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The Machine Fired Me

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Re: The Machine Fired Me

#441

Post by rivo »

There was a HN post three years ago on how to declare someone as dead [0]. Granted, this was not the decision of a machine but like in OP's story, it's a one-way road with no way to "undo" or at least "sudo kill -9" the process, which makes it a very unpleasant experience.

I can't count the number of times I've hit "undo" on Gmail. Just because I hit "send" doesn't mean I won't have second thoughts. And in this case, it appears to have been the absence of an action which triggered the whole process, making it even more likely that a wrong decision will be made at some point.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10063659

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#442

Post by otakucode »

This feels a lot like something the company should be liable for. They constructed systems which inflicted upon this person significant harm. That they did it for money should be a weight against them, not an excuse to cover it. I'm not that familiar with OSHA and their regulations but do they have something about psychological abuse?

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#443

Post by Bartweiss »

def8cefe wrote: post #101
useful wrote: post #74

I've had this happen, myself and an employee who I had signed the termination paperwork for shared the same first name and someone put my name in instead of his. It was hell for at least a month as different automated systems kicked in and disabled my accounts, benefits, and payments. Worse, the first notification email happened while I was presenting to the CEO and the HR contact in the meeting had noticed half way…

> No one was able to stop the machine because no one really knew all the different processes or they weren't built to stop midway. This is (in my opinion) one of the reasons why everyone talking about getting rid of dedicated IT ops in their organizations is making a mistake. You can have devs building integrations and automation all day, but you still need sysadmins who can see the whole picture and override them wh…

Every so often, I see a 'brilliant' claim like "99% of what IT does is routine, so it should be outsourced or even automated!"

The percentage is debatable, but the more important issue is what that 1% looks like. Because it's definitely not 1% of their value, it's the high-stakes stuff that needs a context-aware human to apply a fix or good decision in place of whatever The Machine is trying to do.

(And if you're going to keep experts on full time to handle the occasional 1% case, there's no longer much reason to outsource everything else.)

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#444

Post by nazka »

Imagine with the one of the biggest edge fund, Bridgewater, starting to use AI in place of management and you have this to the next next level. It's a little bit scary.

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#445

Post by mseebach »

Bartweiss wrote: post #433
mseebach wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> a bit of paperwork I suspect this is the difference. If this company is incapable of not firing someone, I imagine their appeals process could be equally miserable. Sure, maybe the manager and director want to repay him, but actually releasing funds to pay someone who "wasn't employed" is going involve a lengthy battle with some HR/Accounting computer system that just wants its invariants not to vary. Depending on…

The good thing about places like that is (a) they don't actually care about the money, it's a rounding error. For some smaller firms paying someone for three weeks of not working (regardless of fault) could actually be a problem. (b) They also have a legal department who's invariant is "don't get sued for breach of contract because of a stupid mistake that a small cheque can make go away".

But, of course, the author is perfectly within his rights to just not pursue this, and I have no idea what processes he'd been told to expect for this -- it's just strange that he would emphasise something he doesn't care about in the post.

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#446

Post by debt »

nazka wrote: post #444

Imagine with the one of the biggest edge fund, Bridgewater, starting to use AI in place of management and you have this to the next next level. It's a little bit scary.

“AI in place of management”

This is already happening. It’s an emerging field cleverly called “management automation.”

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#447

Post by gota »

detaro wrote: post #330
gota wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was this is the US? There are benefits to having a national, public, unique ID # for each person and this is one of them; it reduces the number of 'they had the same name' mistakes to nearly zero

Doesn't a US employer have their employees social security number, which would fulfill exactly this role if people cared to look at it?

I'm not that knowledgeable but I thought SSN aren't public information and that they are not used throughout information systems to identify people because they are 'sensitive information'

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#448

Post by linsomniac »

This reminds me of a co-workers 6 month battle to get his drivers license back. He got a letter from his insurance company saying his car insurance was cancelled. He called them up to find out why and they said it was because his license was suspended. After several calls to the police, he found there was a warrant out for him for ignoring a traffic ticket for being pulled over in Wyoming. Now, my co-worker is from Wyoming, so it wasn't totally implausible, but the specific location he had never been to and he definitely wasn't there when the ticket was issued.

The county issued a request for a copy of the ticket, since it was out of state. Weeks later the copy came and the ticket clearly wasn't for him. It didn't have his drivers license number, had a different name and address. I can't remember if it had a similar license plate number or not. ISTR that the name was incorrect.

So it seems like there was a data entry problem from the ticket into the system, and his name was selected as "good enough".

You'd think once it was seen that the ticket wasn't written for him it'd be all solved... Nah. He had to get up to where the ticket was issued, 300 miles away, without a car, and go through the system to prove that the ticket was invalid. Then he had to spend months calling the DA there over and over to get him to get it all resolved. It was always "I'm waiting to hear back from this person" or "I'm trying to get ahold of this other person" or "we are waiting for this paperwork".

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#449

Post by otakucode »

zby wrote: post #262
bonyt wrote: post #161

This is literally an episode of Better Off Ted.[1] In it, the titular Ted is inadvertenly deleted from the company system when trying to correct a misspelling of his last name. Eventually, he is forced to interview for his own job as the system had already put out an ad for his replacement. I think the most striking part of it, and of the true story from the post, is the human factor - the idea that the humans involv…

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.

I encountered that several years ago. Federal law says that if you request a cable box with an enabled Firewire port, cable companies are required to provide it. I requested such a box from my local Time Warner cable TV company. They had no clue what I was talking about and said their software had no facility to let them enable the Firewire port on my box. So I called the State Utilities Commission in my state. I explained the situation, and that the cable company was violating federal law. The next day I got a call from the owner of the local Time Warner franchise personally. They managed to find a way once they were in danger of having their license to operate in the state revoked.

"Make game of that which makes as much of thee." is a quote from a book thousands of years old (The Rubiyat by Omar Khayaam) but it is as applicable as ever.

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#450

Post by amorousf00p »

std_throwaway wrote: post #425
tigershark wrote: post #253

Something eerily similar happened to me. One day I arrived at work as usual and the turnstile didn’t work. I had to request a guest pass and call some colleague to escort me because I was disabled in the security system. I went up and I obviously couldn’t open the door and access my pc. The scary thing was that I was still in the middle of my contract, it would have expired only 3 months later. I contacted my boss an…

> and went home Did your boss send you home? If not, you should probably stay and be ready for work assignments (even if they don't come). For good measure contact some colleagues each day so they remember you and take a picture before you enter and after you leave.

This is classic modern work culture. Make sure you document your attendance and effort during employer incompetence. Empty your time to exit the turnstile.

No. At a certain level of employee experience and commitment this type of thing is inexcusable. Gaming the game is all that is encouraged these days. Complete corruption.

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