Employee or Datapoint?

A recent investigation by The New York Times revealed the ways Amazon measures and monitors employees at its headquarters, crunching data to reveal who is most efficient and deserving of promotion—and who isn’t. But this gamification of the workplace is far from new. As Esther Kaplan and Karen Levy write, UPS drivers, truckers, authors, and retail clerks are also subjected to the tracking power of technology—and the outcomes aren’t always good. And some workplaces are outfitting employees with wearables, which Andre Spicer argues isn’t always an effective—or ethical—solution.