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The Machine Fired Me

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Re: The Machine Fired Me

#111

Post by girvo »

noobermin wrote: post #46
Swizec wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I realized that there is no pleading or reasoning with The Machine. Weapons of Math Destruction was one of the most eye opening books I read recently. It's all about how Machines when set up with self-reinforcing models can become a real big problem. And how the fact nobody quite understands how The Machine makes decisions isn't helping either.

Examples of these abound, from the article to the Ethereum DAO "hack" and too often (just look a bit lower in the comment section) the response is "The Machine is working as it should." I feel like automation is great but don't forget that people are still people and someone should be able to lift the lid and fix things themselves. My solution would be to not rely too much on these systems, but at the very least, at…

> Engineers do, why can't hackers do this?

That can be difficult if security features rely on humans not being able to subvert the process, I think. But for other processes, this should be the default!

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#112

Post by broodbucket »

sbarzowski wrote: post #34

The really surprising part is that after this incident OP still wanted to work with that company, even though from what I understand they didn't make it up to him in any way.

Yeah that seems insane to me. Sure maybe you go back since it doesn't seem to be malice on the part of the employer, but to not get compensation for the time you were "fired"...

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#113

Post by donatj »

ravitation wrote: post #10

I know I'm speaking from a position of privilege, but I really don't understand how people work at companies like this... The pay must be insane. Edit: Slight disclaimer, "work at companies like this" in a software/IT role ...

My thoughts as well. I've spent the last decade+ working for sub-500 person companies, largely sub-100. I find myself now through acquisition in a 1,000 plus person company and I find it… stifling.

It's bizarre to me to work for a company where I don't know close to everyones name. This kind of junk never happens in small companies.

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#114

Post by randop »

This story is fascinating. Computers were designed to be black-and-white. It seems like the automation tool that was in place is not transparent or restrictive that its hard to figure out why that happened to you.

Glad to hear that you are able to continue on your job.

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#115

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

krapp wrote: post #56
newest_user_ wrote: post #5

I read it and still don't really understand why there was no one administrating the system. Who could have stopped the system (with the appropriate emails to cover their ass). I also do not understand why a check couldn't be cut. Submit to accounts payable with an email approval?

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 contract was a 3 year contract, the new system hadn't been updated to reflect that.

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#116

Post by downandout »

jiaweihli wrote: post #52
terlisimo wrote: post #18

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?

If you accept PayPal as a merchant, every dollar you have received is 100% at risk until you have a) received it in your bank account, and b) removed it from any account for which PayPal has the information necessary to perform ACH withdrawals. For merchants, PayPal is a nightmare.

As far as alternatives, customers seem to love PayPal, because they side with buyers effectively 100% of the time in any disputes. So even if there were a convenient PayPal clone (which there isn't, at least in the US), you still wouldn't match the conversion rate that PayPal has, as many people will only use PayPal.

So, you can either accept a lower conversion rate by going with something like Stripe (because users don't want to enter their CC information directly on small merchant sites), or you can accept PayPal and be essentially guaranteed that at some point your account will be closed and you'll be screwed out of a significant amount of revenue. Currently, these are the bad choices that merchants face.

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#117

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

pmlnr wrote: post #26
mirceal wrote: post #7

sounds like the machine worked perfectly. it did what it was supposed to do and followed the rules layed out by us humans. the problem is in the way the workflow is described/implemented - and even with that we would need to see some numbers around how many times the workflow ran vs issues encountered.

All machines should have a big red emergency stop button, including this.

It's hard when it's a cobbled-together set of systems sending signals to each other, some of which are automated by human robots (e.g. main system sees exit, files a dozen tickets, some of these get picked up by different automation, some of them cause humans to trigger other processes, each of which can again file half a dozen tickets in three different systems...)

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#118

Post by astura »

downandout wrote: post #116
jiaweihli wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

If you accept PayPal as a merchant, every dollar you have received is 100% at risk until you have a) received it in your bank account, and b) removed it from any account for which PayPal has the information necessary to perform ACH withdrawals. For merchants, PayPal is a nightmare. As far as alternatives, customers seem to love PayPal, because they side with buyers effectively 100% of the time in any disputes. So eve…

"effectively 100%"... "essentially guaranteed"... Com'on, that's not true.

I've won disputes on PayPal as a seller.

Companies have been using PayPal for over a decade without their accounts being closed.

You're talking nonsense.

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#119

Post by jachee »

jergason wrote: post #103
rhacker wrote: post #96

It makes sense that the HR IT industry would have some of the worst software developers. It seems obvious to me at least that you can't rely on first name + last name to make a match, and if you do, you have to write code that fails if there are multiple users with such a combination, as well as falling back on soundex or double or triple metaphone as well as nickname support. Second, the screens involved in terminat…

Why would HR IT have worse software developers than other industries?

Because HR in general has worse employees than other disciplines?

Seriously, in my 20+ year career, I've run across very few legitimately talented people in HR. The department seems to attract the kind of people who have little to offer intrinsically; who happen to be willing to facilitate the necessary protocols, as minimally effective as possible, while claiming "people skills" that end up being little more than office politics.

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#120

Post by girvo »

krapp wrote: post #69
ashelmire wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>He was fired. It doesn't matter that people didn't intend for him to be, he was, it went through the system, it was a done deal. Paying people not in your employ is fraud, even under the best of intentions. There's basically a certainty that it was a violation of his contract and company policies that made it not legally sound. A company can also pay whoever it wants for any reason.

IANAL so I might be wrong, but if they terminated his contract, I would assume they can't still legally pay him as if they hadn't. Of course, he's also well within his rights to sue over it.

IANAL either, but I did get a Bachelor of Law; one thing that was hard for me to get while I was studying is that while I thought of the law & contracts as a series of instructions that get executed by the "CPU" (our legal system), really for the most part it's being executed by humans who really dislike cute "this then that, screw context" thinking. I would not be surprised at all if a judge would laugh at an employer that tried to make the argument that he was "terminated" due to a clerical error and automated systems, therefore they don't need to pay him...

But, it depends! It's never black and white for this stuff. It'd be an interesting case though, and I'm sure it's happened before!

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