Patrick McKenzie: evaluation

Transcript context

…You think they leave because they don’t like it? Or they leave because they’re bad at it and they’re fired? Overwhelmingly, they leave because they don’t like it. There is a production function for debt collectors in a way that there is far less of a production function for McDonald’s employees. Certainly, there are ways to be a bad McDonald’s employee, considering, are you physically capable of making a burger or not? Almost everyone who McDonald’s hires is actually physically capable of making a burger. There’s probably at least an order of magnitude difference — perhaps more — in terms of productivity of the amount of dollars collected per hour by debt collectors. It is possible to be a net-negative productive debt collector, and since your activity is tracked, your employer will eventually come to understand that about you. But most people who leave don’t leave because this is a job that is beyond their intellectual capability or because the script they’re given doesn’t work well, et cetera, et cetera. They leave because the job is soul-destroying. How did the maple syrup heists change your overall view of the world and of humanity? What’s the model update?…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.