Businesses Are Using VR To Learn How To Best Fire People (latimes.com) 36
McGruber shares a report: Today, the dream of goggle-wearing masses has deflated, and investment in the tech has dwindled. But VR companies like Talespin have found a growing market in simulating the least entertaining content imaginable: our jobs. Consumers may not yet feel the pull of visiting fantasy worlds in their free time, but for businesses that need to train their workers, better tools are a necessity, not a luxury. "What you're seeing today is not an evolution but a return to the application that's always worked," said Jeremy Bailenson, the director of Stanford's Virtual Human Interaction Lab and one of the founders of Strivr, a competing virtual reality training start-up. He traces the roots of virtual reality back to the Link trainer, a mock airplane fuselage mounted on a platform that could simulate real flying sensations, which half a million military pilots used to safely train during World War II.
Talespin found its first major client in Farmers Insurance Group, which needed a new way to train claims adjusters for home inspections. The start-up designed a virtual house, complete with cluttered closets and leaky sinks, that trainees could scour for evidence of water damage. The simulation changed slightly each time, letting new hires rack up months' worth of experience in just a few days. The company has grown to 75 employees to match the demand for VR training coming from Farmers and other large corporate clients, fueled only by $5.6 million in outside investment. But the company always uses Barry's termination as a demo for new clients -- it's a compelling proof-of-concept experience designed, Jackson said, "to see if talking to a virtual human can actually make you uncomfortable. It's proved to be pretty effective." That emotional realism is what separates virtual reality from all the other tools for teaching interpersonal skills in the workplace, from pamphlets and role-playing workshops to interactive tutorials.
Talespin found its first major client in Farmers Insurance Group, which needed a new way to train claims adjusters for home inspections. The start-up designed a virtual house, complete with cluttered closets and leaky sinks, that trainees could scour for evidence of water damage. The simulation changed slightly each time, letting new hires rack up months' worth of experience in just a few days. The company has grown to 75 employees to match the demand for VR training coming from Farmers and other large corporate clients, fueled only by $5.6 million in outside investment. But the company always uses Barry's termination as a demo for new clients -- it's a compelling proof-of-concept experience designed, Jackson said, "to see if talking to a virtual human can actually make you uncomfortable. It's proved to be pretty effective." That emotional realism is what separates virtual reality from all the other tools for teaching interpersonal skills in the workplace, from pamphlets and role-playing workshops to interactive tutorials.
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Such a waste of frosty post. But thanks for allowing me to attention whore too, just came back to slashdot from a long vacation :) and I just wanted to say one thing, the very first thing that came to my mind once I read this headline:
*pop*
Is the sound of the bubble exploding. Oh boy. How many bubbles have you seen pop my fellow slashdotters?
How To Best Fire People ... (Score:2)
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The best firing is Office Space style whereby they just stopped sending paychecks to the target employee. If the employee complained, they were sent around in cycles of red tape and delay tactics.
I actually worked for a startup that ran out of money and stopped paying people. An email basically said, "Paychecks will be late, as we are unfortunately short of revenue this month."
People slowly faded away as they found new gigs. It was during the dot-com bust such that people didn't have a lot of choice and som
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During the dot-com bust days, we didn't know on which day we'd get paid, or if there would be enough money to pay everyone. Each time when we found out that there was money in the account we'd all race to our cars, drive to the bank, where the company was doing business, as quickly as possible, and cash the check. Some poor guys decided to cash their checks at their local banks, only to have the checks bounce a few days later.
Re: How To Best Fire People ... (Score:2)
I"ve been made redundant three times
You're not doing it right - you haven't even lived until you've deliberately pushed the limits at a bullshit job... just to see what it takes to get the sheep to blink. ;)
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One of my friends in IT did that. He pushed his salary from about 110k to over 300k over the span of four years before he gave up and voluntarily quit, dropping down to about 180k, but a much better work environment.
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This really happened, I have talked to corroborating witnesses.
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I've never been made redundant, I always seem to run my contracts out to the end or jump to a new, usually more lucrative position.
I'm currently a direct employee (O the shame) but it's so easy and pays well enough that I may just ride it allllllll the way to shore.
