare leader Lyft, modernize their screening practices for the new world of work, bringing speed, transparency and fairness to their hiring - and, ultimately, a better future for workers. These are just three recent examples of companies joining the ranks of thousands of others who rely on our background check platform to support their hiring needs.
Boosting our technology and our team
Today’s funding will also allow us to expand our background check technology, furthering the roles of artificial intelligence and machine learning within our core platform to increase speed, data insights and accuracy for our customers.
To help us achieve these goals, we will nearly double our employee headcount in 2018. We’ll be hiring across engineering and product to help expand our platform, sales and compliance to drive our enterprise growth, and many others. As part of our team growth, we are also striving to hit a five percent fair chance hiring goal at Checkr by the end of the year.
Even more to come
At the core of Checkr, we are deeply committed to building and supporting a better future for workers by allowing the overlooked to have a fair chance at employment and providing companies with the insights to find the best candidates for the job. With this funding, we’ll be able to continue this mission and help shape the future of this new world of work.
While it’s been an amazing four years, we’re just getting started. We can’t wait to share what’s next.
硅谷
2018年04月13日
硅谷
这是一个意外的职业：HRIS administrator，你同意吗？成为HRIS专业人员没有直接的职业发展路径。
人力资源和IT部门的人员分配了人力资源系统职责，最终成为他们的全职职位。
There is no direct career path for becoming an HRIS professional. People in HR and IT are assigned HR systems responsibilities, which eventually become their full-time occupation.
Pettit 是医疗设备制造商Halyard Health的HR系统顾问，他们讨论了HRIS专业以及影响它的趋势。在基于云的技术转变正在改变职业，使之更具战略性的业务，他说。
HRIS管理员向IT，HR或其他部门报告的人员是谁？
Jim Pettit：我一直在组织中，他们在整个关系中实际上已经从部门转移了三到四次。在许多组织中，您会看到工资报告直至房子的人力资源部门。而在另一半的组织中，由于工资单对业务的财务影响，你会看到工资单报告直到房子的财务部门。没有人可以真正决定。工资单在哪里去？它是一个HR功能吗？这是财务功能吗？HRIS也是如此。它真的没有家。这就是为什么它是独一无二的，这就是为什么我们创建了这个行业论坛，这个协会是为那些正在寻找进入这个独特空间的人而设立的。
在员工被确定为HRIS特定员工之前，组织有多大？
Pettit：一位支持300人的HR人员将负责薪酬，招聘，变更管理，分析以及可能被称为HRIS的内容。随着组织变得越来越大，您开始分离这些职责，不同的组织将创建一个名为HRIS分析师的工作。大型组织拥有一个完整的人力资源技术团队，可能有项目经理和项目经理正在实施，管理和支持新技术。很多时候，你有一个人支持人力资源系统和IT，但他们正在支持其他系统[用于其他部门]。随着组织的发展，它需要更多的工作来支持HRIT，而HR接下来说的是，那个人正在100％努力支持我的系统，他们为什么不直接向我报告？
有多少人被视为HRIS专业人士？你知道这个职业是否在增长，缩小还是保持不变？
Pettit：这就是我所说的传递职业。人们流连忘返。听到这些故事总是很有趣。那么，你是如何参与HRIS的？很多时候，在人力资源方面，那些在人力资源部门担任招聘人员，或者作为福利分析师，或者分析师的人都很开心，有人过来说'嘿，我们要改变我们的技术。我们将为我们的人力资本管理系统实施一项新技术，并且我们需要一位主题专家与技术人员合作，共同完成这个项目。“ 这就是他们被引入人力资源技术世界的地方。
在IT方面，他们只是计算机科学人员。他们去了一家公司，他们可能正在从事金融系统，供应链系统或分配来支持人力资源系统 - 这是一种随机的事情。随着时间的推移，这就是他们成为专家的原因。
这是一件有趣的事情，因为没有真正的直接[HRIS管理员]职业路径。
许多HRIS专业人士正在从内部部署系统迁移到基于云系统的公司工作。这是如何改变他们的工作？
Pettit：你仍然需要项目管理。您仍然需要变更管理。你仍然需要所有这些东西。你仍然需要测试一下。就部署和实施支持系统而言，您不能丢弃IT部门带来的所有这些年，数年和多年的经验。
HRIS管理员在云环境中需要哪些技能和专业知识？核心技能是什么？
今天的核心技能是，一直都是要真正理解并能够说出企业的语言。
The core skill today is, and has always been, to really understand and be able to speak the language of the business.
