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Amazon is using algorithms with little human intervention to fire Flex workers
- smoldesu 5y agoMeanwhile, they're also relentlessly sending me (and many others) ads about how great of an employer they are. I suspect that the labor shortage is going to hit Amazon the hardest here.
- rxhernandez 5y agoYeah, there isn't a chance in hell I would work for Amazon for the foreseeable future. I have plenty of opportunity with employers who pay me to live a comfortable lifestyle and treat me well.
- metalliqaz 5y agoyou would if you had a car payment due that you couldn't pay
- ebiester 5y agoThere is a difference between developers, who today have many options, and those who are affected. I, as a developer, would not choose to work at Amazon because of how those who are affected are treated. That is because I have options. I do not blame anyone who has to take a position there due to their economic position. That is not the general position of people talking here, though.
- rxhernandez 5y agoYes, this is exactly what I intended to say. I should have said that they also need to treat other employees well too but I fell asleep shortly thereafter. I'm not comfortable working for any company who treats any of their employees like garbage.
- shadilay 5y agoDon't worry, Amazon will just buy up every other company and then you will have no other choice.
- robotnikman 5y agoRobots are not taking our jobs, they are becoming our bosses
- metalliqaz 5y agobeing the boss is a job
- cryptoz 5y agoThis sounds wildly illegal. I don't know the laws on different states, but do none of them require a reason for termination? Seems ridiculous. If they are using facial recognition are they also making systematic racist or other illegal 'decisions' when firing? This is at least super immoral and fucking gross.
- zippergz 5y agoMost states in the US have at-will employment, which means the employee or employer can terminate employment at any time for any reason (other than some carved-out exceptions) or no reason at all.
- cryptoz 5y ago"At-will" employment does not sound like it would apply here. While searching for this, I found a quote "At-will does not apply if there has been a breach of good faith by the employer." This is clearly a breach of good faith. I do not think these firings are legal based on my admittedly weak understanding of the issue.
- thrill 5y agoit's not even close to "clearly a breach of good faith".
- cryptoz 5y agoReally? Hiring someone who starts working a night shift, and then firing them because they look different during the day time is not a breach of good faith? Firing someone for shaving their beard is not a breach of good faith? I guess I need to read up on legal terms. How are these obvious problems not breaches of good faith? I can admit I don't know much here, but, I'm shocked to find out that none of the examples in the article are considered "even close to" a breach of good faith?! What would it take for Amazon to fire someone and breach the assumed good faith? Do you have an example? I'm curious and honestly trying to learn. I googled this obviously but since I'm not a legal expert the results are iffy and can be difficult to interpret so I appreciate the conversation on this, cheers.
- gentleman11 5y agoI recently accepted a 30 day delivery delay to avoid buying some items off Amazon. I got anxiety from trying to buy from Amazon and couldn’t do it, 2 day shipping or not. The company is a nightmare
- gruez 5y ago>I recently accepted a 30 day delivery delay to avoid buying some items off Amazon 30 days? Did you order from aliexpress rather than amazon?
- gentleman11 5y agoSmall book publisher from Europe. Interestingly, even after expensive shipping, it cost less than via Amazon despite Amazon’s fake “free” shipping
- seanp2k2 5y agoIf you want to see very clear examples of ridiculous Amazon pricing, just look up boxes of nitrile gloves. Found some in stock at Target last week for about 2x what I’d expect them to cost normally, yet on Amazon they’re all about 10x normal prices. I really like the longer gloves in larger thicknesses for working on mechanical stuff, but I’m not paying $1/pair for disposable nitrile gloves.
- HarryHirsch 5y agoDid the same, ordered an orchid title (publisher in US this time), the publisher offered 20 % discount on Amazon's price without even asking. The conditions that Amazon offers to their sellers must be truly dreadful.
- cyral 5y agoI find myself ordering less and less from Amazon. For almost any product now there are tons of foreign "brands" with random all caps names that are whitelabeling products with questionable quality. With no oversight, if anything goes wrong, doesn't conform to safety regulations, etc, they can easily just go and set up shop under a different name.
