My team lead got replaced by a dashboard last month

I work in a small marketing firm in Portland, and about six weeks ago, management rolled out a new 'performance system'. It's basically an AI dashboard that tracks our project hours, email response times, and even grades our client call summaries. Our old team lead, Mark, was let go the same day it launched. Now, instead of our weekly check-ins, we just get a weekly scorecard with red, yellow, or green flags. The worst part was last Tuesday, when the system flagged my 'collaboration score' as low because I hadn't used the new chat tool enough, even though I'd been solving a problem in person with a coworker. It feels like the job is becoming less about the actual work and more about feeding the machine the right data. Has anyone else's workplace shifted to this kind of remote, number-driven management? How do you deal with it?

3 comments

3 Comments

sage_moore371mo ago

Sounds like your new boss is a spreadsheet that learned how to send emails. Congrats on the promotion, I guess the real team lead was the data points we fed along the way. You can't even get a coffee with this guy to explain your side of the story. Pretty soon it's going to schedule a mandatory fun Zoom meeting for team bonding.

claire_grant341mo ago

My last boss was basically a walking to-do list with a bad haircut. At least a spreadsheet can't give you that disappointed stare when you're five minutes late. I once tried to explain a project delay to him and he just kept tapping his pen on a pie chart. Felt like I was being graded on my excuses. Honestly makes me glad I work outside now, plants don't ask for weekly reports.

christopherw341mo ago

The worst part is when they start using those automated "people analytics" to decide who gets promoted. Like sorry Karen in HR, but the algorithm doesn't know I stayed late for three weeks to fix the reporting bug. It just sees I missed two pointless check-ins.