[dodgerdan]

Watching growing startups hire a junior data scientist to analyse their new mountain of data is very entertaining. One of their first findings is their revenue/growth seems to be dropping… “we need someone to focus on growth/revenue ASAP”. They hatch a plan, build a team and magically their growth starts to recover.

The issue was spotted in April/May, the building happens during the summer and is launched In September… I’ve watch this cycle happen so many times, I’ve given up trying to point out that the issue is just seasonality.

[datavirtue]

I worked with a guy who loudly pointed this out in executive meetings where marketing and analytics were presenting. Then he wouldn't let it go, loudly proclaiming the sham in the hallways and through various emails.

He was laughing at them in their faces, even, and was 100% correct. They excluded him from any further meetings.

Every time they brought up a new stat and set off alarm bells he would bring up their massive fuckup and rub it in their face, and then would dig through the data and question every point.

He was eventually fired for pointing out how incompetent our new owners were after an acquisition, and would have been a lot happier joining everyone in their sham.

[ludicity]

Yeah, I haven't seen anyone do this firsthand, but all my social intuition tells me that you can't challenge the social reality being presented. You can yell at one manager, call his team incompetent, so on (all deeply inadvisable), but in my heart, I don't think anything would get you strategically blackballed and removed faster than saying "So... what do we all produce, exactly? Oh? You realize that's absolutely worthless, right?"