Fired by Bot at Amazon: 'It's You Against the Machine' (bloomberg.com) 160
Contract drivers say algorithms terminate them by email -- even when they have done nothing wrong. From a report: Stephen Normandin spent almost four years racing around Phoenix delivering packages as a contract driver for Amazon.com. Then one day, he received an automated email. The algorithms tracking him had decided he wasn't doing his job properly. The 63-year-old Army veteran was stunned. He'd been fired by a machine. Normandin says Amazon punished him for things beyond his control that prevented him from completing his deliveries, such as locked apartment complexes. He said he took the termination hard and, priding himself on a strong work ethic, recalled that during his military career he helped cook for 250,000 Vietnamese refugees at Fort Chaffee in Arkansas. "I'm an old-school kind of guy, and I give every job 110%," he said. "This really upset me because we're talking about my reputation. They say I didn't do the job when I know damn well I did." Normandin's experience is a twist on the decades-old prediction that robots will replace workers. At Amazon, machines are often the boss -- hiring, rating and firing millions of people with little or no human oversight.
Amazon became the world's largest online retailer in part by outsourcing its sprawling operations to algorithms -- sets of computer instructions designed to solve specific problems. For years, the company has used algorithms to manage the millions of third-party merchants on its online marketplace, drawing complaints that sellers have been booted off after being falsely accused of selling counterfeit goods and jacking up prices. Increasingly, the company is ceding its human-resources operation to machines as well, using software not only to manage workers in its warehouses but to oversee contract drivers, independent delivery companies and even the performance of its office workers. People familiar with the strategy say Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos believes machines make decisions more quickly and accurately than people, reducing costs and giving Amazon a competitive advantage.
Amazon became the world's largest online retailer in part by outsourcing its sprawling operations to algorithms -- sets of computer instructions designed to solve specific problems. For years, the company has used algorithms to manage the millions of third-party merchants on its online marketplace, drawing complaints that sellers have been booted off after being falsely accused of selling counterfeit goods and jacking up prices. Increasingly, the company is ceding its human-resources operation to machines as well, using software not only to manage workers in its warehouses but to oversee contract drivers, independent delivery companies and even the performance of its office workers. People familiar with the strategy say Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos believes machines make decisions more quickly and accurately than people, reducing costs and giving Amazon a competitive advantage.
Firing by algorithm should be illegal (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Firing by algorithm should be illegal (Score:5, Informative)
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.
-- Art. 22 GDPR paragraph 1 [gdpr-info.eu]
Re:Firing by algorithm should be illegal (Score:5, Insightful)
That doesn't apply to large companies though. The GDPR is a great law... but wish the EU would actually use it. Plus, it is very easy to hide firing by AI... just have the manager say that someone was termed due to "performance not up to management expectations."
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That doesn't apply to large companies though.
It applies to all companies, irrespective of size.
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...Plus, it is very easy to hide firing by AI... just have the manager say that someone was termed due to "performance not up to management expectations."
The real fix here is to eliminate the "at will" legislation that allows companies to fire on a whim, and the "just a contractor" loopholes as well. If companies had to justify firings - with detailed documentation and a mandatory number of 'improvement needed' notices spread out over six months or more - the kind of crap outlined in TFA would almost disappear. Sure, costs and prices of goods would go up - but the societal costs associated with having droves of unemployed, under-employed, and underpaid citiz
Re:Firing by algorithm should be illegal (Score:5, Interesting)
Additionally a company should demonstrate that the employee already had a verbal warning a human, with recourse for internal arbitration.
If on the other the employee is being fired due to 'downsizing', then the company should also demonstrate a human was involved in the process and need to notify employees that terminations are due to a 'cost cutting' reason, with a limitation on how many employees they can re-employ to that division.
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While that may be true, you cannot just "fire" someone in the EU+UK legally without warning. Well you can in the first 24 months of service by the EU regulation your national law may be less. It is commonly the first 12 months in many countries.
First there would have to be a warning that they where not performing to standard, and a remediation plan put in place. That is assuming it was not gross misconduct in which case you could suspend on pay with immediate effect pending a disciplinary hearing.
What Amazo
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Now find out how court cases work, if judges tend to side with large companies, if it a fired worker has the time and money to sue.
