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Amazon's warehouse worker tracking system can automatically fire people
- test1235 8y agoComputers Don't Argue - Gordon R. Dickson https://www.atariarchives.org/bcc2/showpage.php?page=133 https://www.atariarchives.org/bcc2/showpage.php?page=133
- neilv 8y ago> An Amazon spokesperson confirmed to Business Insider, "Approximately 300 employees turned over in Baltimore related to productivity in this timeframe. Why do they talk like that? I think they're erasing doubt that this is a corporatist nightmare place to work.
- lordnacho 8y agoYet another instance of Newspeak. It's quite common nowadays in the real post-1984 world. The good news is people can recognize it for what it is.
- Splognosticus 8y agoBecause the sort of person who thinks it's okay to rely on an algorithm to fire people doesn't care about their employees, but cares a lot about not getting called out for it. They think they're clever but I'll be damned if I'm ever going to work for a company like that.
- jcadam 8y agoYou should always be required to a look a person in the eye when you fire them. There are way too many managers who will do anything to avoid uncomfortable situations (for them). So we end up with things like this... "Computer says you're fired" is the new "Computer says no."
- cosmodisk 8y agoAnd the best is when the cowards send an SMS instead of just saying it face to face..
- lozf 8y agoOr by robo-call as in The New Deal's "Exciting New Direction" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0pmNDIXymc&t=2m37 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0pmNDIXymc&t=2m37
- Aeolun 8y agoIt’s much easier as a company to introduce a system to automatically fire people than it is to teach your managers how to fire people without taking their own comfort into account (e.g. not firing because it’s a pain).
- sct202 8y agoAlso this is an easy way to claim that people were fired fairly and they weren't picked out because the manager didn't like them or was racist.
- sigi45 8y agoIt's a warehouse. We life in the 21th century. In theory if we would sit together and structure the existing workforce without all the bullshit overhead of accounting, bullshit jobs and priorities life quality and sustainability, no one would need to work and we could achieve this in the next 5, 10, 50 years. I get that amazon should pay there workforce properly and as long as we have this, it should be something people can and should do in a social way but Baltimore is a US City, they don't even have a working health care system. A warehouse job is a warehouse job. No education needed, why wouldn't a computer system should not fire people on simple productivity numbers?
- alex_young 8y agoI guess it depends on how great you are at guessing what to optimize for. If you make a machine that just rewards completing tasks, maybe you'll get poor quality. If you add quality to the mix, maybe you'll fire everyone who has experience and you'll be left with only those yet to make a mistake.
- nkozyra 8y ago> A warehouse job is a warehouse job. No education needed, why wouldn't a computer system should not fire people on simple productivity numbers? Increasingly, this viewpoint bothers me. To be honest I don't know the ins and outs of working in an Amazon warehouse but I suspect it's not as brainless a job as you imply. Further, why does that attribute make this ok? Why wouldn't it similarly be ok if the computer could fire people automatically if a threshold of unit tests failed or if a developer failed to meet LOC quotas?
- gambiting 8y agoBecause there's more metrics to programming than LOC and if a company treats it like the only metric then they deserve to go under. Working in a warehouse does not have multiple dimensions to it. You are paid to pick up things, put them in boxes and then pick up more things. That's it. It's easy to measure. For comparison sake, I know someone who runs a company sorting refuse. Each person in the warehouse needs to sort through 500kg of refuse every day. That's it. Literally nothing else matters. It's not a complex job, so the metric is not complex either.
- croo 8y agoTo derail on the sentence: "Approximately" so later they can say that it was actually 200 or 400. "related to productivity" hints that they turned over some more but not related to productivity as to lower the precision of this number even more. "in this timeframe" put all this in a timeframe said by someone else. Every part of the sentence works hard to make the number 300 more imprecise. I think he talks like this because he has no idea about the actual number.
- rasz 8y agoThose are just datapoints, whats the big deal? It only becomes real when finally touching you directly, as some journalist learned recently #LearnToCode.
