peopleanalyst

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Mike West

Product & Technical Leader · AI-Native Analytics Platforms · Applied Decision Science Pittsburgh, PA · mike@peopleanalyst.com · 469.406.4699 linkedin.com/in/michaelcwest · github.com/people-analyst · peopleanalyst.com

Positioning

Mike West designs analytics-native products for domains under-served by data. As founder of PeopleAnalyst (since 2012), he's shipped a 15+ application People Analytics Platform plus consumer products in baby-naming (Namesake), fantasy football (Fourth & 2), and contemplative visual art (Vela) — backed by a published book on the field he helped pioneer (People Analytics For Dummies, Wiley 2019) and a 22K LinkedIn audience. Two decades earlier, he stood up People Analytics functions at Merck (65K employees, $4B HR investment), PetSmart (20K, $40M+), and Google (through 7K → 21K growth, Fortune #1 era).

Operationally bilingual across product, technical architecture, behavioral science, decision science, and applied AI. Builds end-to-end: data pipelines and embedding retrieval through to user-facing surfaces and admin tooling. Ships solo when needed; leads teams when scale demands.

Seeking founder-track placement (South Park Commons, Entrepreneur First, On Deck, YC Visiting Group) or senior product leadership (Senior / Principal / Staff PM, VP Product, Head of Product / AI) at applied-analytics startups, AI-native platform companies, and people-analytics platforms extending into AI. Concurrently applying to PhD programs at Carnegie Mellon (HCII) and University of Pittsburgh.

Distinctive Claims

  • First person to have worked on three leading workforce-analytics data platforms — Visier, One Model, ZeroedIn.
  • Author, People Analytics for Dummies (Wiley, March 2019) — first mainstream book on people analytics. 22K LinkedIn followers, 97+ published articles, group moderator of the People Analytics Community.
  • Solo founder of a 20+ application TypeScript ecosystem spanning enterprise analytics, scholarly research infrastructure, and consumer products — AI-native, hub-and-spoke architecture.
  • Multi-year product leader (Strategist / Manager / Principal Engineer) at people-data startups (OneModel, OpenComp, AnyComp.AI, Performix) running concurrently with consulting practice.
  • Originated methodologies adopted in the field: Rapid Collaborative Insight (RCI), Net Activated Value (NAV), Three A's Framework, Lean People Analytics, Full-Stack People Analytics Systems, Quantitative Model of HR.

Selected Recent Product & Technical Work

People Analytics Platform · 2022–present · solo founder

A 15+ application hub-and-spoke ecosystem. TypeScript throughout. Most repos private.

Strongest pieces:

  • Conductor — Data intelligence orchestrator. AI-powered SQL/Python generation over BigQuery metadata rather than examples — model sees schema + business logic, not sample SQL. Tiered metric recipes, field mediation, One Model imports.
  • Calculus — Persistent batch calculation engine for 210+ HR metrics across segments and time periods. Most HR analytics products recompute per-dashboard-render; Calculus precomputes + materializes, so 1,000+ manager-level segmentations are instant rather than minutes-long.
  • Reincarnation — Adaptive Diagnostic System with RID/SID architecture for multi-study item management with adaptive learning. Single questions participate in many studies without confounding — commercial survey platforms either silo studies or pool naïvely; this preserves both.
  • VOI Calculator — Value of Information analysis. Monte Carlo, EVPI/EVSI, AI-assisted decision modeling. Formal VOI in HR tooling is essentially absent commercially; this implements the academic framework as production software.
  • Meta-Factory — Universal Information Factory: cross-domain pipeline transforming any unstructured corpus (PDF, HTML, audio, video) into schema-conformant typed records with provenance and confidence preserved.

Plus 8 supporting applications: AnyComp (compensation decision OS), Decision Wizard (Kepner-Tregoe structured decision-making), Survey Respondent (15 question types — MaxDiff, Conjoint, Dual-Slider, NPS, Likert), Preference Modeler, Metric Market (composable card-based viz workbench), Segmentation Studio (HRIS data onboarding + canonical field normalization), Data Anonymizer (deterministic PII anonymization), People Analyst (organizational forecasting).

Namesake · namesake.baby · 2025–present · live, solo founder

An intentional baby-naming platform. 47,000+ names with 145+ years of SSA popularity data. Name Wizard guided-selection tool, name-intelligence profiles, parallel partner brainstorming, tournament-bracket voting, themed collections, live baby-shower mode.

