Worthless Data Work: Sorry, No Sympathy from Me

February 27, 2023

I read a personal essay about “data work.” The title is interesting: “Most Data Work Seems Fundamentally Worthless.” I am not sure of the age of the essayist, but the pain is evident in the word choice; for example: Flavor of despair (yes, synesthesia in a modern technology awakening write up!), hopeless passivity (yes, a digital Sisyphus!), essentially fraudulent (shades of Bernie Madoff!), fire myself (okay, self loathing and an inner destructive voice), and much, much more.

But the point is not the author for me. The big idea is that when it comes to data, most people want a chart and don’t want to fool around with numbers, statistical procedures, data validation, and context of the how, where, and what of the collection process.

Let’s go to the write up:

How on earth could we have what seemed to be an entire industry of people who all knew their jobs were pointless?

Like Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the essayist enumerates the wrongs of data analytics as a vaudeville act:

Talking about data is not “doing” data
Garbage in, garbage out
No clue about the reason for an analysis
Making marketing and others angry
Unethical colleagues wallowing in easy money

What’s ahead? I liked these statements which are similar to what a digital Walt Whitman via ChatGPT might say:

I’ve punched this all out over one evening, and I’m still figuring things out myself, but here’s what I’ve got so far… that’s what feels right to me – those of us who are despairing, we’re chasing quality and meaning, and we can’t do it while we’re taking orders from people with the wrong vision, the wrong incentives, at dysfunctional organizations, and with data that makes our tasks fundamentally impossible in the first place. Quality takes time, and right now, it definitely feels like there isn’t much of a place for that in the workplace.

Imagine. The data and working with it has an inherent negative impact. We live in a data driven world. Is that why many processes are dysfunctional. Hey, Sisyphus, what are the metrics on your progress with the rock?

Stephen E Arnold, February 27, 2023

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Analytics, Big data, News

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.