- dwater 5y agoLike unions or not, the contracts they have were arrived at over decades of negotiations between companies and employees. So while many will bemoan that unions make it impossible to fire bad employees, the purpose of those provisions is to make sure that companies aren't firing workers without cause, or because of the companies' own fault, as appears to be the case here. Amazon may have stopped most of its employee unionization efforts so far, but this automated firing system looks ripe for an expensive class action lawsuit to me, and it almost certainly wouldn't have happened if these employees had the bargaining power of a group.
- sneak 5y agoWhat's wrong with firing employees without cause? A business relationship like employment is by mutual consent. Either party can opt out at any time. I'm not sure this is something that needs fixing. You seem to feel differently. What am I missing?
- hobs 5y agoEmpathy for other human beings who will have negative outcomes if for pointless reasons their employment is turned off by a computer.
- sneak 5y agoWhat empathy? Why would anyone want to continue in a business relationship where the other party doesn't want to? There are tons of places hiring right now; Amazon isn't the only game in town for labor.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- alo45 5y agoBecause you’re talking about people who don’t have extensive cybersec experience and multiple retirement accounts, who see a job as the thing, you know, feeding their kids for the next two weeks while we pontificate on their purpose as a class on HN? This comment is extremely tone deaf and betrays why this industry is fundamentally flawed when it comes to human factors. Engineers and product leads building these systems have simply never experienced the other end of the table, and then reduce the equation to a “business relationship” just like you’re doing here. I realize it’s easy to forget you’re discussing human beings when computers make much more sense. I don’t know, call me crazy, European, idealistic, whatever, but putting a human in the loop to say “eh, that’s a bad call” isn’t a lot to ask nor the demise of capitalism. If a human being double checking and delivering bad news is the only thing holding the economy back from grand designs of glorious, automated scale, I’d prefer another economy that pays more attention to its purpose - which is the sustenance of humans, not the concentration of wealth based on flagrant disregard for the welfare of people it serves. I like the way Sorkin put it: “we used to wage war on poverty, not poor people,” and I think your initial question about empathy illuminates much of that sentiment.
- high_byte 5y ago"shaved their beard" and got fired by a bot. dystopian present
- monkeydust 5y agoAmazon treating humans like servers. When you need to scale fast you fire up some more and when you're done you shut them down. That's basically what's happening here. Question is, are we OK with it...?
- mcguire 5y agoApparently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27664846 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27664846
- booleandilemma 5y agoLike cattle not people?
- tyingq 5y agoI would guess this only works for so long. I'm sure there's a big supply of people that will fall for it, but it's not an infinite supply.
- sschueller 5y agoIn essence financial slavery...
- npteljes 5y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery
- zouhair 5y agoSeeing the amount of people still using Amazon I'd say as a society we are more than OK with it. Some life destroyed is worth the price of having my toilet paper sent to my home diligently.
- Clubber 5y agoThere are other ways of inducing reform than boycotting the company. Maybe we can pressure our politicians for better workers rights rather than worse like we've gotten over the last 4 decades.
- mcguire 5y ago"The photos appear to be verified by image recognition algorithms. People who have lost weight or shaved their beards or gotten a haircut have run into problems, as have drivers attempting to start a shift at night, when low lighting can result in a poor-quality selfie." Image recognition works great, as long as you have enough reserves that its failures don't hurt you.
- malcolmgreaves 5y agoFace recognition is different from face identification, which is what Amazon is attempting (and failing rather spectacularly) here. Extrapolating from one image is a doomed prospect. Ultimately, this is an example of extreme technical incompetence on Amazon"s part.
- shrubble 5y ago'If a driver loses the appeal, they can ask for arbitration, though it costs them $200.' How is this considered acceptable?
- mcguire 5y agoPresumably, it's in the contract and the contract is iron-clad. Many years ago, I had a friend who was questioning a lawyer about a general indemnity clause in a contract. The lawyer said, "Don't worry about it too much. The courts don't like it when someone tries to take away your ability to seek legal satisfaction." I guess that has changed.
- aikah 5y agoI thought the cost of arbitration was solely the responsibility of the employer? How is not a scam then to be forced into paid arbitration?