Outlier: built-in research pipeline at PhD-grade cultural-diffusion rigor — 5 theoretical frameworks, 13 research questions, 15 external data sources (SSA, OMDB, TMDB, US Census, etc.), 11 phases, 843 cultural events analyzed to model how names go viral. Publication-grade methodology inside a consumer product.

Stack: Next.js 16, Supabase, Vercel, Tailwind, Anthropic API, FAL, OMDB/TMDB, WhoisFreaks. Built solo from blank slate to shipped in 3–4 weeks.

Vela · vela.study · 2024–present · live, solo founder

A contemplative visual-art platform. 385 active curated works from 6 museum APIs (ARTIC, Met, BnF, Smithsonian, Europeana, Rijksmuseum). Editorial magazine (16 articles, 4 fiction series). Adaptive-intelligence sequenced player. Stripe membership, Transformation Studio revenue loop, partner photographer pipeline.

Outliers:

  • $0.13 per research-run synthesis across 7 sub-questions with primary-source citations, at 30,000+ passage scale. Most "AI research" tools run 10–100× more expensive because they retrieve without pattern-extraction.
  • Dual-grade corpus ingestion — same database holds curator-grade editorial picks AND research-bulk chunks, distinguished by tag. Solves the documented problem where one corpus serves two categorically different uses.
  • Cryptographic provenance contract — SHA-256 tracked for every source file; safe-delete invariant requires hash verification on backup and durable storage before any local delete.

Stack: Next.js 16, React 19, Tailwind 4, Supabase, Vercel, Modal, Anthropic API.

Fourth & 2 · MFL-GM-Consol · in progress

Fantasy-football intelligence platform. Monorepo: Next.js web (Team / Waiver / League Intelligence / Weekly Strategy / Draft Day / Rankings command centers); Python+FastAPI analytics API (PRISM, CAMS, rankings, decisions); shared TypeScript packages (engine, adapters, 16 analytics card types, typed HTTP client). Side games (The Pick, The Matchup, Survivor) shipped as playable.

Real-world application of the same systematic-decision-science frameworks underlying the People Analytics Platform — proves the patterns transfer to high-volume-decision consumer domains.

Loom · 2026 · in early build

AI-assisted memoir composition workshop.

Outlier: voice-match with explicit anti-invention constraint. When a structural rhetorical move requires biographical material the user hasn't supplied, the tool refuses to render rather than confabulating — enforced via per-rendering invented_content[] array surfaced as warnings, plus a Sonnet critic pass. Unusual for AI-writing tools, which default to producing something over flagging a limitation.

Pattern-first compositional scaffolding retrieves structural moves from a curated memoir corpus without exposing source sentences (plagiarism-distance enforcement at two layers — bigram overlap + Sonnet critic). Experience × emotion taxonomy enables cross-axis querying ("scene-setting under shame," "internal monologue under tenderness").

Commonplace · 2026 · architecture

Scholarly corpus infrastructure. Ingests public-domain primary-source archives — Patrologia Latina (217 volumes via Corpus Corporum), CCEL (38 volumes ANF/NPNF), Sefaria (full Jewish primary corpus), Perseus Digital Library — alongside contemporary academic works. Per-vertical extraction manifests pull relevant passages into downstream editorial products.

Outlier: demonstrated ~1000× research capacity amplification — research questions that would require a scholar weeks of library work return cited synthesis in under 2 minutes at ~$0.13 in API cost.

Product & Technical Capabilities

AI-Native Product Development — Retrieval-augmented synthesis pipelines at corpus scale (pgvector, embeddings, structured outputs). Multi-model orchestration (Claude Opus/Sonnet/Haiku, OpenAI embeddings, multi-provider AI Gateway). Agentic workflows with budget + quality trade-offs; structured-output prompt engineering. Modal + Supabase + Vercel deployment patterns for AI workloads. Semantic search, reranking, diachronic semantic drift analysis.

Decision Science & Quantitative Methods — Monte Carlo simulation, probabilistic modeling, scenario analysis. Value of Information (EVPI/EVSI), Kepner-Tregoe structured decision-making. Conjoint, MaxDiff, discrete choice modeling. Attrition prediction, survival analysis, compensation modeling. Time-series analysis, predictive modeling, machine learning fundamentals.

Data Architecture & Platform Engineering — Postgres + pgvector, BigQuery, Supabase, Modal (Python serverless), Vercel. Hub-and-spoke registries, metric calculation engines at 200+ scale. Ingestion pipelines: PDF/DOCX/EPUB/audio extraction, paragraph-respecting chunking, dual-grade tagging. Row-level security, service-client patterns, migration automation, cryptographic content provenance.