Unless something better (read: MO' MONEY MO' MONEY) comes along and then I'll ride that one all the way to shore.
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Mr. Spacely said it best.... (Score:1)
Rid-A-Geezer 9000 (Score:2)
I bet IBM wished they had this system. [slashdot.org]
The best way to fire someone is to make them... (Score:3)
How one goes about this will vary greatly from person to person, and has risks of running afoul of facing a constructive dismissal lawsuit if it is applicable in your jurisdiction.
And of course, it's not instantaneous. You will likely need to plan ahead for this by several weeks if not months. It may be easier to simply give them a good severance package and tell them that their services are no longer needed.
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I found two good ways to terminate the employment of villagers in Minecraft. You can either lock them in a house and pour a bucket of lava in through the window, or lock them out of the village at night and let the zombies take care of them.
Life imitates art (Score:2)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
George Clooney's character flew around the country firing people in person. The suits wanted to save money by firing people over VTC. That didn't end well.
Voice Recognition? (Score:2)
Is it too much to ask these days for people to use words instead of ambiguous abbreviations?
Alexa, fire the Slashdot editors right away.
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Pfft... that's EASY! (Score:2)
You just wave some twinkies at the employees you want to fire to get their attention then toss the twinkies into the parking lot and lock the doors when the minions you are firing chase the twinkies outside.
Recommended termination algorithm (Score:2)
If ((emp.age > 48 || emp.cannon_fodder) && len(emp.path_to_ceo) > 4) {
emp.terminate();
}
Fuck Barry (Score:2)
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I burn the building down!
That catches Barry off guard, and as a result he calmly accepts his firing. Good job!
Best way to use VR to fire someone (Score:2)
HR:We're sorry, but your position has been made redundant, and we have to let you go.
Working shlub:That's terrible!
HR:As a token of our thanks for all your hard work over the years, here is a free VR headset.
Yaz
Pretty soon they WILL fire you by VR (Score:4, Interesting)
Pretty soon they WILL fire you by VR to avoid disgruntled employees shooting the HR Manager (or whoever got tasked with firing "Crazy Jim" down in the warehouse).
You'll be shown into a room with two doors.
You'll sit at the table, a monitor will light up and Karen from HR will tell you that you're history.
The other door opens onto the parking lot and the one you came in through will be locked.
Your personal trinkets and shit will be waiting for you in a cardboard box outside the door.
O Brave New World!
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Re: Pretty soon they WILL fire you by VR (Score:1)
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I must have been nearly a decade ago now, at the start of the financial crisis. In the UK a company fired a load of people by text message. "Don't bother coming in today, u r fired". That's one way of avoiding confrontation I suppose.
What could possibly go wrong? (Score:2)
Once you learn how to fire the VR stooge without getting him angry, you're ready to go. March right out of there and use your new skills to fire a real person. What could possibly go wrong? Wait, real people don't react like VR people?
If you're a good manager, you care about your people. You do what it takes to get to know your people for who they are. Firing someone, even for poor performance, is excruciating. But if you have to do it, you are much better off if you've already been treating them with digni
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I always feel kinda sorry for the sackers. (Score:2)
They play a*hole and excecutioner because they think it makes there job safer and when they're finished, they get fired too.
So you got fired *and* you have no more former friendly collegues. Must suck.
I feel the same for those behind the desks at the office of labor when picking up my unemployment benefits for a gap month.
Mind you, this is Germany, where to don't lose everything right away when you're fired due to mandatory federal unemployment insurance, so YMMV.
Huh? (Score:2)
Today, the dream of goggle-wearing masses has deflated, and investment in the tech has dwindled.
What kind of a lead in is that to an article about VR? VR use has been doubling every year since the launch of the first Oculus headset and shows no sign of deviating from exponential growth. Steam has just got onboard with it's own top of the line headset, freshly launched. Oculus and Microsoft have continued to invest and develop Inside-Out tracking from the HMD both throwing some series R&D into predictive algorithms to make the experience smooth. Oculus only launched a completely standalone headset
Be the robot (Score:2)
Jesus Christ on a cracker. This isn't