- TX0098812 5y agoThat may very well be the case. Companies tend to put all sorts of things into contracts that courts would never enforce. It pays because people believe the contract is valid and abide by it.
- ryandrake 5y agoWe're getting closer and closer to Manna [1] every year. Dystopian stories are meant to dissuade building the dystopia--not to encourage it! If you're a software engineer working on a project with ethical implications, please consider the kind of world you're building. 1: https://marshallbrain.com/manna https://marshallbrain.com/manna
- EasyTiger_ 5y ago> If you're a software engineer working on a project with ethical implications, please consider the kind of world you're building. You'll find them on Twitter falling over themselves to tell everyone how morally upstanding they are
- tryingtogetback 5y agoFascinating tech. imagine if human element is removed from critical decision making, meaning bias is drastically reduced (if not completely eliminated in this case). All decisions are strictly based on your output which eliminates corruption, nepotism, and unfairness. Isn't this system better that what we have now (flawed and unpredictable humans driving critical decisions)? Yes, they highlight transparency issues which is the problem. When using a tech like this objectives must be clear, workers should know the system and know the expectations and productivity criteria
- aikah 5y ago> Fascinating tech. imagine if human element is removed from critical decision making, meaning bias is drastically reduced (if not completely eliminated in this case) The algorithm could be biased at first place. if(employee.isnt_somehow_white()){ employement_service_provider.fire_quicker(employee)} if(employee.is_pregnant()){employement_service_provider.fire_the_quickest(employee)) I'm being hyperbolic but you get the gist. Somebody wrote that program.
- tryingtogetback 5y agoalgorithm could not be based on that. what you described is highly personal and doesn't make sense when optimizing for profits. When optimizing for profits all that matters is value created/delivered (or loss reduced, risks averted). One can speculate about possible (and/or highly personal) correlations while not realizing that the outcome is completely fair.
- aikah 5y ago> algorithm could not be based on that. what you described is highly personal and doesn't make sense when optimizing for profits. That's irrelevant. My point is that no bias is eliminated at first place, since the algorithm is still man made. You could argue that since there is no human intervention the same input would lead to the same output, but again, neither you or I have read the code to claim that it is somehow "bias free" or even completely deterministic, especially if the input relies on computer vision.
- CPLX 5y agoThis is dystopia and we should work together to stop it. It's no more natural or inevitable than rows of 12 year old sewing clothes or dead mine workers.
- belval 5y agoYeah remember how the world came together and stopped child labor in third world countries? /s
- TurkishPoptart 5y agoI was fired by an algorithm in early 2019 when working for Amazon Flex. Basically, on the app, "blocks" would appear, which would be a set $ amount for approximate X number of deliveries to X location. Then you would drive to a "fulfillment" center to pick up your boxes. You had to be quick to grab a block before someone else did. Occasionally I would drop a block and grab a higher-yielding one. It wasn't clear to me that this was frowned upon by the app. After a few weeks of this work, I was "deactivated" without any warning. I called their customer "service" line and was told that I was deactivated in their system and there was no recourse for me. That really sucked.
- zouhair 5y agoThis reads like from some dystopian sci-fi book.
- kache_ 5y agoYou're in one
- the_lonely_road 5y agoIt’s better to ask for forgiveness than it is to ask for permission. But what happens when there is no one to ask for forgiveness from?
- fumar 5y agoDon’t you ever think – “what would the world be like if the bad guys won?” Who said they didn’t? It is all in the eye of the beholder. If we apply some ethics like the golden rule to modern existence, then you spend your time debating where to apply it because it’s near impossible.
- excalibur 5y agoYet still preferable to the alternative
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- codekansas 5y agoIn the Cory Doctorow book "walkaways" there's this central version controlled repository that basically makes all the decisions for this commune about who should do what. Anyone can contribute to it (although AFAIR the review process wasn't too fleshed out). Regarding Amazon, Uber and other "instant employment" type companies - it's a weird world, where you can basically get automatically hired and fired by an algorithm. It creates, in theory, full employment (although not very good employment, at least right now) and gives workers more leverage if they want to quit another job, but also more instability if the rules for the new job aren't made clear or are applied arbitrarily. It also feels like we're in a very nascent stage for this. Maybe this could be done better - it seems like an area that is ripe for disruption.
