Live data from Hacker News

The Machine Fired Me

idiallo.com

81–90 of 578 posts

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely a 3 year contract means the company is in breach of it by not paying you?

Sounds like he's contracting at a huge company. His contracting company isn't going to make waves over this. I would guess the contracting company is making $300+ an hour off this guy, paying him $50 an hour, and they have 200+ other contractors in the building.

So, wage theft.

Now we're not just talking about a lost opportunity to reward a loyal worker. If you're right, somebody ought to be going to jail.

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I resigned effective the 2nd of a month, and the promo was effective the 1st of the month. See above "resignation (slated to be effective after the promo)". So the resignation was scheduled for the day after the promo. I actually stayed an extra week to receive the promo.

I'm not going to lie; that type of thing -- resigning right after getting promoted -- seems like something from some alternate reality fantasy world.

I have an ex-colleague that was promoted 2 weeks after she resigned, just days before she left the country. The announcements came in the right order, first leaving the company and later being promoted. It puzzled lots of people, but this stuff happens.

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#83
post #67
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The system didn't need to be stopped. The employee's contract wasn't renewed, which is indistinguishable from a decision terminate him, so the system executed the termination as scheduled. The system did exactly what it was intended to do, it was the humans who screwed up. Humans who presumably understood the way the system was designed, and didn't care enough to do some due diligence. >I also do not understand why a…

> The system did exactly what it was intended to do, it was the humans who screwed up. It was the humans who designed and who chose to deploy a system without a human in the loop, and without an override (even after a director was involved) that screwed up.

Maybe, but the humans who didn't renew his employment status knew how the system worked. They screwed up more.

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#84
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah the company is lucky he wasn't well on his way to finding a job somewhere else at this point.

If you read to the end, he did take "the next opportunity that presented itself".

He still went back to work at the first company though. I guess this depends a lot on his personal situation as well.

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#85

I had a sort-of related experience with PayPal where the machine said "No." I've been using it for at least 10 years at that point. What I did was try to pay for some cheap VPS hosting in Italy. The transaction was denied. I thought there was some problem with my CC, so I immediately tried to do a $1 transaction with some other company and it went without a hitch. So I contacted PayPal support about it and the next d…

Financial fraud prevention gambits are complicated. It may be possible that PP thought someone else was using your account. What should happen in these scenarios is simply a validation of some kind ie payment only goes through if you click on the email your received. I used to travel to SF from Canada a lot and my bank would block my Visa even though I told them not to. In the US there's no password in Visas, i.e. no…

The US largely migrated to chip and signature in 2015. I think a large majority of credit card uses today are chip in the US because the issuers quickly sent out chip cards, most terminals got updated to use them, and swipe is rejected often if chip is available.

To be clear, this is chip (and sometimes signature for large purchases) but not chip-and-pin, so the original statement of no passwords generally holds true, but the mag stripes are generally not used anymore.

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#86
post #53
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP was pointing out that if they were a contractor for three years, they were violating IRS rules.

Not necessarily. If the employee is going through a body shop (and it sounds like he was, since he had a recruiter) then he might be an employee on W2 of the staffing agency, but not on the actual payroll of the company. That's different than forcing the person on a 1099 as part of an employment contract. In the end he's still a "contractor" in the eyes of the company, and typically if something goes wrong, he's gonn…

Yes I said that in my sibling comment.

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#88

I had a sort-of related experience with PayPal where the machine said "No." I've been using it for at least 10 years at that point. What I did was try to pay for some cheap VPS hosting in Italy. The transaction was denied. I thought there was some problem with my CC, so I immediately tried to do a $1 transaction with some other company and it went without a hitch. So I contacted PayPal support about it and the next d…

I've heard nothing but bad things about PayPal and how they often hold your own money hostage. Why don't people switch to alternatives? Are there no good ones?

Bitcoin was floated as a solution for people who were wronged by PayPal and the banks, before the speculators moved in.

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#89
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Financial fraud prevention gambits are complicated. It may be possible that PP thought someone else was using your account. What should happen in these scenarios is simply a validation of some kind ie payment only goes through if you click on the email your received. I used to travel to SF from Canada a lot and my bank would block my Visa even though I told them not to. In the US there's no password in Visas, i.e. no…

The US largely migrated to chip and signature in 2015. I think a large majority of credit card uses today are chip in the US because the issuers quickly sent out chip cards, most terminals got updated to use them, and swipe is rejected often if chip is available. To be clear, this is chip (and sometimes signature for large purchases) but not chip-and-pin, so the original statement of no passwords generally holds true…

Put your chip card quickly in and out three times, next the machine will tell you to “swipe your card”.

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#90

I doubt all business management software is this inflexible (never heard anyone complain about SAP "taking over"). Anyone have any idea which software product/service this may have been?

No way to say without the author chiming in, but it sounds like a bespoke system consisting of totally unrelated modules (payroll, security, Jira) hooked up, badly, with in-house scripts. This is the case at a large number of companies.

As you say, all-in-one systems have their drawbacks, but usually at least can handle situations like this. But piles of shell scrips to make unrelated systems talk to each other often lack error handling and rollback.

Post reply on HN