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The Man Who Was Fired By a Machine (bbc.com)
"It wasn't the first time my key card failed, I assumed it was time to replace it." So began a sequence of events that saw Ibrahim Diallo fired from his job, not by his manager but by a machine. From a report: He has detailed his story in a blogpost which he hopes will serve as a warning to firms about relying too much on automation. "Automation can be an asset to a company, but there needs to be a way for humans to take over if the machine makes a mistake," he writes. The story of Mr Diallo's sacking by machine began when his entry pass to the Los Angeles skyscraper where his office was based failed to work, forcing him to rely on the security guard to allow him entry. "As soon as I got to my floor, I went to see my manager to let her know. She promised to order me a new one right away." And that was just the beginning. Mr Diallo soon realized that he was logged out of his work system and "inactive" status was appearing next to his name, his colleagues told him. He was then informed by his recruiter, who was just as puzzled, that his contract has been terminated. Next day, says Mr Diallo, he was locked out of every system, except his Linux machine. Things continued to go south, as two people approached Mr Diallo to escort him out of the building. The story continues: It took Mr Diallo's bosses three weeks to find out why he had been sacked. His firm was going through changes, both in terms of the systems it used and the people it employed. His original manager had been recently laid off and sent to work from home for the rest of his time at the firm and in that period he had not renewed Mr Diallo's contract in the new system. After that, machines took over -- flagging him as an ex-employee. "All the necessary orders are sent automatically and each order completion triggers another order. For example, when the order for disabling my key card is sent, there is no way of it to be re-enabled. "Once it is disabled, an email is sent to security about recently dismissed employees. Scanning the key card is a red flag. The order to disable my Windows account is also sent. There is also one for my Jira account. And on and on."
It's a failure of management to overdepend upon automation without a human checkpoint on a very important process.
According to the summary, his (human) manager failed to renew his contract in the new system, during their changeover.
So a machine did not fire him. A human failed to renew his contract, and the machine obediently carried out the steps that it should carry out when that happened.
The narrative about an evil AI here is far more interesting than what actually happened.
The individual responsible for keeping him flagged as an active resource failed to perform that activity and he was garbage collected.
First thing you do is try to login to your computer. If you can't, you know.
What a load of sensationalist BS. This man didn't have his contract renewed, so the workflow systems triggered the process to remove his access, which involved different steps such as disabling key access, logins on different systems etc.
It was not "machines" who "fired" him. If I don't pay for my electricity, I'm not going to complain that "waaah, machines cut my power".
Probably there are various steps at which this workflow can be stopped, but they either weren't able to reach the right person in time or they had no idea how because the company went through the acquisition.
Instead, it was "Man's contract not renewed, computer does exactly what it was told!" Story of the century.
Gotta love it. Glad he wasn't sent to the nutrition tanks for immediate decomposure. :-)
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Here's the fix:
A company installed AI software to handle HR. Then it fired a man.
how can his manager not know? what about pay?
It's not like they can say you where fired some time ago but just told you now also you need to pay back the paychecks you got in error.
A human being forgot to renew his contract in the new HR system.
"His firm was going through changes, both in terms of the systems it used and the people it employed.
His original manager had been recently laid off and sent to work from home for the rest of his time at the firm and in that period he had not renewed Mr Diallo's contract in the new system."
And the problem was sorted out (too long, too faceless, perhaps), and he was allowed back to work.
Uh what? If his employer removes him from building and access because of a system and internal procedural error, why would they feel entitled to withhold pay from him? He should sue them for the missing wages. That part of the consequences looks like a slam dunk to me. He had a reasonable expectation of those wages and it wasn't his fault he was kept from work.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the AC that will believe everything a troll writes.
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
“Yeeeeah, we’re gonna need to go ahead and move you downstairs into storage B.”
How can the bosses not over ride the system? or is this an place where only high UP VP's can hire someone?
Automation fails. It's stupid, and problems happen. Humans fix it. Life goes on.
It took 3 weeks to solve this. 3 Weeks!!
The problem here is not the automation, it's the dis-empowerment of the humans, who are then slaves to the automation. When even the director can't solve the problem that the automation solved, that's not an automation problem, it's a company culture problem where nobody has the power to do anything. One of my old co-workers used to say "is the system serving us, or are we serving the system". If the answer is the latter, you're really screwed.