- kjhughes 5y agoBad automated policy is bad because the policy is bad, not because automation is bad. Automation applies policy evenly. An employee can be sure that the firing wasn't due to a boss having a bad day, not liking the employee personally, not noticing worse performance of colleagues, etc. The real problem comes when automated assessment is poorly designed. And it's a shame not only because of the heartless actions that impact real people's lives and the needless public relations damage that is bound to emerge. It's also a shame because of the lost opportunity to help workers' performance improve via feedback at a level of detail that the automated systems could provide. Damn the secrecy. Develop an open rating system that provides continuous feedback to the worker. Build in dampers that provide ample time to learn, correct mistakes, and improve. Publish every factor, every consideration, every weight that goes into the assessment. Openly. Refine over and over until both management and the workforce see it as fair and helpful. I would take that system over the subjective, unevenly applied, unclear criteria that's historically been used to assess performance. No surprises to the workers, and management has to own the criteria rather than hide behind unpublished automation. Objectivity should be a virtue. Without transparency, it's going to prove to be quite the vice.
- nkingsy 5y agoI was thinking similarly in the "FU IG" thread. The only way I see capitalism surviving long-term is if we can embrace data collection in all aspects of life and make it work for us to internalize negative externalitites on an ongoing basis.
- crazygringo 5y agoThis is a great point. However, I'll just add that, having tried to design such systems in the past (for large-scale Mechanical Turk work), it is fiendishly complex. Not only is it incredibly difficult to turn our intuitions of "what's fair" into formulas, but then you've got to deal with people trying to game those rules for their own advantage once they figure them out, which ultimately means you can only ever be partially transparent at best. In fact, I'd go so far as to say it's impossible for all pretty much practical purposes that need to be cost-effective, sadly. It's a really tough problem.
- tacker2000 5y agoWell thats not much different how they deal with their 3rd party sellers. An automated system detects “problems” and then just freezes your account, without much recourse except talking to the useless seller support that cant speak english properly and do anything about it. In the case of being an amazon vendor (selling stuff directly to amazon in bulk), you receive orders from a computer system and if you dont deliver in the allowed timeslot they penalize you. Minimal human interaction necessary. Amazon is truly the pioneer in this type of development.
- slownews45 5y agoHowever, if you do deliver they pay you. In some areas (publishing) this is not always the case.
- SmellTheGlove 5y agoUpcoming Amazon medium post: Firing at Scale For real though. We need some labor protections in this country. Remember when we robo-signed ourselves into fraudulent foreclosures?
- rantwasp 5y agoAmazon announces Elastic Firing Service. Build on years of AWS and e-commerce. You too can hire and fire your drones to adapt to the shifting realities of today's gig economy.
- SmellTheGlove 5y agoWait - is mturk rebranding!?
- profmonocle 5y ago> Flex drivers’ forums are littered with posts from people complaining that their accounts were terminated because their selfies did not “meet the requirements for the Amazon Flex program.” The photos appear to be verified by image recognition algorithms. If these algorithms work better with lighter-skinned people (as has happened in the past), could they have a discrimination issue on their hands?
- asteroidbelt 5y agoPlease do not suggest something is racist unless you have some evidence. Not everything in the world is about race. There could be 1000 other factors in play and any combination of them. I know nothing about the algorithm, but I imagine the algorithm could discriminate people who don’t smile, have face tattoos or just untidy.
- FredPret 5y agoHow very on-brand
- newobj 5y agoDo you want a dystopia? Because that's how you get a dystopia
- throwaway_dcnt 5y agoWhen I first read Mana (https://marshallbrain.com/manna1 https://marshallbrain.com/manna1), I didn't even flinch. I knew human greed would definitely lead to this future, what I did not anticipate was its arrival in about 10 years.
- SkipperCat 5y agoI hope Mr Bezos is fine if we replace the re-entry team of his spaceship with the Amazon Flex computer system. I'm sure he'll be fine if the system decides to terminate the reverse thrusters because he didn't earn a "great" rating for his re-entry vector switch flipping. I think I may watch the movie Brazil again.....