IHRIM董事长Jim Pettit
Pettit：今天的核心技能是，一直都是要真正理解并能够说出企业的语言。它曾经是，你会问，'你需要什么数据，你需要什么样的报告，我会格式化一份报告，这里是你的数据。' 由于分析和工具的原因，我们现在必须说：'从现在开始，一年后需要回答哪些问题，从现在起18个月还是现在24个月，这些问题会影响业务？
我必须有前瞻性思维。我必须充分了解企业能够与企业领导者合作，了解他们将在18个月，24个月，两年后提出的问题，以便建立系统和数据收集工具和技术来收集他们制定这些决策所需的数据。
你现在描述的内容听起来像是一个更具战略性的角色。这是HRIS管理员角色如何发展的吗？
Pettit：我需要知道您需要什么样的问题来帮助您通过分析，回归分析和数据分析来回答[要么]。一旦我理解了这些问题，那么我必须回头想一想，我将如何配置这个工具来为我提供这些答案，或者让这些数据能够提供这些答案。所以，这是更具战略性的。
硅谷
2018年04月11日
硅谷
LinkedIn联合创始人的新冒险：用区块链重构社交信任关系，创立新公司HUB编著注：
在HUB（https://www.hubtoken.org/）的网站中，第一句话就是：
Human Trust Protocol
Billions of users on the Internet interact with each other every day on messengers, online communities, social networks and peer-to-peer marketplaces, making contact with people they never met let alone trust.
翻译供参考：
人类的信任协议
互联网上数以亿计的用户每天都在网上相互交流，在信息传递、在线社区、社交网络和p2p市场上，与从未谋面的人取得联系，更不用说信任了。
腾讯《一线》 纪振宇 4月2日发自硅谷
16年前，Eric Ly与Reid Hoffman等人一起，基于构建世界上最大的职业社交关系的理念，创办了Linkedin。两年前，这家全球最大的职业社交网站以262亿美元被微软收购。如今，Eric Ly又开始了自己的新冒险，有意思的是，他这次的全新创业项目，几乎要完全颠覆他此前职业生涯最成功那次创业的底层逻辑。
“互联网目前已经从信息时代过渡到价值时代，”在接受腾讯《一线》专访时，Eric Ly这样说，Linkedin获得的巨大成功，并没有让他在社交领域的探索上止步，在过去的十几年来，Eric Ly一直没有停止对于社交的思考。
2007年，在创办Linkedin后5年，他个人投资3.5万美元，启动了一个称为Presdo的项目，该项目首先开发了一个日程机器人，和现在各大互联网公司主推的智能机器人的概念很像，目的也是为了实现一个能够深度理解人的想法、行为的工具。
他认为，目前的互联网，无法在一个没有强大第三方中介的情况下实现存储、转移和交换价值，根本原因是信用关系在互联网世界难以得到确立，基于这样的情况，谷歌、Facebook等大型互联网巨头应运而生，并且变得越来越大，掌握了越来越多的用户数据和信息。
近期，Facebook用户数据泄露事件，标志着这样一个由巨头掌握的互联网世界的弊端已经显露地原来越明显。
“平台的中心化意味着数据拥有着（平台）和用户的激励机制非常不一致，平台想方设法利用用户数据获取利润，有时，他们会不小心或过度地使用这些数据而违背了用户对他们的信任。”Eric Ly说。
他认为，Facebook事件之所以愈演愈烈，除了平台自身逐利导致的用户数据使用造成疏忽以外，还与互联网总体缺乏责任感、缺乏信任度和问责机制有关。
“在平台上发布假新闻而导致不良的决策后果产生，将不会受到任何惩罚。”Eric ly说。
基于这样的想法，Eric Ly的新创业项目应运而生，这一被称为Hub的项目，是基于他在2017年启动的“人类信任协议”（Human Trust Protocol）而建立的，目的是通过区块链技术，在互联网上建立一套全新的信任机制和信用体系，通过区块链记录人们在各种不同领域的互动中的表现，并以此作为计算每个人的可信度的基础。
在此机制下，用户可以完全控制、拥有自己的数据，同时用户可以从自己拥有的信誉数据中收益，而不是通过中心化的平台，从而消除利益冲突。
Eric介绍说，Hub将能够为许多行业和产业带来价值，例如，所有共享经济，如Airbnb、Uber、Didi的商业模式，目前都依赖于陌生人之间的信任，平台解决了信任的问题，但是成本高、效率低，通过区块链技术，可以从根本上重构这样的信任关系，即便没有平台的存在，也 可以解决信任关系。
他对腾讯《一线》表示，Hub也计划进行ICO，而发行的数字货币的价值，将通过系统整个的效用价值而体现，具体而言，参与其中的用户，通过提升自己职业生涯活动和各种社会活动的声誉历史数据，来获得价值增值。
Ly认为，信用也是一种货币，因为它能够给人们带来获得经济机会的途径。
“一个人的信用越高，那他能够获得的机会就越多，”Ly说，“我觉得未来几年会有数十亿人使用这样的构建在区块链上的系统，了解其他人的可信度，因为信用能够带来潜在经济机会。”
谈到与美国现有信用体系的区别，Ly说主要包含三个方面，一是可验证，这种可验证是由别人而非自己对信息进行证实，这也是区块链技术的一个重要特征，二是可移植性，即一旦获得了信用信息，可以从一个社区转移到另一个社区，不受到平台的限制。三是普适性，即可以在不同领域实现的信用信息，包括出售商品或者提供服务等。
Slack正在开发一些工具来判断某人是否有麻烦 Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield is fascinated by “people analytics.”