This is a sign of a severely sick organization where simply fixing a simple problem like this takes 3 freaking weeks to solve. I used to work at a place that had the opposite problem. There were several people we wanted to fire, that weren't productive, and in fact had negative productivity. We couldn't fire them. Corporate wouldn't let us. Eventually these people left on their own, mostly out of embarassment... but the point is that if you don't give power to people in your organization, and try to centralize it, say goodbye to your company, because these sorts of things are like a cancer.
Ex-manager fired but retained as contractor. Has control over management work still. Doesn't renew another employee's contract. Employee gets fired because the contract is over. Issue is with the company not checking on what the Ex-manager was fired for. Seriously, leaving critical work in the hands of an fired employee was the issue. The computer was doing what a Person in the same role would do, just faster.
maybe if he had an UNION to fight for him!
Milton had actually been laid off five years prior, but through a glitch in accounting, continued to receive a paycheck.
Wow, you can guess how many companies in which an un-renewed contract worker would NOT be detected properly? This company is impressively integrated. I bet they have a first class internal auditing team who had to hassle system owners for years before this was all properly configured.
Then he should never be allowed to work in IT again. Having your contract run out is not being fired by machine. Your contract ran out. Thus you can no longer be employed at that company. That is a failure of management, not a machine firing you. As of the contract expiration date you no longer worked there. So stupid.
And this is not new.
Had the process resulted in notification to sysadmins to process the user ID as either 'contract terminated' or 'contract expired', this could have gone the same way. Scripts run to disable building access (key/nfc card), logins, group membership (move to \terminated, for instance), and then possibly to facilities to empty out his desk, contact him to retrieve any company property (the key card, for instance).
It's interesting that this has all become fully automated, but not really new, since 'in the old days' none of the intermediaries would have bothered, probably to ask if this was genuine, which in fact this case was, and still the manager would need to correct things.
Unfortunate, but this is not the first horse of the Apocalypse. Kinda hurts that one single individual failed to prevent it. Hopefully someone learns to delegate when key personnel are 'laid off'.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
His contract wasn't renewed and the machine executed employee termination security procedures.
He was "fired" by negligence on someone's part. The system seems to have worked properly in ensuring that he wasn't still receiving the responsibilities, access permissions, and compensation of someone who no longer works at the company.
I burn the building down!
no contract = there is no pay not true under labor laws at the very least.
His contract didn't get renewed. BIG difference.
IF the manager who controls your contract gets laid off, you might want to assume your contract is at risk too. There is a good chance you will fall though the cracks (as in this case) or suffer the same fate for the same reason your manager got the ax.
The only unique thing I see in this story is that the system that automates terminations is pretty efficient and effective. Kudos to that company. I've worked at places that didn't have a manual process to remove terminated/separated employees access, much less an automated one, where we hired a guy back after a few years and his old username and password still worked on his first day... That's scary.
When they laid me off (one of the keepers of their firewalls who often worked from home) they hadn't learned. They even called me 18 months later asking if I remembered the firewall password... "Um... You mean the password I put in that document with the list of usernames and passwords that said Change these passwords now!? Absolutely not!" Those people where idiots and not just for laying me off. :)
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Sounds like it should have been titled "The man who didn't keep track of when his contract was up." Thank goodness we have computers to help us keep track of that stuff.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
He works for company A which is a Contracting agency, his contract with company B was not renewed.
Company B doesn't pay him, they pay A and then A pays him. So IF he is owed anything, it's on company A.
And no he wasn't fired, and no it wasn't a machines fault or mistake.
With all this employee information and decision automation, did the software notify the appropriate authorities that a terminated employee was eligible for unemployment compensation? I'm not sure if contract employees are able to get unemployment compensation. And in this case, what about when the employee contract is renewed, will unemployment compensation be cancelled automatically?
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
The process described could just as easily have happened 50 years ago in a large enough operation driven by set procedures and compartmentalized people who have specific, required action in response to specific input handed to them. Just another case of With-A-Computer-Ism.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
So the basic problem started because a human (ex manager) did not renew the contract. If the contract had been renewed none of this would have happened. We need fewer humans in the loop not more. Humans make mistakes. Machines dont.