Product Design & Management — Multi-surface architecture (player, magazine, admin, partner, API). Admin-over-CLI operational patterns (every script has an admin UI path). Progressive disclosure, curator workflows, taxonomy + content modeling. 15+ applications shipped solo; ecosystem registry maintained as hub. Multi-agent engineering coordination (Claude Code + Cursor + completion-block protocol).

Program Leadership & Client Delivery — Founded PeopleAnalyst 2012; 25+ enterprise clients including Juniper Networks, Mars, Pfizer, Zoom, Reddit, Instabase, Articulate, Nike, Pure Storage, Cityblock Health, 10X Genomics, Atlassian, Udemy, New York Times. Stood up People Analytics from zero at Merck, PetSmart, Google. Led M&A pay structure reconciliation across 45+ countries (Juniper). Implemented Workday SaaS HRIS at Otsuka: 3 applications consolidated to 1 in under 10 months; $6M monthly payroll, $0 errors.

Career

PeopleAnalyst — Founder, Principal Consultant & Product Builder · Mar 2012 – present · Pittsburgh, PA (previously Dallas, Austin, Springfield MO, Portsmouth VA)

  • Founded the first niche people-analytics consulting practice in the US; served 25+ enterprise clients across pharmaceutical, tech, retail, healthcare, media.
  • Pivoted to AI-native product development in 2022; shipped a 15+ application platform plus Vela, Loom, Commonplace in adjacent domains.
  • Published People Analytics For Dummies (Wiley, March 2019); built 22K LinkedIn audience through 97+ published articles.

The New York Times — Consultant, Workforce Analytics & Compensation · Aug 2025 – 2026 (contract, completed) · Pittsburgh, PA

  • Designed a workforce intelligence model integrating merit, incentive, RSU, and discretionary-award data for executive program-design and annual-compensation planning.
  • Applied Monte Carlo simulation to compensation scenarios — advanced planning accuracy from "could miss financial targets" to reliable predictions across outcome ranges.
  • Participated in implementation of One Model cloud-based people data warehouse.

OneModel · OpenComp · AnyComp.AI — Product Strategist / Product Manager / Principal Engineer (concurrent, multi-year) · 2015 – present

  • Multi-year stints at people-data / compensation-analytics startups designing workforce intelligence and compensation decision products.
  • AnyComp.AI is own AI-native compensation-decision product line; extension of the PeopleAnalyst Platform.

Otsuka Pharmaceutical — Manager, HR Information Systems & People Analytics · Jan 2010 – Feb 2012 · Princeton, NJ

  • Designed HR technology architecture enabling a Japanese conglomerate to launch its first North American pharmaceutical business.
  • Led Workday SaaS HRIS implementation: 3 applications combined into 1 in under 10 months; outsourced Benefits + Payroll; live with $6M+ monthly payroll, $0 errors.
  • Scaled Otsuka's geographic footprint 10× with constant support headcount.

AstraZeneca — Field Researcher, Field Sales · Oct 2008 – Jan 2010 · Phoenix, AZ

  • Pioneered data-driven sales-training evaluation: proved statistically that removing salespeople from the field for sales-data training produced better subsequent performance; led to program expansion.
  • Designed dashboards combining previously isolated performance and sales data for executive talent-management discussions.

Google — Program Manager, People Analytics · Jul 2006 – Aug 2008 · Mountain View, CA

  • Pioneered People Analytics in Benefits during 7K → 21K growth and Fortune #1 Best Company to Work For era. Insights influenced multi-billion-dollar annual benefits + engagement investment.
  • Designed Google's first attrition prediction model.
  • Designed Google's first professional global employee survey — precursor to Googlegeist.
  • Partnered with BI team on Google's first HR data and reporting environment.

PetSmart — Sr. Quantitative Analyst, Talent Management · Mar 2005 – Jul 2006 · Phoenix, AZ

  • Pioneered the Quantitative Analyst role in HR at PetSmart (20K employees, $40M+ HR investment).
  • First to connect brand-specific employee measurements to business outcomes in specialty retail: analyzed how store-associate knowledge / engagement / attrition correlated with customer satisfaction and sales.
  • Identified store jobs disproportionately critical to sales; redirected performance management, compensation, and training investments accordingly.
  • Instrumental in PetSmart's "Mart to Smart" transformation.