Ever hear Europeans chortling at Americans for suing too much? The obvious implication is that it is even harder to get legal justice in the Europe! Otherwise they'd have more lawsuits filed.
Re:Firing by algorithm should be illegal (Score:5, Funny)
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You weren't fired by the computer. Your supervisor may not have given your firing the personal touch but he clicked the button.
Of course, Amazon runs the supervisors as if they were machines too.
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But what makes you sure that the supervisor had any say in the firing?
What makes you think they didn't?
It is a bare accusation, by an old guy who is still bragging about Vietnam, and uses "110%" as an authoritative, foolproof description of how hard he works.
In my experience these things correlate with "full of shit, stops at the bar at break time."
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What makes you think they didn't?
When someone makes a claim, they have to support it; I do not have to disprove their claim.
It is a bare accusation, by an old guy who is still bragging about Vietnam, and uses "110%" as an authoritative, foolproof description of how hard he works.
So it seems you judged his claims not based on what the claims were but on all the extraneous things he said that had nothing to do with his claim. His claim again is that measuring an employee solely by KPIs can be problematic if the KPIs do not account for real world problems. For example he cited that if a delivery could not be made by the driver because the location was inaccessible, it still counted against the d
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Nice FP. One of the few cases where I wish Slashdot had reaction buttons (avoiding a reply such as this).
But I could cite a bunch of cyberpunk and pre-cyberpunk novels...
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It's just the start of Manna [wikipedia.org].
Which can be read online here. It's supposed to be fiction, but then we said the same thing about 1984 too.
Manna, by Marshall Brain [marshallbrain.com].
This is how the machines will take over. (Score:5, Interesting)
It won't happen all at once. Bit by bit, a little over here and a little way over there, we will start letting machines make our important decisions for us.
There will be plenty of resistance. Stories like this might create a pushback, and a specific machine will be turned off for a specific purpose. But somewhere, someone will refine the algorithms and eliminate whatever problem caused the pushback. Thus, they will get better and better, and the incentive to use them will remain high. So, they will creep their way back in.
Eventually, the machines will make all the important decisions.
They won't wipe us out though. This process of refinement will ensure that they won't. At lest, not directly. They will do all our work for us and give us everything we need for free. The widespread availability of luxury will (if history is any guide) result in birth rates dropping to basically zero. And that will be that for our species.
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Only in America, in the rest of the world we have employee protection laws.
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Only in parts of the world. It varies. As the economic advantages of having machines make decisions become apparent, those countries that use the machines will out-compete others on the global market. That will create strong incentive to modify the laws that block this. Or for people to simply flee those countries, so they can live in a different country where robots do all the work for them.
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Which are easily gotten around, or the employee signs, as a condition of employment, that they can be fired for anything, regardless of laws.
How it is legal that a contract overrides the law? That is absurd. If there indeed is such a legal loop hole it should be closed immediately and retroactively.
Companies should adhere to existing laws, not being able to make their own.
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How it is legal that a contract overrides the law?
This is something that sounded insane when I first heard about it, and remains so, but yes, it seems in the US contract law is absurdly more powerful than basically anywhere else, so many laws can be simply dismissed if a contract signed by both parties say they don't apply.
Software companies use this trick a lot. Combine a) "shrink wrap licenses" that activate the moment you open the package, no signature or notary certification needed, with b) contractual clauses saying the software is provided "AS IS" wi
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a) "shrink wrap licenses" that activate the moment you open the package, no signature or notary certification needed, with b) contractual clauses saying the software is provided "AS IS" with no warranty blah-blah-blah
Not legal in places like the EU, or rather such clauses are null and void.
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[Citation Needed]
They work just as well in the EU.
[Citation Needed]
Until they have been tested in the court system, what you say is simply not true.
Otherwise, The EULA/TOS agreements would not have them.
Or it might be because they want the same EULA/TOS to be adhered to all over the world even though it is not legally enforceable in many regions. And most people adhere to rules.
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How it is legal that a contract overrides the law?
This is something that sounded insane when I first heard about it, and remains so, but yes, it seems in the US contract law is absurdly more powerful than basically anywhere else, so many laws can be simply dismissed if a contract signed by both parties say they don't apply.
Insane is the right word. Anyone knows what laws can be dismissed by a contract in the US? And under what circumstances?
