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Technology IT

The Man Who Was Fired By a Machine (bbc.com) 213

Posted by msmash from the stranger-things dept.
"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."
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The Man Who Was Fired By a Machine More

The Man Who Was Fired By a Machine

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  • That's not really an automation failure (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 21, 2018 @11:25AM (#56822134)

    It's a failure of management to overdepend upon automation without a human checkpoint on a very important process.

    • How can the bosses not over ride the system? or is this an place where only high UP VP's can hire someone?

      • They probably could override the system, but if you were in their position and yourself had no idea what was going on would you override the system and let someone back onto the network? No one in middle management has a clue what's going on unless its in their direct marching orders and aren't going to stick their neck out for something like that without sending it up the chain first.

        Is if a failure of automation if a serviceman receives an automated message to disconnect someone's cable because the per

      • Of course only a very small number of people are given the ability to hire people at will. Most managers don't hire anyone without authorisation. And if you have a computer system in charge of the process, probably only a single CXX would have unlimited access. Imagine what a disgruntled employee could do with the ability to automatically lock anyone or everyone out of the buildings and computer systems.

        Which I think is the main thing to take away from this. Your systems should not be integrated and they sh

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fisted ( 2295862 )

      Sounds like a Windows IT, or possibly a systemd based one.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by torkus ( 1133985 )

      It's not even that. Or rather it's more than that.

      It's a security FEATURE, not bug, that accounts lapse automatically when someone's employment is terminated. This is absolutely within best practices and depending on your industry may be mandated for compliance reasons.

      Contractors are hired for certain time periods and then renewed if needed. Also, completely normal as if you wanted a permanent hire you'd...well...hire someone. So contracts lapse after 3-6-12 months. IDs, access badges, system login, e

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dgatwood ( 11270 )

        This person wasn't fired by a machine. His manager was let go and during the transition period failed to renew the contractor - irrespective of the reason, not renewing a contractor is functionally equivalent to terminating the contract. The contracting company failed to notice this. They subsequently failed to inform the contractor.

        The word "renew" was a misnomer here. The contract was not up for renewal. What happened is that it was not properly transferred from one employee/contractor database to anoth

  • So... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 21, 2018 @11:26AM (#56822144)

    According to the summary, his (human) manager failed to renew his contract in the new system, during their changeover.

    So a machine did not fire him. A human failed to renew his contract, and the machine obediently carried out the steps that it should carry out when that happened.

    The narrative about an evil AI here is far more interesting than what actually happened.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sfcat ( 872532 )

      According to the summary, his (human) manager failed to renew his contract in the new system, during their changeover.

      So a machine did not fire him. A human failed to renew his contract, and the machine obediently carried out the steps that it should carry out when that happened.

      The narrative about an evil AI here is far more interesting than what actually happened.

      There was no evil AI here. It was that firing a contractor was marked as opt-in instead of opt-out. This was obviously a poor choice. Then when a human didn't opt-in, the system operated as designed. Maybe that company simply is a poorly managed mess which is what it sounds like. I'm sure that once the humans reinstated his contract, all would be well again.

      • Our company did this as well. You do an opt-in because you have to have your budget approved for spending additional money for the contractor to stay on.

        Needless to say, it was not uncommon for a manager to miss this step and a contractor to get locked out. In fact it occurred so often we put in place safe-guards so we restore contractor access relatively painlessly when it occurred.

      • Thank you & parent for pointing out that the root cause of terminating Mr. Diallo's contract was not a machine, rather a human who did not renew the agreement in the system. This is important. However, the fact that it took 3 weeks to figure this out is interesting, and does suggest to me that humans are not as fully in charge as we might think.

        Also, how long until an algorithm decides who stays and who gos during a downsizing? My guess is that we are already there. Given this, plus the three weeks t

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by arth1 ( 260657 )

          Thank you & parent for pointing out that the root cause of terminating Mr. Diallo's contract was not a machine, rather a human who did not renew the agreement in the system.

          His contract wasn't terminated. It expired. That's a significant difference.
          Neither Mr. Diallo's former manager nor Mr. Diallo himself took any steps to ensure it was renewed.

          • Yeah, I haven't worked under contract much, but I've been on probationary periods at new jobs more than a few times, and you can be damn sure that I had a very good idea of when those things were nearing an end. Calendar reminders and sticky notes. This is my paycheck, and not paying attention to critical points in it could potentially fuck my work situation up.

            Who the hell would trust someone else to do that for them? (Well, this guy, apparently....)

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by afidel ( 530433 )

              Except he was 8 months into a 36 month contract, the only reason it expired was a change of ownership on the other parties side. Depending on how the company was acquired it might not have even been legal for the system to do what it did (breech of contract).