Merck — Sr. HR Decision Support Analyst, Workforce Planning & Analytics · Jul 2001 – Mar 2005 · Whitehouse Station, NJ

  • Contributed to the development of one of the first corporate HR Analytics functions in the world, for a 65K-employee global workforce and $4B HR investment during Merck's pioneering-early era of data-driven HR.
  • First project analyzed e-learning vs. "fly-them-in" training; consensus to standardize on eLearning saved millions — the original instance of what later formalized as Rapid Collaborative Insight (RCI).
  • Analytical work across Organization Learning, Talent Management, Workforce Strategy, HR Digitization, Leadership, Engagement, Diversity.

Methodologies & Frameworks (Originated)

Placeholder one-liners — these deserve fuller introductions than this section currently allows. Earmarked for a follow-up pass before final.

  • Rapid Collaborative Insight (RCI) — combines collaboration with data-driven analysis to guide complex organizations toward optimal decisions faster than either approach alone.
  • Net Activated Value (NAV) — unifying leadership metric tying quarterly human-capital measurement to dollar outcomes.
  • Three A's Framework — Attraction, Activation, Attrition as the lifecycle measurement spine for any people-analytics function.
  • Lean People Analytics — applies leading-edge analytics practices to resource-constrained, rapidly-growing companies; extends Lean methodology into HR.
  • Full-Stack People Analytics Systems — end-to-end pipeline from data collection through storytelling, treating the analytics function as a software stack rather than a reporting team.
  • Quantitative Model of Human Resources — mathematical framework for HR resource allocation and investment.
  • CAMS — (applied in Fourth & 2 analytics API; full definition pending follow-up pass)

Publications & Public Work

  • People Analytics For Dummies — Wiley, March 2019. First mainstream book on people analytics.
  • 97+ published articles (LinkedIn, 22K followers) on Lean People Analytics, Talent Acquisition Analytics, the Five Models of People Analytics, HR Metrics, Employee Engagement, People Analytics history & philosophy.
  • People Analytics Community on LinkedIn — group moderator, thousands of members.
  • Conference speaking + podcast appearances.

Education

  • University of Minnesota — Carlson School of Management. M.A. Human Resources & Industrial Relations, 1999–2001. GPA 3.8. Student exchange: Stockholm School of Economics, Jan–Jun 2001.
  • Northern Arizona University — B.S. Sociology & Psychology, 1994–1998.

Certifications

  • SPHR (Senior Professional Human Resources) — SHRM, 2009
  • CCP (Certified Compensation Professional) — WorldatWork
  • CMS (Compensation Management Specialist) — CEBS / Wharton, 2009
  • Targeted Selection — DDI, 2009
  • MBTI Certified — Otto Kroeger & Associates, 2003
  • Corporate Online Instruction — NYU, 2002

Technology & Platforms

AI & Automation: Claude (Opus / Sonnet / Haiku), OpenAI, Gemini, Cursor, Replit, Vercel, V0; AI-assisted research workflows; automated ETL pipelines; structured-output prompt engineering; multi-model orchestration via AI Gateway.

Data & Analytics: Python, SQL, R, SPSS, Alteryx, Excel, Google Sheets, Postgres + pgvector, BigQuery, embedding retrieval at 30K+ passage scale.

Workforce Intelligence Platforms: Visier, One Model, ZeroedIn, LinkedIn Talent Insights, Lightcast (EMSI/Burning Glass), CompAnalyst, Radford, Mercer, WTW.

Dashboards & Visualization: Tableau, Power BI, Visier, One Model, MicroStrategy, Cognos.

HR Systems: Workday, Oracle HR, PeopleSoft, Greenhouse, Syndio, Payscale, MarketPay.

Survey & Research: Qualtrics, Culture Amp, Glint, SurveyMonkey, MaxDiff, Conjoint — plus own survey platform (Survey Respondent, 15 question types).

Cloud & Infrastructure: Supabase, Modal (Python serverless), Vercel, Next.js, React 19, TypeScript, Postgres Row-Level Security, Stripe integrations, migration automation.

Current Focus (2026)

Simultaneously: (a) building out the AI-native People Analytics Platform ecosystem; (b) shipping Vela + Loom + Commonplace in adjacent domains; (c) applying to PhD programs at Carnegie Mellon and University of Pittsburgh; (d) seeking founder-track placement OR senior product leadership in applied-analytics startups, AI-native platform companies, and people-analytics platforms extending into AI.

Open to: founder-track programs (SPC, EF, On Deck, YC Visiting Group); Senior / Principal / Staff PM at applied-analytics SaaS; VP Product at legacy ERP companies modernizing with analytics + AI; Head of Product / AI at early-stage applied-analytics startups; research-leaning product roles at AI-native platform companies.

Not currently seeking: HR Business Partner roles, HR support function roles, traditional HRIS administrator roles, individual-contributor analyst roles.