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…
I had to do a back transaction once in Greece and they did ask for my mother's and my father's name. Strange for a German but it seems to work for them.
Isn’t that a matter of public record in most places?
None of what you says really applies in this case. According to the article the thing that triggered this was the failure to renew his contract. If it had renewal intervals, that means he wasn't legally entitled to 3 years. This is likely why he wasn't paid for the interim either. The best the company could do would likely be to bump up the future rate or offer a "signing bonus". Being a contractor is not at all like…
It does though, failure to renew a contract should be announced in writing a month in advance to allow the employee to search for a new job and take holidays that may be left. If the announcement is late, the employee is entitled to an extra months' pay.
I doubt that's correct legal analysis. This worker is not an employee of the company, and so cannot assert rights afforded employees. There might exist special termination provisions in the contract, but that's speculation.
> I missed 3 weeks of pay because no one could stop the machine. Why has this company not made their loyal worker whole? He stayed there when they needed him even when their system was trying to lock him out. They need to fix this. If they don't, they are not a company anyone should work for. Perhaps the worker did not want to risk making a big stink, but a manager should have taken the initiative. Humans were involv…
He elaborates a bit in the comments - it seems he's entitled to the money, but couldn't be bothered: "So I had to do an appeal, and go through a long process that I did not care much to go through. I had a mind in quitting after all."
Sounds very strange that he wouldn't care to do a bit of paperwork, which he from the sounds of it could probably well justify to do on company time, with the manager and director being supportive. Or get the agency to do it for him, and bill them for the trouble. Or whatever. Something smells a bit fishy about that part of the story.
I am normally big on Solidarity with fellow Workers but the humans in this loop really should be automated away, because they knew what they were doing was a mistake and did it anyway, so what value were they adding? In fact they were worse than automation because at least that can be debugged, but there is no fix for the bureaucratic mindset. Especially since you could tell them to stop and they would say "yes" and…
>you could tell them to stop and they would say "yes" and then carry on anyway... // This was discussed/commented on at length a couple of weeks ago. In Indian culture, apparently, the "yes" is like a verbal tick - kinda - and just acknowledges you've spoken without giving any commitment to doing anything (nor indeed indicating any level of understanding).
Not exactly. If you ask "do you understand ?" and "will you do it?" they will tell you yes as well. It's not a verbal tick. It's just not socially acceptable to say no.
For what it's worth, I've never had a bad experience with PayPal. I've heard all the horror stories, but nothing has come close to that. I sold something on Ebay once and the buyer didn't receive the item, and did what he should and reported it to Ebay/PayPal. Paypal started the dispute resolution process, and I uploaded a receipt of me sending it. The dispute was resolved in my favour. I started accepting donations…
> I sold something on Ebay once and the buyer didn't receive the item, and did what he should and reported it to Ebay/PayPal. Paypal started the dispute resolution process, and I uploaded a receipt of me sending it. The dispute was resolved in my favour. How is that not a bad experience for a buyer who never got an item he paid for?
It might be a bad experience for the buyer (I'm not sure - I guess maybe PayPal still reimbursed them? idk?), but I did my part. It's not on me to lose money when I did everything I could.
The buyer kept emailing me after it, 'updating' me on the situation, which I mostly ignored. I believe he was in some smaller town and he knew the postman and had a very strong suspicion that he stole it, or something like that.
Remarkably similar to the 1981 Timothy Zahn story "Job Inaction".
Wow, that is an incredibly obscure reference. This comment chain on HN was the first thing I found when I googled "Job Inaction Timothy Zahn". Looks like a good read though, might save it for lunch.
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 of…
Having known a couple of founders who built their companies to a greater than 5000 person company, this is actively done. Founders need control over who they employ, promote, fire, etc. While it doesn't matter much at the entry level stage, as you move up the seniority chain, there is a lot more politics. HRs major purpose is to make sure that things that are done to employees are done in a legally justifiable way. If management wants to see someone gone, they make sure there is a paper trail. If someone needs to be moved up faster, they facilitate that. Essentially, they are there to do upper management's bidding, not to employ their own thoughts. Headstrong people don't survive there.
This has been a real problem with facial recognition. Faces used to train engines are typically Caucasian, so the ability to distinguish other ethnicities is quite sub-par. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/04/the-u...
Isn't there a problem with shadow contrast which makes features more difficult to pick out on darker skinned faces? I vaguely recall an East Asian developer giving that reason for why he developed on Western data-sets.
We call 'em occidental datasets 'round these parts.
I have noticed that people following machine orders is also used by corporations to force customers to give up on their rights. I have a minor dispute with one of our communication providers and it is a real nightmare - according to the law I have the right, but the system does not include it and people don't know what to do in this case. Some other people higher up just wait until I give up.
That’s very common with badly designed anomaly detection systems. Customer support say the system has detected something wrong in the customer behavior and ask, often order, to stop or fix whatever they’re doing. Neither customers nor support are able to intervene
> I missed 3 weeks of pay because no one could stop the machine. Why has this company not made their loyal worker whole? He stayed there when they needed him even when their system was trying to lock him out. They need to fix this. If they don't, they are not a company anyone should work for. Perhaps the worker did not want to risk making a big stink, but a manager should have taken the initiative. Humans were involv…
He elaborates a bit in the comments - it seems he's entitled to the money, but couldn't be bothered: "So I had to do an appeal, and go through a long process that I did not care much to go through. I had a mind in quitting after all." Sounds very strange that he wouldn't care to do a bit of paperwork, which he from the sounds of it could probably well justify to do on company time, with the manager and director being…
"Fishy" is a very ungenerous read on the worker opting out of an arduous appeals process and cutting their losses.
And if there's anything in the comments about "the manager and director being supportive", I don't see it -- where did you get that?