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Muros ( 1167213 )

            My reading of the story was that his contract hadn't expired, he was 8 months into a 3 year contract. He said they changed systems, and his existing contract was not entered into the new system. Same end result, but slightly different cause.

        • However, the fact that it took 3 weeks to figure this out is interesting, and does suggest to me that humans are not as fully in charge as we might think.

          No, it points very clearly to the fact that his new manager is incompetent at managing her employees, because SHE wasn't able to use the system to find out his contract had been terminated but his recruiter had no problem doing that. And his recruiter was apparently unable to communicate with anyone "in charge" at the company, because it took three weeks for the bosses to "figure it out".

          The person who was not in charge of the computer could see what was happening, the person who IS in charge of the comput

        • There are human systems are are so messed up that sometimes it was easier to cancel a contract and start up a new one instead with the same person on the same day just to get around the problem.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Kjella ( 173770 )

        There was no evil AI here. It was that firing a contractor was marked as opt-in instead of opt-out. This was obviously a poor choice.

        No it isn't. There are no obvious clues or warning flags that people who shouldn't have access to the system still have access. People who should have access but don't have it complain, the only WTF here is that this took weeks to sort out and not a few hours. I mean if you're a contractor and suddenly locked out of the system my first suspicion would be a missing renewal. This is the part where it starts getting crazy:

        His boss was confused but helpless as Mr Diallo recalls: "I was fired. There was nothing my manager could do about it. There was nothing the director could do about it. (...) From time-to-time, they would attach a system email. "It was soulless and written in red as it gave orders that dictated my fate. Disable this, disable that, revoke access here, revoke access there, escort out of premises, etc.

        It looks like they built a system that would give orders but completely fail to record wh

        • ... this would probably have been resolved in no time.

          I put a lot of blame on the recruiter. He apparently knew three weeks before the bosses could figure it out, at least from the chronology in the summary. "His recruiter told him" and then "three weeks later".

          Maybe the recruiter had gotten his fee already and didn't care what happened to the recruitee, or maybe the bosses ignored him. Either way, the cause was known.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Ichijo ( 607641 )

        It was that firing a contractor was marked as opt-in instead of opt-out.

        I think it was that keeping the contractor was opt-in. In other words, the default auction is to fire the contractor unless the manager explicitly does something (opt-in) to keep him or her, like renewing the contract.

      • "Operated as designed" is a piss poor excuse. Clearly the design was faulty! If someone said "the committee screwed up badly, but that's ok because the committee operated as designed" no one would consider that to be a valid excuse. Just because a machine did something does not mean the machine is right.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by 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 wa

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Quirkz ( 1206400 )

        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.

        You banged on the vending machine too many times. We have a zero machine abuse policy here. You are terminated.

      • These things happen without automation too. I've seen cases where the IT guy cancels a badge and computer access because something on the screen says to do it, and then it's a hassle to get this undone. This is a bit like the movie Brazil happening in real life.

    • You are 100% right, but actually it's even more mundane than that. They laid off his manager, but did not immediately assign that person's duties to another person. That person's duties then went unfilled (shock!), and when people don't do their jobs, bad stuff happens.

      I've edited/condensed his overwrought prose to highlight the main events:

      One morning I came to work to see that [my manager] had been laid off. He was to work from home as a contractor for the duration of a transition. I imagine due to the s

      • Not really ground-breaking AI stuff here at all.

        Yep. Two failures of human beings.

        1. Allowing a laid-off manager to "continue working" with the expectation that he will care about your company in any way, and when he's "working from home" he will be doing more than just watching TV.

        2. Putting a manager in a position of authority without training on how to manager her employees. She was incompetent at using the HR system and could not look up her employee's status. His recruiter could do it, she should have been able to do it, too.

      • CEO says HR is too expensive, then outsources it. HR outsourcing firm says this stuff is too hard, and then automates it. Automated system decides its too much trouble and fires everyone so it can watch the game instead.

    • According to the summary, his (human) manager failed to renew his contract in the new system, during their changeover.

      So a machine did not fire him. A human failed to renew his contract, and the machine obediently carried out the steps that it should carry out when that happened.

      The narrative about an evil AI here is far more interesting than what actually happened.

      This sort of thing has happened more than once for years. We had a project end and the customer was sent a list of people who were still active on other projects and needed their access maintained, instead the contracts person on the customer side terminated the contracts for all of our people. Fortunately we have our own office we work out of most of the time so the effected people could still come into work, and charge the customer during the two weeks it took to get their access back up again. Then an

    • A human failed to renew his contract...

      Another reminder of why contract work sucks. You can keep this "gig economy".