在二十世纪九十年代初期，新成立的互联网传播者承诺无性别的乌托邦。他们认为，像种族和阶级这样的分层标识符会在网上被遮蔽，因此有偏见的判断将因此变得过时。这并没有完全奏效。
性别规范今天渗透到数字通信当中，如同他们面对面一样强有力地（并且对女性有害），显示出数十年的语言分析。正如 研究数字通信动态的领先语言学家Susan Herring 所说的，无论是在列表服务，短信，Facebook还是Reddit中，男性都倾向于“数字化传播” 。与此同时，女性在私人空间中自我隔离，像直接消息一样仅限女性空间。
日益流行的工作场所沟通平台Slack不免于这种现象。正如我在“ 你的公司的Slack可能是性别歧视 ” 一文中所写的那样，各行各业的女性都表示，他们的男性同事用他们在会议中部署的同样权威的沟通风格来主导公共频道的对话。与此同时，女性更倾向于使用支持性的友好标点符号，并用对冲方式修改他们的观点，如“我可能是错的，但是......”
现在，Slack首席执行官斯图尔特巴特菲尔德说，斯莱克是领先的产品，将提供单独的斯莱克用户的数据，他们的数字通信是否改变时，他们与不同人口的人说话。他表示，这些数据将有助于促进更加平等和包容的工作场所文化，并使员工更有效率和效率。
在Slack上偏置
随着Slack继续取代电子邮件，成为全球5万多家公司内部沟通的主要手段，女性对平台的抑制对组织文化，创新和商业成功构成了巨大威胁。
当然，性别或其他等级的传播规范并不普遍; 有些女人很自然地说话，特别是其他女人也一样。有些男人自我质疑，以至于瘫痪。Slack（作为一个公司或产品）也不应该归咎于性别规范的流行，我们在我们打字之前就开始内化 - 甚至可以用完整的句子说话。但是，尽管Slack认为其产品的任何部分都不利于偏见，但公司现在似乎承认，女性和代表性不足的少数群体的人 可能会在Slack上保持沉默 - 并且正在研究解决这些趋势的产品开发。
2017年11月，Slack告诉Quartz，关于该平台促进性别偏见的抱怨没有出现。“如果我们看到一种趋势，那就是女性说他们在Slack上没有发言权，我们会努力解决这个问题，”Slack通讯主管Julia Blystone说。“但我们在研究中没有听说过。”
短短几个月后，CEO巴特菲尔德管家指出，斯莱克是 着手解决的担忧，通过开发工具来分析其平台上通信的发展趋势，在沃顿人们分析会议 3月23日在费城响应来自沃顿商学院管理学教授一个问题Mae McDonnell谈到Butterfield是否担心私人Slack聊天“渠道”会加剧排斥，CEO也开玩笑说，“我担心所有事情。我有一个犹太人的祖母。“
“如果组织内部存在深层和系统性问题，Slack可能夸大他们，”他说。
巴特菲尔德补充说，该平台还可以增强组织的积极特征。“如果组织内部有真正的积极属性和成功的[谈判和对话]技能，那么这些技能可以超负荷，”他说。“所以我认为[Slack]的结构没有任何内在的东西......或者任何固有的可见特征都会抑制多样性。”
巴特菲尔德强调，对于所有身份不太熟练的雇员来说，斯莱克可能是天赐之物。巴斯菲尔德说，几乎每个星期，斯拉克都会听到那些内向的或者以前很难参加“某些参与者声音更大，或者更具侵略性”的会议的客户，或者只是想更慢地思考。“他们伸手要说声谢谢，因为现在有了Slack，他们可以异步参与，他们觉得他们有更多的投入，并且他们的公司对话中的参与者要多得多。”
“个人分析”可能会暴露沟通偏见
虽然面对面沟通中的性别歧视或种族歧视可能会被感知和记忆扭曲，但Slack的数字档案为语言分析提供了宝贵的机会。
巴特菲尔德说，他对个人分析的想法非常感兴趣。
“这些分析是除了你之外没有其他人能够接触到你，”他说。“他们没有以任何方式向你展示任何真正的道德价值，但[他们回答诸如此类的问题]，你跟男人说话的方式不同于与女人谈话？你是否以支持小组的方式发言，而不是与上级谈话？你在公共场合讲话的方式不同于你私下说话吗？
巴特菲尔德的纽约员工正在创建这些分析工具来识别这些个人通信风格，他说。“Slack员工使用一些API来完成自己的查询，”他说。“ 我们未来几年的计划是尽可能地扩大这一计划 - 以便为客户提供有关其组织和个人的见解。”
布莱斯通表示，个人分析计划“处于早期阶段，并将在未来几年继续发展。”
作为首席执行官，Butterfield表示他有兴趣在更宏观的层面上使用Slack通信分析来识别功能失常的团队或其组织内不匹配的合作关系。Slack已经公开承诺在自己的职位中实现多元化，2016年已经将女性管理人员的比例从43％提高到48％。尽管如此，有色人种 仍然缺乏代表性， 只有5％的Slack科技职位的雇员是黑人，这在科技公司中普遍存在。
分析和监视之间的细微线路
在这些产品的早期，它们将数据放在逐个人基础上损害（和积极）通信动态的潜力是前所未有的。
女性和代表性不足的少数民族的人有时不会说出Slack习惯使他们感到不舒服的同事，因为担心他们不会相信，或者没有数据支持他们的指责。令人信服的是，对于性别交流模式的语言学研究可能是有代表性的，但与容易获取的有关人们坐在一起的实时数据（或偷懒）相比，这些国家代表性的样本显得苍白无力。