- lenkite 8y agoUtterly horrifying. No better than terrible slavery - while Bezos travels by private jet and enjoys his luxury super-yacht http://superyachtmag.com/2017/08/06/456-foot-lurssen-superyacht-project-redwood-on-track-for-delivery-in-2019/ http://superyachtmag.com/2017/08/06/456-foot-lurssen-superya...
- donatj 8y agoI mean it’s certainly dehumanizing but... they’re not being whipped to death after working endlessly in the hot sun. I’m not saying it’s not awful working conditions, but the ability to leave alone makes it better than slavery.
- lenkite 8y agoYou are right. My apologies - I should have said: "just a bit better than slavery".
- omginternets 8y agoNo, you could have said "at least it's not slavery". I empathize with your outrage, but you're being hyperbolic. I think you should avoid this because it's a good way of discrediting your position.
- torqueTorrent 8y agoCompanies like this give whores a bad name.
- thefounder 8y agoAt least there won't be any gender/race bias.
- sagebird 8y agoNot necessarily. If it fired people who listen to rap music while they worked, would it be racist? Some might argue— no— because it also fired white people who listen to rap. But it would be a rather obvious discriminatory practice. Now we must use our imaginations to consider less direct examples of the same phenomenon. For what it’s worth, I have no reason to believe that amazon is not an equal opportunity human soul extraction and disposal system.
- dx034 8y agoIt fired by the worker's output. Any racial bias in there is likely due to a deeper racial inequality (e.g. differences in health care access which can lead to worse performance) rather than the algorithm itself.
- arkitaip 8y agoAlgos tend to inherit the biases of their developers. Let's say you're a woman on your period and that the bleeding, cramps and pain can get severe. You might need to visit the rest room or maybe take a few more pauses than the modeled average, that happens to be based on men, during certain days. The algorithm that is about to fire you doesn't factor in these issues when it decides to fire you for not meeting its performance quota.
- meigwilym 8y agoOnly three days ago the NYT published "I Used to Work for Google. I Am a Conscientious Objector." and already we see that someone has coded a automated employee firing system. I assume the same culture that developed the idea persuaded the programmer to implement it. Software is eating the world, but often not in the way we believe it to do. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/23/opinion/google-privacy-china.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/23/opinion/google-privacy-ch...
- ReptileMan 8y agoIt should be noted that no ethically-trained software engineer would ever consent to write a DestroyBaghdad procedure. Basic professional ethics would instead require him to write a DestroyCity procedure, to which Baghdad could be given as a parameter. As long as the check clears what is the problem with implementing stuff?
- McDev 8y agoWell at some point that engineer should ask themselves why they're writing that procedure for a company called DestroyBaghdad Inc.
- ReptileMan 8y agoMoney. It's useful to have more of it. Or just fun. Solving hard problems is rewarding. There us subset of us that will play Ender's game even if we know beforehand it is not a game just for the thrill. The dystopia is coming, you can only influence which kind and whether you will be near the top.
- lagadu 8y agoBecause DestroyBaghdad Inc. pays well and offers lovely working conditions. Judging the legality of its business actions is a job for the state, not for me.
- empath75 8y ago
- rdm_blackhole 8y agoIt kind of reminds me of https://idiallo.com/blog/when-a-machine-fired-me https://idiallo.com/blog/when-a-machine-fired-me
- tapland 8y agoHah. Having crohn's disease I would be royally screwed. =/
- benj111 8y agoIs this legal? Can a computer have standing to terminate a contract? Can a computer enter in to a legal contract? Edit: High frequency trading would seem to suggest it is? Is there nominally supposed to be a human in the loop?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Retra 8y agoComputers don't need standing, they act on their controllers' behalf.
- benj111 8y agoThere's a limit to that somewhere though? There's some minimum input that the controller needs to put in. If Outlook took it upon itself to send "you're hired" emails to all applicants for a job, that wouldn't be legally binding right? I suspect the line isn't where I would like it to be in this situation though. Thinking about a generalised rule, requiring the counterparty be human if the original party is human? That seems reasonable and workable?
