points are a pretty poor proxy for the amazing variety of skills, proficiencies, and perceptions of humans (or even animals), no matter how sophisticated the point system might be. it also paints an illusory objective sheen (aka ass cover™) over a highly subjective evaluation. you might believe in the point system if it favors you, but that doesn't make the point system any more transparent or "good".
we're just not as fungible as nearly a century of mass industrialization would have us believe. we devalue humans by trying to bucketize a set of skills and buy only those skills on the labor market, despite the vast richness that each person brings to the table. that we allow the labor market to be commoditized this way is already a huge imbalance between worker and corporation. we need fair and transparent labor markets for people, not corporations.
> the amazing variety of skills, proficiencies, and perceptions of humans
Does this matter for the vast majority of jobs? I have lots of skills. I am a published writer. I have won innovation competitions. I can build large cities with high property values in SimCity.
None of that matters for my employment. I am a software engineer. For the purposes of work I am a commodity. My past job replaced me fairly easily when I left. Companies are truly only buying a subset of skills on the labour market.
> "I am a software engineer.... Companies are truly only buying a subset of skills on the labour market."
yeah, if you buy in wholesale and premise your argument that way, then of course arguing the premise seems ludicrous. i'm questioning that acceptance itself.
when it comes to value creation, it's rarely the skills list that makes a person, a team, a company, effective, but rather an unquantifiable synergy of individualistic and combined abilities. on a basketball team, you can assume every forward is interchangable with every other one, but then you'd never win a championship and presumably would never understand why.
> but rather an unquantifiable synergy of individualistic and combined abilities.
Interesting. Basketball is an extremely team integrated sport. 100% of the time is spent playing as a team. Do you find workplace teams to be near that level of integration?
Maybe my thinking comes from not working on particularly integrated teams.
knowing nothing else, i'd bet that your workplace value creation encompasses a bigger team around you than you may perceive in your day-to-day. that is, unless you're designing, developing, testing, deploying, securing, marketing, documenting, supporting, accounting for, financing, and selling everything yourself. but even then, you'll often have others helping you, either on contract or in an advisory or support capacity. all of that stuff needs to be sync'ed up and holistically delivered to customers.
basketball is my go-to first-order microcosm of work life, but you can see the same representative dynamics in other facets of life, like a band. similarly, i think of pets as first-order humans, endlessly fascinating and instructive to observe and interact with. =)
we're just not as fungible as nearly a century of mass industrialization would have us believe. we devalue humans by trying to bucketize a set of skills and buy only those skills on the labor market, despite the vast richness that each person brings to the table. that we allow the labor market to be commoditized this way is already a huge imbalance between worker and corporation. we need fair and transparent labor markets for people, not corporations.