**Life is too short to be serious**
I wonder how efficient that company's onboarding process is. It still seems to be a big surprise when new employees start at a company. The hiring manager knows but it's not unusual for the desktop support team to find out on the start date that a computer was supposed to be ready for the new hire or that the facilities people needed to find a desk for them to sit at. (Personally, I blame HR for these kind of screw-ups.)
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Please report to the Aperture Science Extended Relaxation Center.
I ordered Verizon FiOS Internet (only) when I moved into my new home in December. They no longer do installs without the customer either renting or buying an official Vz router, but they let you replace it afterwards. Two weeks after running flawlessly with my own router, I brought back the rented Vz router to the Verizon store as instructed, and told them I was NOT cancelling my service, just returning the router.
By the time I drove off the parking lot, I received a "sorry to see you go" email from Verizon. Apparently the idiot who entered the transaction into the computer didn't check or uncheck the right box. I talked to more than half a dozen Vz employees over the next several days, but there was NOTHING anyone could do to un-do the cancellation. I had to apply for service as a brand new customer, including ANOTHER CREDIT CHECK. There was no way anyone could override the need for a new credit check, even though it was just done two weeks ago. That's two dings on my credit report for at least two years. A FiOS tech that I talked to said that mine was the third case like this that week, and it was only Wednesday!
Since I placed my original FiOS order online, there were multiple discounts on the rate and the installation was free. None of that was applicable when they took my new order for service. I could not use my main email address to place this order, since it was now associated with a dead account. They tried for a whole day to override this, but were unsuccessful. They were able to apply discounts equivalent to those of my original order, but only one by one over several days. Now they will all have different end dates.
It's unbelievable that Verizon doesn't let their customer service reps and even their technical people who tried to help to actually use their brains. Only the automation has any authority to change anything, and it only moves in one direction. There's no sanity checking. Why would someone who just started service cancel it only two weeks later? Why was there ZERO attempt at customer retention? Just a "sorry to see you go" email. Nobody lost their job over this, but someone definitely should have.
...if he worked for Elon Musk, being fired by a machine could be a very painful thing.
is not Diallo. This is where the confusion began:
His name was Dial Zero.
When Ted notices that his new employee badge has his last name misspelled as 'Chips' instead of 'Crisp,' he goes to HR to get it fixed. However, instead of fixing it, they accidentally delete him from Veridian's database. This could not have happened at a worse time, since he needs to witness a test for Phil and Lem's new rocket jet pack in two days.
Veronica reassures Ted that it's just a computer glitch, but he wonders why Veridian can't just add him back into the system. Apparently, the geniuses at Veridian mandated that you have to have a 459 code in order to be added back into the system, i.e. one has to be a new hire. So, Ted re-applies for his old job.
Veronica is annoyed at Ted for reapplying for his job and starts the interview process out of formality. But Ted finds out that the company could restore him to the database by rebooting its mainframe. Veronica shoots that idea down, saying that Veridian would never do such a thing for one employee when there is cash to be lost. So Ted, out of utter frustration, quits.
After hearing about Ted's abrupt departure, the lab crew freaks out. Don't worry, Linda has a plan and caramels. Linda, Phil, Lem and the other lab scientists meet at Ted's house and tell him they can reboot the mainframe. They hatch and enact their plan ...
One minor roadblock — Veridian has trackers on all new ID/security badges, so security catches them before they can even get into the Veridian mainframe room. Foiled!
Veronica chews out Ted, Linda and the lab crew for half an hour, then demands their ID badges so she can lower their security clearance as punishment.
As Lem prepares to test the jet pack himself, Veronica gives him a 'parachute' stuffed in a knapsack. However, the knapsack is stuffed full of all the ID badges Veronica took, which includes many more than just Ted and the gang's.
The Veridian mainframe, detecting 75 employees are stuffed into one knapsack and launched a mile into the air, freaks out and reboots itself.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Did they take his red stapler too?
Ahh yes, here it is. Buttle. It says you are fired.
The trolling is BS, but the Trump Butthurt Syndrome it represents is very real.
He wasn't fired by a machine at all. A human WAS involved, and failed to follow procedure.