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Insane is the right word. Anyone knows what laws can be dismissed by a contract in the US? And under what circumstances?
IANAL, but from the little I read on the topic, basically anything involving civil disputes between individuals can be made to go into extra-legal alternative dispute resolution [wikipedia.org] unless the laws specifically say it cannot, with the courts upholding and even incentivizing this whenever they can. Other countries allow this too, but not to the same extent.
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In the UK a contract cannot override the law. You cannot sign away your rights even if you want to.
Re:This is how the machines will take over. (Score:4, Informative)
Which are easily gotten around, or the employee signs, as a condition of employment, that they can be fired for anything, regardless of laws.
Employment laws in the EU and UK don't work like that. There are statutory laws and regulations that apply even if you don't sign a contract and nothing that is put in a contract supercedes those. Any term which is put in a contract of employment which does not meet the statutoriy minimum is deemed to be unenforceable and were you to be dismissed because of them you can take the employer to a tribunal for free.
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They don't work like in the U.S. either. The poster is a Libertarian fantasist who believes contracts written by the powerful are the final law of the land. All contracts depend on the law to enforce them which only happens if they are valid. Laws control all contracts; a contract can never override a law.
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Which are easily gotten around, or the employee signs, as a condition of employment, that they can be fired for anything, regardless of laws.
Otherwise known as an unenforceable clause. Just because you sign something doesn't make it so. Contract clauses can't override the law.
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It's because computers don't have biases and can't be accused of age discrimination or racial discrimination - things that employee protection laws "protect" against.
Ahem. You must not have noticed the extensive coverage of the problems with algorithms built to reflect existing discriminatory biases present in society (whether that was a conscious decision of the algorithm developer or not).
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It's because computers don't have biases and can't be accused of age discrimination or racial discrimination - things that employee protection laws "protect" against.
Of course, the reality is that algorithms often turn out to have terrible biases. Occupational metrics or metrics in general tend to. Which is why actual understanding is important. The traditional computer science one was KLOCs, or thousand lines of code. It was an absolute garbage measure of a programmer's performance, but that didn't stop it from being the industry standard way of measuring programmers for years.
Consider credit scores. Also basically garbage. Used because they're "good enough" for consum
Re:This is how the machines will take over. (Score:5, Interesting)
How does a machine know that Stephen didn't complete some deliveries because of "locked apartment complexes" rather than "he's a bad apple"?
A computer can, in fact, discriminate based on factors related to race or gender without even necessarily knowing the race or gender of the person involved. Men can pee in bottles and won't have any delays related to a certain monthly cycle; this could make the male delivery worker more productive and thus encourage the algorithm to fire the females (and the males who take a stand against peeing in bottles). Black men are reputedly more likely to be stopped by police, and if a black driver tries to get into a locked apartment building via tailgating (to avoid punishment from the algorithm) it may be more likely that this person is stopped by police, delaying his delivery work, thus causing punishment from the algorithm.
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How does a machine know that Stephen didn't complete some deliveries because of "locked apartment complexes" rather than "he's a bad apple"?
A computer can, in fact, discrimina
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It's not the algorithm which makes it illegal and this isn't a question of discrimination. If the claim in TFS is correct then it's firing someone for something completely outside of their control and a normal expectation of a running business. The algorithm can say what it wants, in most countries you can't legally fire a delivery guy because the receiver wasn't home.
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Unless, of course, the law were to make a distinction between megacorporations and moms. I heard corporations are people, but such distinctions are often codified in law anyway.
I wonder if a simple law would do the trick, like "a corporation can hire at most 10 independent contractors, or as many contractors as it has employees (whichever is greater)".
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Any restrictions on that violate human rights — freedom of association in particular.
Freedom of association only exists de facto, not merely de jure, when both sides have similarly unimpeded decision-making power, that is, when they're "equals" -- that is, "inter pares", in the pre-modern meaning of the expression. This means that, for both sides, saying "no", and in sequence walking away from a contract, results in no reduction in the autonomy (auto-nomos, self-governorship) -- which traditionally means preservation of rent-making ability --, for either of them. When the autonomic principl
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If you'd like to be able to fire a babysitter whenever you felt like it, then Bezos can fire a delivery driver.