- Retra 8y agoThere doesn't need to be any rule, because computers simply don't make decisions that have legal relevance. Nothing a computer does is legally binding; things humans do using computers may be. Computers only facilitate things that humans do. If Outlook sends "you're hired" emails, it is legally binding if its controller intended to enter into a contract, and not if it was an error or accident. You don't have to consider the behavior of the computer at all when deciding legal ramifications.
- benj111 8y ago"because computers simply don't make decisions that have legal relevance" The computer is automatically firing people, that seems like legal relevance to me. It is making the decision (on some level) without human input. High frequency traders buy and sell without human interaction. Is that not another example? If there were an error, as with the Outlook example, there was absolutely no human input, so obviously there wasn't intent, therefore it isn't legally binding. There is a continuum between a human doing everything, and a human doing nothing. At some point a legal line is crossed. On one side the computer is following a humans instructions, on the other it is working independently. Where is that legal line, what happens if a computer enters into a contract when working independently?
- nkozyra 8y agoIs the path to these awful decisions forged by human malice or is this just an organic byproduct of corporatism? Is it that nobody cares and are just hoping they don't get called out in the press, or is this stuff generally happening under the radar under the blanket of "efficiency?" Also, what a pleasant mobile reading experience! https://imgur.com/GXiVkvE https://imgur.com/GXiVkvE
- skrebbel 8y agoNitpick: I'm not sure corporatism means what you think it means. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism
- regularfry 8y agoI didn't read the article because by the time I'd clicked 4 different popovers of one sort or another I figured it wasn't worth it. Then I follow your link to Imgur, and get another quantcast modal. Aargh!
- taneq 8y agoHow do you use anything on the web without adblock? :S
- amelius 8y agoOn the bright side, this software replaces a human that used to fire people. That human has now been fired. :)
- sslayer 8y agoThe real treat will be when they turn it on the managers.
- C1sc0cat 8y agoThe manger that decided to fire people was let go first.
- corobo 8y agoThis happened at Netflix. I don't know if it was automated or not but the person that came up with a firing method was fired by said method https://www.fastcompany.com/3056662/she-created-netflixs-culture-and-it-ultimately-got-her-fired https://www.fastcompany.com/3056662/she-created-netflixs-cul...
- riccardo_gr 8y agothat's why i don't want to buy on amazon...
- nisa 8y agoWorked in a warehouse for a german online retailer as a picker a few years back - tracking everything you do is totally normal - people worked through breaks to reach their limit, too and the break is a joke because it's a huge hall and more than 50% of the time is spend reaching the break-area and to go back. Someone at Amazon basically throught why does a human have to look at the statistics after a few months and replaced it with some code - but besides that, that tracking and pressure is probably common in almost all online retailer warehouses. Maybe some cynic asshole thought that not letting the team-lead to do firing prevents keeping employees that perform bad but have good reasons for it - like beeing older or having medical problems.
- petra 8y agoWhy ? What's the big deal if a package costs a few more cents to fulfill? Is it a competitive disadvantage - or just standard greed ?
- lotsofpulp 8y agoIt is a competitive disadvantage. That's how Walmart got to where they are, they cared about a "few more cents" for each item, which adds up in high volume low margin businesses, and crushed everyone in their market.
- thoughtstheseus 8y agoEver day low cost is the motto
- Aeolun 8y agoTo me, nothing. On a macro scale? Everything.
- dkns 8y agoExactly. One package that costs 5 cents more? 10? 100? Not a big deal. 50 millions packages that cost 5 cents more? Kind of big deal.
- ForHackernews 8y agoAmazon is basically building "Manna" for their warehouses: http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
- theseareusernam 8y agoThis reminds me of 'Manna', by Marshall Brain, a sci-fi short story in which an automated, AI-driven management system (Manna) gradually takes on more and more responsibility and authority over the world of humans in the workplace, leading to dystopian consequences. There's a lot more to it than that (I'm bad at blurbs) but it's highly worth a read. http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm Once again, fiction predicts reality..