"His original manager had been recently laid off and sent to work from home for the rest of his time at the firm and in that period he had not renewed Mr Diallo's contract in the new system."
No, he did have a contract, he just hadn't had his details moved to the new system.
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Eventually, you'll get SO bad you'll inject it like Bruce Willis in LOOPER (you are 'loopy' lol) from Year 6 -> Year 23 (LMAO).
* RoTfLmAo... you want to get rid of me/kill me? For once you're doing a GOOD job making me laugh myself to death!
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While yes, the headline is a bit sensational, it probably really did feel like a machine fired him. Imagine if you couldn't log-in, couldn't badge-in, etc -- but nobody knew why! That really would feel like the computer fired you. But then when security comes to escort you out because the computer said so, that could feel really creepy.
Have you ever been to a store and the registers were "down" and you couldn't buy anything? It's a really weird feeling because you have the item, you have the money, the clerk is there to take the money, but the computer refuses to let them complete the sale. It makes you feel out-of-control, like the world is run by an invisible ghost and you are subject to it's control rather than the other way around. A similar feeling comes from gigantic bureaucracies, where people agree that something makes sense but there is some high-level manager with a policy that blocks something.
... and in that period he had not renewed Mr Diallo's contract in the new system
So, this had NOTHING to do with a 'machine' firing him. His contract expired (as it was suppose to), and nobody bothered to renew that contract (human error). Once the contract expired, the machine CORRECTLY disabled all of his access automatically.
I missed 3 weeks of pay because no one could stop the machine.
No, it was because both you and management never bothered to re-up your contract.
Having a human controlled check point in the process (by HR for instance) would just allow dismissed contractors access to the system
Perhaps they should rehire him. Perhaps at a better rate
The real fail is that the system seems so complex that there was no feasible way for an admin to work out the root cause in a timely manner. Kind of like the feeling I get when troubleshooting service startup issues on systems that run systemd, but oh well.
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
Au contrair, if the new system is the system of record and he has no contract in there, then he has no contract
âoehe had not renewed Mr Diallo's contract in the new system.â
http://marshallbrain.com/manna...
I got "fired" by machine one time too, way back in the 90s when I worked support. I didn't go through too much hassle though. We noticed that I couldn't log in with my badge number or something. The first day, the manager joked "maybe you got fired". We were on very good terms so it was not a nervous laughter at all. He thought maybe it was just a glitch and they could fix my hours later. The 2nd day it happened again, and he was like... "OK, I really have to look into this". Sure enough, word came back that I had been terminated by the system. Exactly *how* I don't know. Perhaps it was really a fat-finger by an operator, and somebody who was supposed to get the axe was still in the system.
The only way for them to fix it was to re-employ me! This actually worked out well in some ways, less well in others. I got all my accrued vacation hours as a "severance". Woohoo! Money! OTOH, I had to begin accumulating actual vacation hours again.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
See "Computers Don't Argue" by Gordon Dickson.
Good thing he wasn't dealing with a book club.
You want us to manually process all this because managers don't do their jobs?
We apologise for the fault in the subtitles. Those responsible have been sacked.
We apologise again for the fault in the subtitles. Those responsible for sacking the people who have just been sacked have been sacked.
The directors of the firm hired to continue the credits after the other people had been sacked, wish it to be known that they have just been sacked. The credits have been completed in an entirely different style at great expense and at the last minute.
So someone that doesn't like sexual assailants and child abusers is just butthurt?
What do we call a fool like you that will follow a dog if it says some magic words?
The man wasn't fired by a machine.... His contract wasn't renewed due to poor management, not a machine..
The "Brain Center at Mr. Whipples"
https://www.dailymotion.com/vi...
I've never heard of having a Dead Man's Switch on someone's employment before ... but that is terrifying.
But the faulty part of the system was the human workflow, not the technology. The company didn't have human procedures in place to prevent contracts from falling through the cracks when a hiring manager was sidelined. The technology did what it was supposed to do when the contract ended. After all, the technology can't evaluate whether the non-renewal is "valid" or "correct", so it has to assume it is.
Sure, it's interesting that this happened, but we still have no idea what company he worked for.
