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The Machine Fired Me

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Re: The Machine Fired Me

#241

Post by ReverseCold »

teekert wrote: post #237
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…

So true. Recently I was at the pharmacy, the doctor wrote a wrong prescription and my wife was in the car having a hefty migraine. They wouldn't give me the drug even though they could see she has been using it for years and the wrong prescription could be solved afterwards. I think such people will be the first to be completely replaced by robots, I for sure wouldn't notice the difference, in fact I expect a robot t…

Okay this example makes sense. No prescription == no drugs (especially for painkillers and other things that people abuse).

If you think this is a bad thing, then it's an organizational problem and has nothing to do with computers.

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#242

Post by zerr »

msisk6 wrote: post #138

I had a similar experience but in reverse. About six months ago I left my long-time enterprise-y employer for a startup in another city. So we sold our house, packed up the family, bought a new house and moved in. After 3 months it became obvious I had made a terrible mistake, so we sold the new house, packed up the family again, and bought another new house in the same city we had just left 3 months ago so I could r…

Maybe next time just try out things at first? i.e. rent, move the family into the rented home after 2-3 months without selling the original house for some time.

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#243

Post by teekert »

ReverseCold wrote: post #241
teekert wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So true. Recently I was at the pharmacy, the doctor wrote a wrong prescription and my wife was in the car having a hefty migraine. They wouldn't give me the drug even though they could see she has been using it for years and the wrong prescription could be solved afterwards. I think such people will be the first to be completely replaced by robots, I for sure wouldn't notice the difference, in fact I expect a robot t…

Okay this example makes sense. No prescription == no drugs (especially for painkillers and other things that people abuse). If you think this is a bad thing, then it's an organizational problem and has nothing to do with computers.

If you are a human and you can see in the computer that the prescription is regularly updated and you can even call the doctor if you doubted it. You can even check the prescription afterwards and if my story doesn't check out, do something about it. The migraine was pretty bad, imo it was like not treating a broken leg because of a missing insurance card or something.

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#244

Post by ensiferum »

"When my contract expired, the machine took over and fired me."

Your contract expiring is not the same thing as getting fired. The title is a click bait.

"A simple automation mistake(feature) caused everything to collapse."

No, it sounds like the system just did what it was programmed to do. The real issue was with the one guy not renewing your contract.

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#245

Post by zaarn »

vkou wrote: post #94
pbh101 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> swipe is rejected often if chip is available. It's the other way around. If you try the chip 3+ times, and it doesn't work, you can swipe the card, and the swipe transaction will work. When the more secure method fails, it falls back to the less secure one. It's lunacy.

Luckily EC cards in Europe don't do that. If you fail 3 times the chip stops working and the magnet stripe tells you to use the chip.

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#246

Post by hueving »

wjnc wrote: post #209
rectang wrote: post #45

> 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…

I agree. It's a theme I run across in many US-worker situations we read about on HN. There is such a lack of basic rights, but also basic norms when relating to workers. Ethical behaviour, from my perspective, would be to compensate the employee, regardsless of his legal rights. In a more worker-central system, the worker should have easy recourse to an official judgement for his money. In the Netherlands there is ev…

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 being an employee despite how similar the responsibilities are. You have to watch contract details like renewals like a hawk. This guy and his recruiter should have included compensation for failing to notify when not renewing.

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#247

Post by pmlnr »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #117
pmlnr wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...)

No, it's not. Make every step check the existence of a kill-swith entry in a shared resource, say, zookeeper, mysql, etc., before they act. If it's there, halt. A human than can do the manual cleanup.

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#248

Post by zaarn »

predakanga wrote: post #145
_drimzy wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Because the seller fulfilled their part of the sale (I.e. posting the item). No postal system is without risk; that’s why they offer package insurance, registered post, etc.

Depends on the country. In central europe the seller is responsible until the package arrives at the buyer (for private transactions, not business) so in this case Paypal would resolve in favor of the buyer and you'd have to get the money from the package service.

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#250

Post by zaarn »

blotter_paper wrote: post #177
vkou wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin shifts all the counterparty risk to the buyer. PayPal shifts most of the counterparty risk to the seller. As a buyer, I don't care for that feature of Bitcoin.

Bitcoin supports multisig transactions, which allows a buyer and seller to choose a third-party mediator who can side with one of them in the event of a dispute. If you find that all the counterparty risk in your transactions are placed on the buyer this is a problem with your use of Bitcoin, not Bitcoin itself.

We already have third party mediators; paypal and visa.

The mediator can decide against your case just like Paypal or Visa can. Even worse, now I have to find some random mediator the seller trusts.

How is that better than plain bank transactions or paypal? The fees are not even cheaper for that "privilege" of having some random mediator play paypal-on-the-blockchain.

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