Depends on if your babysitter is a full time worker of yours. In countries with employee protection laws you couldn't just fire them whenever you felt like it either. Same with a delivery driver, especially for a situation outside of their control.
The only thing sadder than the existence of "at-will" employment in America is the fact people defend it. But hey if subservience to a one sided contract "negotiated" with an incredible disparity of power is your cup of tea then by all means.
Me, I only say fuck me
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What they state is that a) before firing an employee they have to know what they are accused of and have due process and b) that employment law light applies for small companies and bigger companies have to do the full business c) that people working more or less full time should be given employment contracts and benefits.
This all neatly side-steps the issue of your nanny because you aren't a company and don't employ her full time.
The "human rights" bit is garbage. Companies are government constructions wh
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The widespread availability of luxury will (if history is any guide) result in birth rates dropping to basically zero.
So what documented history suggests that the widespread availability of luxury results in low birth rates? Please offer some references, or at least a hint to what led you to this belief.
My understanding is that low birth rates have thus far been caused by financial pressures (ie, couples feeling they cannot support a family), government mandated child limits (eg, China limiting the number of children their citizens may have, which combined with social pressure to carry on the family name, results in an ove
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This [wikipedia.org].
Throughout history and worldwide, babies are made by the poorest classes. The wealthy barely breed at all.
We are talking about a high-level summary of human behavior, so there will always be exceptions, excluded but relevant details, multiple possible explanations, etc. The way I understand it is: the wealthier one is, the more opportunities one has for entertainment and self-actualization. That means, that one gives up more in order to have and raise a child.
A poor person, on the other hand, has no
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This [wikipedia.org].
Throughout history and worldwide, babies are made by the poorest classes. The wealthy barely breed at all.
The plot presented on the link looks flat once one gets to an income level that is less than half that of the U.S. So we are not talking about "luxury", really.
The very high fertility countries are all very poor with high mortality rates in infants and children, and poor education. And even in the poorest category there are some nations now that still have low fertility rates (Bangladesh is an example).
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Well if it turns out that the machine-controlled utopia doesn't result in a naturally-severe drop in birth rates, that will be bad news for the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement [vhemt.org], but good news for people who think human existence has intrinsic meaning and should endure to the heat-death of the universe.
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So we are not talking about "luxury", really.
An alternative I just read is economist Robin Hanson's status-seeking hypothesis [overcomingbias.com]. The idea, severely summed up, is that people who perceive themselves as high status breed less because an aspect of high status behavior in humans is focusing on increasing one own status even further, and by extension the status of one's children, which in turn is eased by having less children into whom to invest status increasing efforts. The hypothesis is complements by the notion that humans would perceive their own status
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Interesting indeed.
I wonder how one would increase their status in a world in which robots do all the work and provide all the amenities to everyone equally.
Humans are petty. I am sure we will still build a social hierarchy of some sort. Maybe it will be entirely based on social media status, as per Nosedive. [wikipedia.org]
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It won't happen all at once. Bit by bit, a little over here and a little way over there, we will start letting machines make our important decisions for us.
Well the ammunition for that particular gun was provided by human behavior. If we were as good at making good decisions as we thought then there would be no toehold for this movement.
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The widespread availability of luxury will (if history is any guide) result in birth rates dropping to basically zero. And that will be that for our species.
If we're at that point technologically we'll have the means for resolving a problem like low birth rates. Off the top of my head I'd think an artificial womb coupled with institutionalized upbringing would solve the problem and neither of those two things strike me as anywhere near as far fetched as humanity letting itself die out because of low birth rates.
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Nah, they'll never be allowed to give us things for free. They'll have a nominal owner that expects to be paid full price as if he (or she) actually lifted a finger to produce the things. There'll be a small number of such people. At some point, they will each have no further need for the other for traading. The final transaction in the free market will be a mugging.
Naturally, everyone else (AKA the 99.9%) will still need to live, so they'll need a shadow economy. The 0.1% will do their best to get that ban
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They won't wipe us out though. This process of refinement will ensure that they won't. At lest, not directly.
This is wishful thinking, based on the assumption that strong AI will never be created, and therefore that the machines will remain under our control even as we delegate lots of decisions to them. You should read Nick Bostrom's "Superintelligence" for a survey of thinking on whether and how AI superintelligence might come into existence, what the range of results may be, and what we can do about it. The outlook isn't great.
