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The Machine Fired Me

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Re: The Machine Fired Me

#411

Post by pimeys »

daxelrod wrote: post #381
krzat wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if western culture has similiar quirks that we don't even realise.

“How are you?” “Good” Tons of people have this exchange out of politeness. The person asking “How are you?” doesn’t really want to know details. The person answering is expected to be brief and positive. It’s only among friends that the same question is expected to get an honest and detailed answer.

As a Finn I typically answer what I really feel at that moment. It creates funny situations, but in general I think if you ask me a question I should give a truthful answer. Why would you ask if you don't want to know...

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#412

Post by neaden »

newest_user_ wrote: post #343
detaro wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Social security numbers are not unique, but combine them with a birthday and name, and it gets pretty close.

Social Security numbers are unique. They don't work as a great identifier because they can be mistyped, can be hard to verify, and people don't want to give them out too much.

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#413

Post by phyzome »

What I find curious here is the staggered shut down of access. Why wasn't it all immediate? Sure it might have taken time for parking access to disappear, since that message would have been sent over to facilities, but email and keycard access should have been shut down instantly at any large employer.

My employer is I suppose mid-size, and the shutdown all happens very quickly once that ticket is filed, even though it's a largely manual process.

(Of course I also find it curious, and alarming, that no one could/would shut down the automated process in his case.)

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#414

Post by robterrell »

duxup wrote: post #200
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…

In the book Catch 22 the character "Major Major Major" is made a ... Major, I belive due to an IBM computer error.

And he can’t get promoted to captain!

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#415

Post by mirceal »

pmlnr wrote: post #247
tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes and no. You’re assuming all systems have a sane way of integrating. You’re also assuming that whoever build this has knowledge of all moving parts and has thought through all edge cases.

When you put in the killswitch, is this for a step, for a workflow, for a subsystem, for the whole thing? It’s alluring to think that you have the option to stop everything, but do you really want to stop everything if there are thousands of things happening in the system? Can a human think through what happens to what in this situation? If the builders of the system missed it, what are the odds that an operator will catch it?

For example: gas stations. They have a big red button that stops everything. If a pump if on fire it makes sense. If the trash can near the pump is full and you cannot throw your garbage away would anyone stop everything for the can to be emptied?

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#417

Post by lolsal »

realo wrote: post #19
drewg123 wrote: post #11

I had a somewhat similar, but much less serious experience at Google. I resigned just after I had gotten a promotion, but before the date when the promo was effective. Much to my surprise, the resignation (slated to be effective after the promo) somehow cancelled the promo via some automated system. However, a promo at Google is a huge deal. I really wanted the promotion to go through, so that I would have that level…

This is interesting. On the one hand, you have been promoted to a new role, so you have reached a compatible level of expertise. You can put that role on your resume and sell yourself. On the other hand, you never, ever actually performed in that role, with the new responsibilities. How can you list that on your resume ! I am not sure what is the right answer here... but as your new employer I would take your last pr…

> On the other hand, you never, ever actually performed in that role, with the new responsibilities.

For what it's worth - that's not necessarily true. Several places I have worked gave promotions in retrospect - after you have been performing the additional responsibilities for a while. It's sort of like a 'dry run' - they want to make sure you can do it before officially thrusting it on you.

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#418

Post by baud147258 »

LarryL wrote: post #372
Spooky23 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not wage theft. Contractors aren’t humans, from a human resource pov.

> Contractors aren’t humans Real story from one of the (big) french telecom companies I worked for, as a contractor (a few years ago)... In that company, a regular employee was given a full desk, contractors were only given 2/3 of a desk (meaning 2 desks put side by side for 3 persons). Also, contractors were NOT allowed to go to ANY conference. Even when it was about technical stuff that was directly for their proje…

I'm a contractor in France, the treatment depends on where one is working. Canal+ and PSA were bad, but the current situation is good, there's no difference between myself and the employees.

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#420

Post by throwaway43532 »

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…

> The human tendency to defer to authority may never be as terrifying as when that authority is held by an uncaring machine with a couple bugs.

To this observation I highly recommend E.M. Forster's The Machine Stops, first published in 1909(!).

[0] http://www.ele.uri.edu/faculty/vetter/Other-stuff/The-Machin...

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