Hyper-Measurement

"Everyone gets paid on commission

The Washington Post recently laid off a columnist because his blog posts didn't get enough web traffic.

Of course, in the old days, the newspaper had no real way to tell which columns got read and which ones didn't. So journalists were lulled into the sense that it didn't really matter. The Times quotes Jay Rosen, a journalism professor at NYU, “It’s an unusual public rationale for serious newspaper people, that’s for sure.”

Wrong tense. It's not going to be unusual for long.

In fact, in a digital world where everything can be measured, we all work on commission. And why not? If you do great work and it works, you should get rewarded. And if you don't, it's hard to see why a rational organization would keep you on.

You don't have to like the coming era of hyper-measurement, but that doesn't mean it's not here."

Where does this leave the millions of people who are paid living wages where the value is much higher than the ACTUAL value their work generates? If we were all paid on commission, the vast majority of us would starve! May as well let the robots take it all over and we can allow our species to slowly become obsolete.

Then again... I do understand Seth's point. As I'm preparing to enter the job market, I have to ask myself, "Is there anything I can do that it is worth a living wage to an employer?" More often than not, the answer I come up with is "No."

via Seth Godin