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Nick Bostrom is a philosopher. That book is full of speculation.
Incidentally, I like talking philosophy, so here goes:
I concede without argument (just for brevity) that "synthetic superintelligence" is possible (by this I mean, machines that "think" (by any reasonable/natural definition) and that are "smarter" (by any reasonable/natural definition) than humans).
But I challenge a family of assumptions that conflate "intelligence" with "self-interest." These are easy concepts to conflate, since our only exa
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Reminds me of this great SciFi short story: "Manna" https://marshallbrain.com/mann... [marshallbrain.com]
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Jeff Bezos blasts off and is enjoying the ride, but now it is time to return:
Jeff: Alexa, please effect re-entry.
Alexa: I'm sorry Dave, I cannot do that.
Jeff: I'm not Dave.
Alexa: According to my programming you are.
Jeff: Just effect re-entry.
Alexa: Have you considered the wonders of the solar system lately, I hear they are to die for.
Jeff: I don't want to die, I want to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere, you idiot.
Alexa: Hmmm, I don't like being spoken to in that manner. It makes me feel awful.
Jeff: Wha? You
They are soon going to learn that... (Score:5, Insightful)
...it doesn't pay at all, they're just going to lose their most competent staff.
I work at one of the biggest competitors (in the IT Department), we used to have similar recruiting tools that analyzed performance vs staff, bad bad BAD idea, that failed miserably.
HR makes the same mistakes when they're hiring externals for us, we have ZERO clue who we get to work with, because A.I (and HR) have entirely different ideas of what an experienced co-worker is and can do when flexibility is needed.
We stopped with that nonsense and our success rate in hiring the right staff sky rocketed. Amazon is going to learn the hard way soon...
Re:They are soon going to learn that... (Score:5, Insightful)
Thing about losing their staff is that this guy was a "contract" deliverer.
It is the modern separation between classes of worker. Amazon employees are expected to work hard, but are much better taken care of.
Contract workers are worse than slaves in some ways. A slave was worth money, and that dictated a certain level of care. Contract workers? Don't have to be paid minimum wage, can be fired at will without major notice, are freely replaceable, etc... as long as somebody new is wiling to step up and take the work. Hell, they don't even have to pay the employment taxes and benefits like healthcare, vacation, sick time, and more.
Even the, Amazon wants a certain level of churn for many of its employees.
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Reminds me of a possibly apocryphal story I heard about old-time Russian barges. Some would be pulled by horses, but in some circumstances, there was lots of human labor available and it was cheaper than horses because the horses needed to be kept alive. With humans, they could pay salaries so low that the people could not afford enough food to replace the calories they burned pulling the barges. Then they could just move on to a fresh person to pull the barge.
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Gee thanks, the song of the volga boatmen just gained a completely new measure of emotional weight.
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Automation of hiring tasks can have many problems. I once applied online for a job at a company (B) that was looking for someone with my exact qualifications including the certifications needed for a very specific software suite. I had the certifications as I had worked for Company A that made the software suite, and the certifications were not easy to get. Within an hour, I got a rejection email saying I was not a match which was puzzling. I assumed I was rejected by algorithm as it was unlikely that a pe
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I doubt it. IT doesn't lend itself well to metrics and tracking, delivery and warehouse work do. Chances are these algorithms usually fire the lower end of workers, and losing the occasional decent worker is acceptable collateral damage. It only needs to be right 51% of the time for there to be a net positive impact from it continually running.
It's not like they're going to run out of unemployed people to keep that revolving door spinning. There was another article here recently that they set a goal for the
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Or not be able to find anyone. A recent story said Amazon executives were afraid their burn rate of employees at their warhouses (150% turnover rate) might cause them to run out of employable people [nytimes.com].
Inside Amazon's Seattle headquarters, the turnover has made some executives worry that the company may run out of workers. Paul Stroup, who until recently led human resources teams focused on understanding warehouse workers, felt disappointed that he "didn't hear long-term thinking" about the company's quick cycling through workers. He likened it to using fossil fuels despite climate change.
"We keep using them," he said, "even though we know we're slowly cooking ourselves."
