<story><title>Amazon is using algorithms with little human intervention to fire Flex workers</title><url>https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/06/amazon-is-firing-flex-workers-using-algorithms-with-little-human-intervention/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kjhughes</author><text>Bad automated policy is bad because the &lt;i&gt;policy&lt;/i&gt; is bad, not because automation is bad.&lt;p&gt;Automation applies policy evenly.  An employee can be sure that the firing wasn&amp;#x27;t due to a boss having a bad day, not liking the employee personally, not noticing worse performance of colleagues, etc.&lt;p&gt;The real problem comes when automated assessment is poorly designed.  And it&amp;#x27;s a shame not only because of the heartless actions that impact real people&amp;#x27;s lives and the needless public relations damage that is bound to emerge.  It&amp;#x27;s also a shame because of the lost opportunity to help workers&amp;#x27; performance improve via feedback at a level of detail that the automated systems &lt;i&gt;could&lt;/i&gt; provide.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;I would take that system over the subjective, unevenly applied, unclear criteria that&amp;#x27;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  No surprises to the workers, and management has to own the criteria rather than hide behind unpublished automation.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&amp;#x27;s going to prove to be quite the vice.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>brundolf</author><text>Totally disagree. No system of rules could ever handle all the obscure edge-cases that humans can. Just look to all the Google account automated-flagging issues that pop up on HN, for reference.&lt;p&gt;What could maybe work is an automated system for the &amp;quot;easy 90%&amp;quot;, paired with an appeals system well-staffed by human beings. But that isn&amp;#x27;t Amazon&amp;#x27;s plan (or Google&amp;#x27;s, etc), because that 10% will cost much more than the first 90%, so it&amp;#x27;s easier for them to just write it off as a loss. And at their scale, that margin of error translates to thousands of potentially-ruined lives.</text></comment>
<story><title>Amazon is using algorithms with little human intervention to fire Flex workers</title><url>https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/06/amazon-is-firing-flex-workers-using-algorithms-with-little-human-intervention/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kjhughes</author><text>Bad automated policy is bad because the &lt;i&gt;policy&lt;/i&gt; is bad, not because automation is bad.&lt;p&gt;Automation applies policy evenly.  An employee can be sure that the firing wasn&amp;#x27;t due to a boss having a bad day, not liking the employee personally, not noticing worse performance of colleagues, etc.&lt;p&gt;The real problem comes when automated assessment is poorly designed.  And it&amp;#x27;s a shame not only because of the heartless actions that impact real people&amp;#x27;s lives and the needless public relations damage that is bound to emerge.  It&amp;#x27;s also a shame because of the lost opportunity to help workers&amp;#x27; performance improve via feedback at a level of detail that the automated systems &lt;i&gt;could&lt;/i&gt; provide.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;I would take that system over the subjective, unevenly applied, unclear criteria that&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;s going to prove to be quite the vice.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>WalterBright</author><text>Any algorithm can and will be gamed. Making it public means people will adhere to every detail, and yet still be unproductive.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s even a name for it: &amp;quot;work to rule&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Work-to-rule&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Work-to-rule&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>