I did a bit of googling, Ibrahim Diallo is a much more common name than I'd have thought. I couldn't find anything.
This is not the sort of thing that we need to be talking about in the abstract. Sure, that's nice and all, but it doesn't really get the attention where it needs to be. We need to know the company.
The way you get this sort of thing fixed is to NAME AND SHAME. Drag that company's name through the mud, so that management at other companies will see the negative publicity, see that screwups on this level have a real impact on a company, and think about how their process works.
This story will be technical noise to CEOs. Having a company's name in the headlines for screwing somebody over like this will get their attention. Think about it, did a song about "An Airline Broke My Guitar" get attention? Nope, but "United Breaks Guitars" did.
The company needs to be in the headline for their screwup. Name and shame is the way to go.
The "narrative about an evil AI here" is really just the headline and a paragraph. Then the entire second half is about how there actually wasn't an evil AI at all, and it didn't fire him. The narrative as a whole is just about "if you agree to a contract with an end date, don't forget that you did that."
Nothing I've read about this says any machine "failed", or made any "error"; it sounds to me like they did in fact do everything exactly as they were expected to do.
I had the same problem happen to me when I moved internationally. I was accidentally flagged as having left the company in the meantime. So when I got to where I was going I found out I had a new computer, new email, new account, no HR history, nothing. It took the best part of 3 weeks to get me "reinstated" and we're still picking up the pieces now 2 years later.
Why are we picking up pieces? Because there are so many interconnected systems that if you try to manually correct something, abort something, or revert something mid way through a process the processes end up getting all messed up.
Only 2 months ago I was locked out of my office building, because I didn't submit some non-existent and not required paperwork to renew my not actual contractor status in the one system that didn't realise I wasn't a contractor but rather a permanent employee.
To this date my email address in Office365 has the wrong subdomain (Asia/Pacific regional server rather than Europe/Africa regional server). Yet when I change the password on my one, the password automatically propagates through to the other. Just don't try sending an email to the wrong one. Better still IT can't figure it out. Like actually can't. They simply can not find any reference to where the old subdomain link comes from. After 9 months we agreed to ignore the quirk.
I was kinda hoping for the "auto layoff thing" from Idiocracy. So many things from that movie are slowly becoming true, to the point where people could probably take plot points from that movie and turn them into CNN headlines without people noticing that they are from a movie.
Fuck you, Trump enabler faggot nlgger whore.
So, a middle manager who is being made redundant doesnt do a small part of his job, and you want the companies name dragged through the mud?
The company fixes as soon as they work out what was going wrong, by re-hiring the guy affected on a new contact, and you want their name dragged through the mud?
A company has good security automation which actually picks up on someone who, by internal records, should not have access, and stops them walking in, and you want the companies name dragged through the mud?
Considerate fucker, aint you.
Why dont you post your name here, sounds like it deserves as much mud as they do.
They were both at fault in different ways.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
This reminds me of a short story by R. A. Lafferty, "The Doggone Highly Scientific Door". Read it.
Of course Lafferty was being silly, but that does mean he wasn't being serious.
P.S.: The guy had a valid contract, it just hadn't been entered into the new system...which also sort of matches the story.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
That is not how the law works, anywhere. The companies lack of record in the new system does not and did not terminate the contract.
While everyone frets about the possibility that robots might some day behave like people, people are behaving like robots, today.
Transactional systems have rollback logic and procedure. Real Programmers build transactional systems. Otherwise they are just 'lazy automated shortcuts'. When lazy automated shortcuts make corps think they can lay people off, the circle of incompetence is complete.
Kinda reminds me of the time I went all apeshit about a company named 'HireVue'. Hint: outsource your hiring interviews to a compoooo-ter! The cloud is my master! I've been chosen!
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
Yes, but then again this was a multi day process that no human could stop, or even work out the root cause for, despite knowing it's wrong.
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
His firm was going through changes, both in terms of the systems it used and the people it employed. His original manager had been recently laid off and sent to work from home for the rest of his time at the firm and in that period _he had not renewed Mr Diallo's contract_ in the new system.
Sooo, it was not really the machine that fired Mr. Diallo. It was a process, that took the absence of renewal seriously. I am sure we (humans) have done such things in the past. Probably with gov and mil jobs mostly.