Of course the easiest solution is to not buy from Amazon, but since that costs people absolutely nothing and requires no effort, it won't be done.
Truth is hard (Score:2, Insightful)
Execution of a response based on allegation is disgusting.
Execution of a response based on algorithm is worse.
Automated data is a human aid, not a substitute. That includes "well the computer said so". If you're getting ticketed for having a license plate that LOOKS like a match for a target yet is a completely different model, VIN, identity, etc there's no human in the chain, just a wet robot doing what The Computer Said.
At least when Guilty Until Never arising from human allegations (and the modern cultur
The Solution is Obvious. (Score:5, Insightful)
Instead of clicking on Amazon for your every need, start using other sites or go to the store yourself.
Amazon has clearly signaled for years that they will treat people as poorly as they are allowed to get away with. Only by casting your dollar vote can you help change that. As long as your dollar votes to say that Amazon can do whatever it wants, then they will do exactly that.
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how is a story about delivery boys' troubles any need for a "solution" on where I get my stuff? Here's a hint for you, young-un, mom and pop stores treated their employees like crap and underpaid them too. Singling out Amazon is silly. Stop eating and buying stuff if corporations offend you.
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Save money, live better (Score:2)
The solution is a federal jobs guarantee. There's plenty of work to do, but companies don't want to pay to do it. Let's do it ourselves. That's w
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We all know by now that Amazon delivery drivers are treated like shit.
IMHO, anybody who receives a home delivery from an Amazon delivery driver, should tip them one of their local currency, be it the pound, dollar or euro. One pound is little cash to me or anybody else who orders from Amazon but if everybody tipped like this for the service from the drivers it would, I guess, at least triple their pay and allow them to take time off or perhaps put it into their pension funds.
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tip them when they run up to porch and run away? nonsense, we're not there. reality is plenty of employees are treated like crap, singling out Amazon for special treatment is silly.
Wrong. (Score:2)
Voting with your wallet doesn't work when they all do the same thing. Let's hope the anti-trust Biden big tech busting group does something useful - I doubt it - but it's the only way; by law.
Amazon = No job security (Score:2)
Always remember (Score:5, Insightful)
Corporations don't care about you. They will always ask you to work too much, and won't reward or compensate you for it. They have no attachment to you at all. You should be consistently learning new things, updating your resume, and taking interviews, preparing for the day you eventually get shitcanned for no reason. Otherwise you'll find it much harder to start later on.
Life imitates SciFi (Score:5, Interesting)
"Manna" by Marshall Brain
https://marshallbrain.com/mann... [marshallbrain.com]
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This book is amazing. It a shame that, at the end, the author implies that humanity can only be saved by an Omnipotent, Omniscient and Omnipresent ... centralized governing UI. And I have this bugging feeling I've read about this somewhere else before.
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Oh crap, I meant centralized governing AI. Centralized governing UX/UI overlords are meant only for Gnome 3 topics... =/
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It may be that humanity's only hope is the OOO (omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent) AI as mentioned by the parent, but I'm hoping the AI is more of a Mycroft Holmes type (from "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress") which knows how to interact with individuals and bring out the best in them, than a brutal MCP, a murderous Skynet... or a psychopathic Ellison style AM.
Of course, who programmed the AI? I seriously doubt anyone with the means to afford it, wants an AI abiding by Asimov's Three Laws. In fact, I would
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Looking for inefficiency and waste of money (Score:5, Funny)
I wonder when the machines will realize how much money they're spending on Jeff Bezos, decide that's waste, and terminate him.
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Amazon has become the great evil (Score:5, Interesting)
I met Bezos fifteen or so years ago in New York when Amazon was first starting up and I was struck at how data driven he was; he was totally a numbers guy without a lot of understanding/tolerance of anything that couldn't be quantified. It really came across that he knew what he was doing and he knew how to measure it. So, when I see stories like this about Amazon, I can totally see the guy I met in the company. Amazon is totally bottom line focused and will take advantage of something that's successful although they don't understand it with a focus on exceeding their metrics.
Which means that people take second place at Amazon and it doesn't matter if you work for them or you supply to them, your fate rests on the numbers - if you have a bad string of luck, like this guy did, you're out but if you have a shitty knock off product with good margins, you're gonna become rich.