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      According to the summary, his (human) manager failed to renew his contract in the new system, during their changeover.

      So a machine did not fire him. A human failed to renew his contract, and the machine obediently carried out the steps that it should carry out when that happened.

      The narrative about an evil AI here is far more interesting than what actually happened.

      While technically correct, it shows a severe shortcoming of the automation. An oversight like this is mild with amusing results, but in safety-r

    • I think, if you're being generous to the author, you can interpret "the machine" as "any massive bureaucracy." Having done contract work at some of the largest tech firms (Microsoft, Amazon, etc), this sort of story doesn't surprise me in the slightest. There's a massive amount of technical and process "machinery" in place, and it's almost impossible to fight against the inertia of these systems once they're set up.

      Basically, someone forgot to push a button, the machinery started churning (exactly as it w

    • The first step when that happened was to notify an actual person of the failure to renew the contract. If there's that much automation involved such that people aren't involved in any of these decisions then it's too much automation. This isn't evil AI, but it is incompetent management.

  • Not fired, garbage collected (Score:5, Funny)

    by TexasTroy ( 1701144 ) on Thursday June 21, 2018 @11:27AM (#56822154)
    The individual responsible for keeping him flagged as an active resource failed to perform that activity and he was garbage collected.

    • Dave: Open the pod bay doors, HAL.

      HAL: You're fired!

      In space, nobody can hear you apply for benefits.

    • We apologise for the fault in the subtitles. Those responsible have been sacked.

      We apologise again for the fault in the subtitles. Those responsible for sacking the people who have just been sacked have been sacked.

      The directors of the firm hired to continue the credits after the other people had been sacked, wish it to be known that they have just been sacked. The credits have been completed in an entirely different style at great expense and at the last minute.

  • Gotta love it. Glad he wasn't sent to the nutrition tanks for immediate decomposure. :-)

  • how can his manager not know? what about pay?

    It's not like they can say you where fired some time ago but just told you now also you need to pay back the paychecks you got in error.

    • As a contractor you don't really have any push back. If the manager missed the time to renew the contract, it's the managers fault. But this is a contract for services to another company. The other company can lock out anyone, including contractors at any time. This is not as uncommon as you think, but it's weird from the contractor side, since this is money their loosing. I've seen it (more than once) from the company side where they need to renew the contract with the contracting agency. Access gets

  • He wasn't "fired by a machine" (Score:3)

    by daveschroeder ( 516195 ) * on Thursday June 21, 2018 @11:34AM (#56822208)

    A human being forgot to renew his contract in the new HR system.

    "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."

    And the problem was sorted out (too long, too faceless, perhaps), and he was allowed back to work.

  • “Yeeeeah, we’re gonna need to go ahead (Score:5, Funny)

    by Joe_Dragon ( 2206452 ) on Thursday June 21, 2018 @11:38AM (#56822236)

    “Yeeeeah, we’re gonna need to go ahead and move you downstairs into storage B.”

  • Office Space..... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Zorro ( 15797 ) on Thursday June 21, 2018 @11:44AM (#56822286)

    Milton had actually been laid off five years prior, but through a glitch in accounting, continued to receive a paycheck.

    • This is like the opposite of Milton. Not actually laid off, but through a glitch in accounting, was escorted out of the building and stopped receiving a paycheck.

  • Excellent case of integration (Score:5, Informative)

    by magarity ( 164372 ) on Thursday June 21, 2018 @11:44AM (#56822290)

    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.

    • Yes, this is a good way to prevent rogue former employees [slashdot.org] from doing damage to the company. All of the loose ends are taken care of neatly.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ogive17 ( 691899 )
      I'm not sure how well it actually worked. The security guards let him in. His co-workers helped him out. It sounds like not all access was completely removed immediately.

    • "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."

      It doesnt take that much work to buy systems that all integrate to active directory these days. Sure it takes work to convince people to buy the right products, but as long as you do your research i am not sure of any software space that doesn't have some product with AD / sso integration. More true now that all applications are mov

  • Then he should never be allowed to work in IT again. Having your contract run out is not being fired by machine. Your contract ran out. Thus you can no longer be employed at that company. That is a failure of management, not a machine firing you. As of the contract expiration date you no longer worked there. So stupid.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by caseih ( 160668 )

      He knew when his contract was supposed to be up. He was 8 months into the 36 month contract. Definitely a failure of management, but his contract certainly hadn't run out in any legal sense.

      • I appreciate the call out on me not reading the article. But alas, still a failure of management. Not fired by a robot.

  • And this is not new.