- vbuwivbiu 8y agoor someone read it and thought "I like that idea"
- ryandrake 8y agoEvery month, Amazon’s warehouse system gets closer and closer to the one depicted in Manna [1]. 1: https://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm https://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
- pratyushc 8y agoSo, Manna is finally becoming a reality: http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
- cocochanel 8y agoNobody got time to read your link. Summarize.
- Sahhaese 8y agoThis sounds like it would be illegal in Europe because it falls foul of "automated decision making". Article 22 of the GDPR: > The data subject shall have the right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing, including profiling, which produces legal effects concerning him or her or similarly significantly affects him or her.
- caymanjim 8y agoDoes the GDPR have anything to do with employment law? Seems unlikely.
- krageon 8y agoOf course the GDPR applies to a company's employees. They don't stop being people just because they are also employed.
- IMTDb 8y agoI am guessing that technically, since a human can override the system, a human chose not to. So the decision is not made solely on automated processing. This is purely semantic of course, but might get the off the hook (which tells a lot about the usefulness of those laws)
- C1sc0cat 8y agoIts not like data aka algorithms has not been used for decades to decide this sort of thing. I suspect IBM punch card systems have been used for this predating the First IBM computers. Having the computer decide is new and could well cause more problems than having a low level manger do it..
- robin_reala 8y agoFor at least a couple of decades beforehand: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punched_card#IBM_80-column_punched_card_format_and_character_codes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punched_card#IBM_80-column_pun...
- nixgeek 8y agoNot sure if you’re aware of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
- newsgremlin 8y agoSurprised I've never heard this book or IBM's specific involvement with the Nazi regime. Strange how of the many times IBM has been mentioned this isn't one of the glaring facts that atleast one person brings up.
- C1sc0cat 8y agoIts interesting that in WW2 NCR got the contract to build the 4 rotor Bommbes and Not IBM
- durnygbur 8y agoTheir subsidary - Watson Business Machines - was optimizing the logistics of transporting people to concentration, labour, and death camps with punchcard workshop straight next to the Warsaw Ghetto. The IBM's original "Watson project". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dehomag#Holocaust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dehomag#Holocaust
- ascar 8y agoI don't think there is a huge ethical problem with automatically terminating employees based on metrics. Quite the opposite, it could make this process more fair. The problem is in how the metrics are used and there is no real difference between an ill-meaning profit-hungry manager and an ill-meaning profit-hungry algorithm. Laying off employees for bathroom breaks or short (days, few weeks) fluctuations in productivity is wrong. But it's wrong if an algorithm does it or a human does it. Algorithms could be used to prevent firing an employee in such a situation.
- peteradio 8y agoThe psychology of it is fucked. It is so impersonal. Are you even notified that you've been terminated or you show up and your badge doesn't work. No explanation provided, just algo129 determined poor metrics. Sucks to work there not knowing what the blackbox is watching or when your time will come.
- crispyambulance 8y ago> ... Algorithms could be used to prevent firing an employee in such a situation. I think you're being _very_ optimistic and a bit naive about the motivations of a business that would resort to such algorithms. They want to maximize the throughput rate of picking boxes and minimize their cost. Sure, it sounds "objective" to say that everyone who doesn't meet the pre-agreed work criteria would be fired (and not-fired if they meet it). But who gets to set that threshold? Who determines what is reasonable? What if that performance threshold can only be met by fit young people and only until their bodies can't take the stress anymore? How will workers even assess whether or not they can do the job until they try? This is an ugly practice. If it survives, it will be coming to a cubicle near you someday. Hope I am retired by then.
- lotsofpulp 8y ago>But who gets to set that threshold? Who determines what is reasonable? What if that performance threshold can only be met by fit young people and only until their bodies can't take the stress anymore? How will workers even assess whether or not they can do the job until they try? If it's harmful to the worker, then it should fall under the purview of OSHA in the US. Otherwise, that threshold is set by consumers who choose to patronize businesses that treat their employees in a certain way. Almost all of the time, for goods that can't be distinguished from one another, consumers will choose to patronize a business offering the lowest price available to them, hence the businesses that squeeze the most out of the workers survive and the others do not.