当然，与人们分析相关的隐私仍然很紧迫。这是Slack尚未解决的问题。
巴特菲尔德说：“我们在这些关于信息访问的谈话中处于中间位置，因为我们大部分大型企业客户都有员工条款，这些条款已经授予他们访问所有员工沟通的权利。
自动分析用户如何沟通将是更进一步的一步。 巴特菲尔德后来说：“这是一个 充满挑战的领域，因为你希望通过他们得到的反馈和他们使用的工具来赋予人们权力，而没有他们感觉他们正在被监督。
“ 这对任何员工都是有用的反馈，但这可能是人们与他们的经理或同事分享不太舒服的东西，所以同意问题真的很有趣。”
然而，即使不公平的数据要暴露个人，它也可以 - 并且在巴特菲尔德的书中 应该激发积极的变化。“因此，如果[数据]的结果不是'嗨，结果你是个混蛋，我们正在解雇你'，但'嘿，事实证明我们已经确定了一些围绕沟通的问题，或者管理结构或组织设计，这阻碍了我们想要取得的进展，因此我们要纠正它们，“这是件好事，”他说。
以上由AI翻译完成，仅供参考。
In the early 1990s, newly minted Internet evangelists promised a gender-free utopia. Hierarchical identifiers like race and class would be obscured online, they argued, and biased judgements would therefore become obsolete. That didn’t quite work out.
Gender norms infiltrate digital communication today as powerfully (and as detrimentally to women) as they do in-person, show decades of linguistic analysis. Whether on listservs, text messages, Facebook, or Reddit, men tend to “digitally manspread,” as Susan Herring, a leading linguist studying digital communication dynamics, calls it. Meanwhile, women self-segregate in private, women’s-only spaces, like direct messages.
Slack, the increasingly popular workplace communication platform, is not exempt from this phenomenon. As I wrote in “Your company’s Slack is probably sexist,” women across industries say that their male colleagues dominate public-channel conversations with the same authoritative communication styles they deploy in meetings. Meanwhile, women are more likely to use supportive, friendly punctuation, and to modify their opinions with hedges like “I could be wrong, but…”
Now, Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield says Slack is pioneering products that will provide individual Slack users with data on whether their digital communication changes when they speak with people of different demographics. He says this data will help promote more equal, inclusive workplace cultures, and make employees more efficient and effective.
Bias on Slack
As Slack continues to replace email, becoming the primary means of internal communication at over 50,000 companies worldwide, women’s inhibitions on the platform pose a formidable threat to organizational culture, innovation, and business success.