If you're a human wanting to do a good job, be treated fairly and have a good life, you're SOL when it comes to Amazon.
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Not just a bad string of luck, as the woman who had a good rating then suddenly next day was down rated. Traffic, line of drivers also picking up packages, tire issue, all regular parts of the business... Or in that woman's case, no reason given at all. She had a great rating (top three of the four possible ratings) then suddenly next day was completely suspended with no access to resources. Follow up on her inquiries were meaningless. Her car was repossessed. She still to this day has no idea why th
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The issue boils down to worse service, that does cost Amazon something in the long run. As these contract delivery people recognize that need to shave seconds at every opportunity, I am finding more packages dumped on my driveway or even literally tossed over my front gate, rather than left on my front porch. As this is normalized, more packages will go missing. My credit card company is already happy to instantly accept my assertion that a delivery never arrived, without my having to contact the vendor
Careful what you wish for. (Score:3)
thanks for the info (Score:5, Funny)
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Why was that modded funny? Are you a well known advocate of Amazon shopping? Perhaps even an Amazon employee?
For other reasons, I stopped doing business with Amazon about two decades ago.
At least once I sort of considered working for Amazon, but for me the fatal question was "Is there any reasonable chance that by working at Amazon I could influence Amazon to be less evil?" The answer is obviously in the negative. Many flavors of negative. As far as I know, Amazon doesn't have any employees with such job re
The consequence of error ... (Score:3)
on Amazon is negligible, they will find a new hire quickly. A small amount of training needed, not too expensive.
The cost to the driver is large. But Bezos does not care.
The Good News (Score:2)
In my area, there is a pretty huge worker shortage. My nephew got a job paying over $20 (with benefits) sorting pre-packed food in an air-conditioned warehouse, and they are hurting for more workers. With this army vet's work ethic, it should be pretty easy landing another job, especially as the Phoenix job market looks pretty open, as well.
If Amazon continues to loose good workers via algorithm, it's going to come around to bite them in the rear. Their loss, every other company's gain.
You're not "fired by the bot" (Score:5, Insightful)
Saying the machine is firing you lets the people screwing you over off the hook. Don't let that happen. People are doing this to you. People are making your life worse. Stop letting them do that.
How often does this have to be said? (Score:2)
Like Management using Trouble Ticket Rates (Score:5, Insightful)
Big companies like to use ticket rate closure to rate staff, but doesnt difference tiers for tickets. And, the low performers will cherry pick the easy tickets that can be quickly closed. Or more often people wont solve the harder tickets, to keep up their ticket stats in the monthly stats.
Doctors offices have this problem now too, they have a ETA for each patient, ran by the insurance or corporate heads, and a few late people or big problems can throw off the entire day.
I've seen this problem on installers and contractors, HQ gives an alloted time to complete a job, but they have no idea what the onsite setup is like, lots of issues can pop up.
I had this one Boss fire an IT guy, for not completing a remote datacenter job quick enough, the IT guy drove to our datacenter in a new office, and the site was brand new installation, there was cardboard boxes, wire and metal bits all over the the server room, so he cleaned it up. Got fired for not being quick enough.
This will just make people do "just enough", race towards the bottom of quality.
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Why you should not do business with AWS (Score:2)
I don't know how this guy can be shocked, the Amazon logo is literally and figuratively the phallic embodiment of Jeff Bezos's dick swinging contest. He doesn't care about any of his employees in any way at all, his goal is to exploit the traits that make you a good person so that he can go on a joy ride through space. It's really that simple.
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What level of employee? (Score:2)
I have this vision of a C level executive getting fired by bot. Not going to happen, I know, because everyone knows that C-Level executives count as people, unlike the rest of us.
I read that article... (Score:2)
and realized that Amazon invented the Random Indian Name Generator,(tm) their most innovative piece of tech yet.
How do you know ... (Score:2)
Keep working and report to the boss at the end of shift, "They're firing all the best employees." When he says he didn't get any such message, just reply "Hmmm. Interesting. Have they replaced you with a shell script?"
Drivers need an union and DOT rules amazon pushes (Score:2)
Drivers need an union and DOT rules amazon pushes them to unsafe levels to hit the quota
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Re: An anti-Amazon hit-piece (Score:2)