- calvinbhai 8y agoI don’t see anything wrong with this. Most of the warehouse operations will get automated soon. So it’s better (from the laborers’ perspective) to keep manual labor as efficient/profitable as possible, otherwise they’ll make it attractive to automate all manual labor. i.e., those who are considered good warehouse workers, are at risk of losing their jobs too to automation if the not-so-good workers are not fired.
- sagebird 8y agoJust because robots exist does not imply humans should accept being treated like one in order to be maximally competitive. Societies get to collectively decide what the floor is for human treatment, not just market forces. (Hint- the market has no floor in this regard.) (I upvoted your comment for making a salient point that I think has merit though I disagree with it.)
- lotsofpulp 8y agoThat would have nothing to do with Amazon choosing to automate a process. Society, i.e. government, has the power to decide what the floor is for human treatment. The people lucky to live in democracies can choose to vote for representatives that provide minimum amounts of paid leave, maximum amount of hours worked, etc.
- sagebird 8y agoA society could reasonably elect that firings must be reviewed and signed off by a human. In real life, there are instances of hard working people who through some bad luck end up having to do manual work into their 70’s. They haul ass and have a high work ethic, but can’t keep up with workers who are 50 years younger. They don’t meet quotas in terms of productivity, but usually management is happy to keep them on. Sure, you could automate compassion by formulating a metric that keeps these people, but let’s be honest, Amazon is not doing that. So a reasonable society might say that a human must be part of the process in order to offer “humane” relief for extenuating circumstances, or at least present an opportunity for that. It’s kind of fucked if Amazon realized they can save money by removing human judgement from the loop because humans are not universally in dispossession of a heart or compassionate facility.
- bash-j 8y agoHow is this any different to one of the many gig economy workforce companies like Uber, Lyft, Postmates, etc? How much human interaction do these employees have before they are fired? Do humans tell these people if they are performing badly and offer training to improve?
- esel2k 8y agoI have been a longterm dreamer to work for amazon AWS. But honestly speaking as much money as this company does, I am not sure I want to support this... as this is a tech forum with big AWS fans here, don’t you think that without separation of the blue-collar-cruching part and AWS there is a serious risk? Would you support this organization?
- newsgremlin 8y agoWhat a type of algorithm like this will never account for (and what it should really be used for) by design is nepotism.
- vbuwivbiu 8y agothis sort of thing has to stop
- vbuwivbiu 8y agotips on avoiding Amazon ?
- GoodJokes 8y agoIt is really really scary the amount of people in this thread defending this. The amount of people absolutely with no problem dehumanizing workers.
- mnm1 8y agoThey terminate customer accounts in the same way for no reason so this certainly shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. Amazon is simply too big to care about people whether they be customers let alone employees.
- WheelsAtLarge 8y agoThis type of monitoring always leads to employees missing breaks, bathroom visits and working off the clock. Algorithms have no understanding of human limits and will push and push. Employees are scared to miss quotas since they will get fired and employers feel that they can push employees more since quotas are being met. At some point, it becomes a sweatshop where workers are strained to their limits. We have seen this type of high-pressure work previously and it does not end well for both employers and employees. Employees revolt and employers have to concede to demands or face employee dissatisfaction which leads to societal disruption. Companies think that they are improving their bottom line but in the long run, they disrupt society to the point of chaos for all. This time may seem different because it's a high tech world but as long as humans are part of the equation we will see a similar result to previous situations. It's bad for everyone even if you are not the employer or employee.
- kwhitefoot 8y agoMany of the comments here make me think of the interview I heard yesterday with David Graeber (anthropologist, author of Bullshit jobs). He made the point that it seems always to be the people who do something useful who get the worst pay and conditions.