Yesterday, Scale’s Alex Wang formally announced his company’s new hiring policy — MEI, or Merit, Excellence, and Intelligence — explicitly banning race, gender, and identity-based hiring from the company. “That means we hire only the best person for the job,” the founder controversially explained, and “Hiring on merit will be a permanent policy at Scale,” he further, controversially added. Partly, a public gesture of this kind was inevitable following years of DEI backlash, partly, it’s probably close to the law at this point following the Supreme Court’s ruling over Harvard’s racist admissions practices. But mostly, it’s just interesting how few people melted down over his decision. No massive media backlash, no staff exodus. The man said “we are hiring smart people, I don’t care tf they look like,” and everyone said “okay?” Then, he got a bunch of love online. Stay losing, Robin DiAngelo-obsessed HR cat ladies. It’s the revolution of the sane.

Wells Fargo has fired more than a dozen employees for “simulating keyboard activity creating impression of active work,” according to FINRA legal disclosures. To translate, the employees were using “mouse jiggler” devices that continuously move their mouse to show them as "active" on software such as Slack and Teams — even if they are enjoying the afternoon by the pool, for example. The news yesterday reached the r/overemployed subreddit (a 323,000-member community dedicated to working multiple jobs at once), where a commenter said it better than I ever could: “It's wild that the only way to measure employee job performance is with keyboard activity lol.” And they're right. If corporate America has the infrastructure to detect people's creative ways of bypassing the panopticon, then we certainly have the tech to measure output. And once that happens, a very different category of employee — the incompetent — might be out of work.

Per a new piece in the Chronicle, a network of automated license plate readers installed in SF a couple months ago is already facilitating daily arrests of fugitive criminals. Despite this, the ACLU and other local “civil liberties” groups remain resolutely opposed to the tech, which they warn will be weaponized to expose the “intimate details” (license plate numbers) of innocent citizens. But given most of us are already constantly tracked by devices, ‘privacy concerns’ seem like a thin cover for what is obviously the ACLU’s actual issue with this kind of crime-fighting technology: they basically oppose the idea of retributive justice. This isn’t even a conspiracy; they’ve literally spent the past decade fighting to legalize shoplifting (Prop 47), rioting (Floyd), and shitting on the sidewalk (Grants Pass). Which is crazy. But… interesting? I mean you can’t say it’s not original. Just admit you like the chaos, ACLU. Sure it’s nuts, but at least we’ll have a fascinating conversation.

According to Zippia, US companies employ a combined 980,000 HR professionals. While this is unfortunate, incumbents who employ an army of “administrators” present an opportunity for more agile startups. Warp is the payroll and compliance platform built for such startups. The Warp team has cut out all the features you don’t need (looking at you, Gusto’s “e-Welcome” card for new employees) and has automated the ones you do: federal, state, and local tax compliance, global contractor payments, and 5-minute onboarding. In other words, Warp saves you enough time that you’ll stop having the intrusive thoughts suggesting you might actually need to make your first Human Resources hire.

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