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."

Comments

Re: Lock him up!

[barakn]

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the AC that will believe everything a troll writes.

Excellent case of integration

[magarity]

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.

Re:So...

[Anonymous Coward]

The headline is misleading and clickbaity (get used to it), but the meat of the story is reasonable. In most companies, his issue would have been resolved simply by going to see HR or someone in charge to query why his contract hadn't been renewed; it would have then been renewed, and he would not have been fired. For his problem to go as far as it did was only possible because there were no humans in the decision loop beyond the guy who should have renewed the contract, it was all automated. So yeah, he was fired because of an automated system.

True, the story would have been much more interesting if he had been fired because of an AI evaluating his performance, or taking a disciplinary decision against him or something, as the clickbait headline wants you to think. That'll probably happen soon enough.

Re: So...

[stealth_finger]

He wasn't fired, his contract was up for renewal and they did not renew it.

His contract wasn't up for renewal it needed putting into a new system because of a take over and the person that was supposed to do that actually did get laid off and never bothered.