What I am to do, the Evidence is There in Large Quantities and Qualities?
June 3, 2025
I was childish and unfair To you, my only friend I regret, but now it’s too late I can’t show you any more The things I’ve learned from you ‘Cause life just took you away, Ruth, and being paid for my work, I’m asking why? (I’m asking why?) I’m asking why? (I’m asking why?) Nobody […]
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I was childish and unfair
To you, my only friend
I regret, but now it’s too late
I can’t show you any more
The things I’ve learned from you
‘Cause life just took you away, Ruth, and being paid for my work,
What I am to do, the Evidence is There in Large Quantities and Qualities? I am on the top of my performance like I have never been before, and yet this is the worst period of my unemployment in my life. Except for the long period employed at Griffith University and the University of Melbourne (1997-2008), my advanced skills, knowledge-base, and capacity for employment has never been respected, and that includes the short period when I was actually employed in the Law Faculty at QUT.
And yet community organisations have flourished because of my work. If it was not for Ruth and I in 1995, BUUF would not have happened, and this community organisation would not be a great example of unity, universality, and strength it is today (ANZUUA June 2025 Email Newsletter attached). My work performance for this month has ended in results of significant attention (examples attached).
The Outlier project has been an exercise in filtering those with advanced skills, knowledge-base, and capacity for employment, out of the opportunity. The Outlier leadership complains about the low yield, but the yield might be low since people like me, experts in humanities and social science are not given tasks of humanities and social science Ph.D. level questions. I suspect the company is taking an anti-university humanities position because of political prejudice. I challenge the cognition. I am kept told by this company of temp contractees, that:
No project currently matches your skills.
This is after the company obviously attempted to filter out humanities candidates, as in this example of their questionnaire illustrates:
There is even a misalignment in some of the questions where the correct answer is ignored:
The question obviously required further explanation since the scoping of the dataset was not indicated. Below was the answer which was expected, and which is much more reductive than the answer I gave:
At the recent meeting of the 31 May, others complained about this reductive and ridiculously difficult criteria:
I was taken off of CB and now on CA I receive two linters that are seemingly contradictory.
One says ‘informational retrieval’ and the other says ‘verifiability issue.’ I feel like I am not worried about pay but just the quality of the prompt. I am a perfectionist.
One will say it is basically informational retrieval but when we try to make it more reasoning and analytical then the linter concerning verifiability pops up.
For example, I get a linter saying the prompt is too complex and can’t pass an autograder. So I’ll simplify the prompt and then the next will say it’s information retrieval.
I feel I have worked on prompts for hours and then just give up due to frustration.
You very rarely find a clear, unambiguous answer as you would in an econometrics equation
You should just think of the linters as a suggestion. If you think it is wrong, you are the expert. Just thumbs it down (unless its the ones that don’t let you, those can be annoying for sure).
I question whether anyone in your company even has a degree in cognition histories or sociology. I accuse the company of seeking out the answers they want. Not the approach of philosophical science. Have any of these persons in the company done a course in management ethics? Or is there just a degree in IT marketing? Looking for the cherry-picked answers! The presentation approach of the company and design is a lesson in propaganda, and the result is low yield. The design in the company is obviously computer science, but there is a great lack of understanding of the questions in humanities and social science. The two questions I asked the company, they could not answer: who gets given tasks and why, and where does the data end up in the real world?
The attitude I received from Outlier is the same problem I have had with all of my potential employers. There is such a lack of understanding how prejudice, bias, attitudes, and values actually link up in employing someone:
Neville Buch (Pronounced Book) Ph.D. is a certified member of the Professional Historians Association (Queensland). Since 2010 he has operated a sole trade business in history consultancy. He was a Q ANZAC 100 Fellow 2014-2015 at the State Library of Queensland. Dr Buch was the PHA (Qld) e-Bulletin, the monthly state association’s electronic publication, and was a member of its Management Committee. He is the Managing Director of the Brisbane Southside History Network.
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