Of course, gendered or otherwise hierarchical communication norms aren’t universal; some women are comfortable speaking bluntly, especially when other women do the same. And some men self-question to the point of Slack paralysis. Nor is Slack (as a company or product) to blame for the prevalence of gender norms that we start internalizing before we can type—or even speak in full sentences. But while Slack holds that no part of its product facilitates bias, the company now appears to acknowledging that women and people of underrepresented minorities could be silenced on Slack—and looking into product development that addresses these trends.
In November 2017, Slack told Quartz that complaints about the platform’s facilitation of gender bias hadn’t come up. “If we had seen a trend where women said they didn’t have a voice on Slack, we would work on how we might address it,” said Julia Blystone, head of communications at Slack. “But we haven’t heard that in our research.”
Just a few months later, CEO Steward Butterfield indicated that Slack was beginning to address concerns, by developing tools to analyze communication trends on its platform, at the Wharton People Analytics Conference in Philadelphia on March 23. In response to a question from Wharton management professor Mae McDonnell on whether Butterfield ever worries that private Slack chat “channels” can reinforce exclusion, CEO also joked, “I worry about everything. I have a Jewish grandmother.”
“If there are deep and systemic problems at an organization Slack can exaggerate them,” he said.
Butterfield added that the platform can also enhance an organization’s positive characteristics. “If there are real positive attributes and successful [negotiating and conversational] skills within an organization, those can be supercharged,” he said. “So I don’t think there’s anything inherent to [Slack’s] structure… or any inherent visible characteristics that would inhibit diversity.”
Butterfield emphasized that for less loquacious employees of all identities, Slack can be a godsend. Nearly every week, Slack hears from customers who identify as introverted, or previously struggled to participate in meetings “where some of the participants are louder, or more aggressive,” or just prefer to think more slowly, says Butterfield. “They reach out to say thank you, because now with Slack, they can participate asynchronously, and they feel like they have much more input, and are much more active participants in their company’s conversations.”
“Personal analytics” could expose communication bias
While apparently gendered or racial slights in face-to-face communication can be distorted by perception and memory, Slack’s digital archives provide invaluable opportunity for linguistic analyses.
Butterfield says he’s “really interested in the idea of personal analytics.”
“These are analytics that no one else has access to you except for you,” he said. “And they don’t present you with any real moral value either way, but [they answer questions like], do you talk to men differently than you talk to women? Do you speak to support groups differently than you speak to superiors? Do you speak in public differently than you speak in private?
Butterfield’s New York staff are creating those analytics tools to identify those personal communication styles, he says. “There’s a handful of APIs Slack employees use to do their own queries,” he said. “Our plan for the next couple of years is to expand that as much as possible—so to provide customers with insights about their organizations and individuals.”
Blystone says the personal analytics initiatives are “in the early stages and will continue to develop over the next couple of years.”
As CEO, Butterfield says he’s interested in using Slack communication analytics at a more macro-level to identify dysfunctional teams or mismatched partnerships within his organization. Slack has publicly committed to diversity within its own ranks, and 2016, has raised representation of women in management from 43% to 48%. Nevertheless, people of color remain vastly under-represented, only 5% of employees in tech roles at Slack are black, a disproportion common in tech companies.
The fine line between analysis and surveillance
Early as these products may be, their potential to put data behind damaging (and positive) communication dynamics on a person-by-person basis is unprecedented.
Women and people of underrepresented minorities sometimes don’t speak up about coworkers whose Slack habits make them uncomfortable due to fear that they wouldn’t be believed, or wouldn’t have data to back up their accusations. Convincing as linguistic studies on gendered communication patterns may be, nationally representative samples pale in comparison to easily accessible, real-time data about the people literally sitting (or Slacking) alongside you.
Of course, privacy as it relates to people analytics remains pressing. It’s an issue Slack has yet to resolve.
“We’re a bit stuck in the middle on these conversations about access to information, because most of our large corporate customers have employee provisions which already grant them the right to access all employee communications,” said Butterfield.
Automatic analysis of how users communicate would be a further step. “It’s a fraught area, because you want people to be empowered by the feedback they’re getting and the tools they’re using, without them feeling like they’re being surveilled,” said Butterfield later.
“That would be useful feedback for any employee, but it’s probably something that people don’t feel very comfortable sharing with their managers or with their peers, so the consent question is really interesting.”
However, even if unfavorable data were to to be exposed about an individual, it can—and, in Butterfield’s books, should—inspire positive change. “So if the result of that [data] is not ‘Hey, it turns out you’re a jerk and we’re firing you,’ but ‘Hey, it turns out we’ve identified some set of problems around communication, or management structure or organizational design, which inhibits the kind of progress we want to make, and therefore we’re going to rectify them,’ that’s a good thing,” he said.
This story is part of How We’ll Win, a project exploring the fight for gender equality at work. Read more stories here.
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