[zeidrich]

I think algorithmic hiring can be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Putting people in situations that are not optimal for them can cause them to grow. This might lead to situations where people are not as productive, or where they leave the job early either because it is not a right fit, or because they've built skills and found a better job elsewhere.

But in all of these situations the people grow. They've learned about why the job isn't right for them, they've built skills, even if they didn't have perfect skills to start with.

Choosing the person who is the best fit for the job is more efficient for the company, but it means that you're less likely to have someone take the chance when you're looking to broaden your horizons, even when you're truly eager to do so, because an algorithm says that you have some risk factors.

But there's a cost to society there, you start working in one career, and now the system feels you're optimized to continue working there, changing jobs is risky. If you have a run of bad circumstances that lead to you being laid off a few times, your average employment duration goes down and you become a higher risk factor, meaning you get fewer offers from the best jobs, and more offers from more desperate employers, which have a higher chance of conditions that might lead to a shorter length of employment.

A question is, what is the value to society of the most efficient hiring decisions? It keeps us from making hiring mistakes, but mistakes are things we learn from. It keeps us from taking hiring risks, but risks are something that we are occasionally rewarded for. It maximizes efficiency, which reduces the number of jobs necessary. It concentrates wealth.

I'm not saying that we should strive to be inefficient. I mean, that's easy to do, we could just hire the first applicant to any position. But I do think there's value in remaining human. I don't think we make better decisions than an algorithm in terms of maximizing the value of the hire. But I do think we can make more human decisions, which can't go into an algorithm because it is so subjective and dependent on an individual's personal experience.

But that's not what these algorithms are for. They're for hiring 5000 people instead of 5500 people. That's fine for the person who wants to profit off the work of those 5000 people. But it's less interesting when that inefficiency just leaves 500 jobs off the table.

I am not saying that an algorithm is bad, or is less efficient than human decision making. I'm questioning what we should value in society. I'm asking what we should give up. To let an algorithm dictate hiring practices is different than something like improvements to robotics allowing 10% more widgets to be made per factory worker.

It's taking something from us. It's removing human agency. Sometimes that is good, for instance, removing agency from human drivers can be good because it protect society by causing fewer accidents on the road. But what is the good of removing human agency from hiring? It only benefits really large hires, it makes more efficient labor, these situations are ones where people who are already wealthy make more money. It also limits the agency of the people applying for the job. No longer can you do better in an interview, or convince someone to take a risk on you. Your position is firmly set by your personal details and past, which are set in stone, and might have already been decided algorithmically for you.

We give up a lot, and the benefit goes to a few. Is it better for us to do that? I don't know. But I think with less and less labor needed, and more and more concentration of wealth, I'm not sure if it's worth giving up our control of both the hiring and applying process to algorithms, even if they are beneficial to the company hiring. Why throw away our ability to make our own decisions for so little, even if they are "better" ones?