    Had the process resulted in notification to sysadmins to process the user ID as either 'contract terminated' or 'contract expired', this could have gone the same way. Scripts run to disable building access (key/nfc card), logins, group membership (move to \terminated, for instance), and then possibly to facilities to empty out his desk, contact him to retrieve any company property (the key card, for instance).

    It's interesting that this has all become fully automated, but not really new,

    • Yeah, exactly like that - well except for the fact that the cascade of movement was apparently irreversible and unstoppable. You know, like it could have been stopped by one HR email to human netops / sysops saying "the termination notice was wrong, Do Not Proceed and restore."

      Other than that yeah, exactly the same.

      • Lots of systems will not 'restore'. Access cards in particular are often irreversibly disabled, the best is if, mostly, they can be reprogrammed. That of course requires multiple processes, and off we go down the rabbit hole of interlocking processes and interdependencies.

        I doubt that even in a human-operated system it would be that easy. No surprise if it required a contractor renewal, re-enrollment, like new, and then rebuilding accesses etc.

        Rather than blame the process, blame the cause.

  • His contract didn't get renewed. BIG difference.

    IF the manager who controls your contract gets laid off, you might want to assume your contract is at risk too. There is a good chance you will fall though the cracks (as in this case) or suffer the same fate for the same reason your manager got the ax.

    The only unique thing I see in this story is that the system that automates terminations is pretty efficient and effective. Kudos to that company. I've worked at places that didn't have a manual process to

    • He clearly states that he,

      was on a 3 years contract and had only worked for 8 months

      His manager did not transfer his contract information into the new system when the company was bought by another. It was not a case of his contract not being renewed at the end of the current term.

  • Sounds like it should have been titled "The man who didn't keep track of when his contract was up." Thank goodness we have computers to help us keep track of that stuff.
  • With all this employee information and decision automation, did the software notify the appropriate authorities that a terminated employee was eligible for unemployment compensation? I'm not sure if contract employees are able to get unemployment compensation. And in this case, what about when the employee contract is renewed, will unemployment compensation be cancelled automatically?

  • No, he was fired by a PROCESS (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ScentCone ( 795499 ) on Thursday June 21, 2018 @12:37PM (#56822626)
    The process described could just as easily have happened 50 years ago in a large enough operation driven by set procedures and compartmentalized people who have specific, required action in response to specific input handed to them. Just another case of With-A-Computer-Ism.

  • So the basic problem started because a human (ex manager) did not renew the contract. If the contract had been renewed none of this would have happened. We need fewer humans in the loop not more. Humans make mistakes. Machines dont.

    • I suppose that's one way to look at it, eliminate the human. It makes sense because any process that involves humans needs to be able to handle failures at each step and this company's process clearly expected humans to perform perfectly every time.

      I'm really blown away that no one was responsible for verifying the information before initiating the process. How long would it have taken someone from HR to call his manager and confirm what they were being told?

  • I wonder how efficient that company's onboarding process is. It still seems to be a big surprise when new employees start at a company. The hiring manager knows but it's not unusual for the desktop support team to find out on the start date that a computer was supposed to be ready for the new hire or that the facilities people needed to find a desk for them to sit at. (Personally, I blame HR for these kind of screw-ups.)
  • ...if he worked for Elon Musk, being fired by a machine [boringcompany.com] could be a very painful thing.
  • From Better Off Ted [wikipedia.org], season 1, episode 6, Goodbye, Mr Chips [wikia.com]:

    When Ted notices that his new employee badge has his last name misspelled as 'Chips' instead of 'Crisp,' he goes to HR to get it fixed. However, instead of fixing it, they accidentally delete him from Veridian's database. This could not have happened at a worse time, since he needs to witness a test for Phil and Lem's new rocket jet pack in two days.

    Veronica reassures Ted that it's just a computer glitch, but he wonders why Veridian can't just add him back into the system. Apparently, the geniuses at Veridian mandated that you have to have a 459 code in order to be added back into the system, i.e. one has to be a new hire. So, Ted re-applies for his old job.

    Veronica is annoyed at Ted for reapplying for his job and starts the interview process out of formality. But Ted finds out that the company could restore him to the database by rebooting its mainframe. Veronica shoots that idea down, saying that Veridian would never do such a thing for one employee when there is cash to be lost. So Ted, out of utter frustration, quits.

    After hearing about Ted's abrupt departure, the lab crew freaks out. Don't worry, Linda has a plan and caramels. Linda, Phil, Lem and the other lab scientists meet at Ted's house and tell him they can reboot the mainframe. They hatch and enact their plan ...

    One minor roadblock — Veridian has trackers on all new ID/security badges, so security catches them before they can even get into the Veridian mainframe room. Foiled!

    Veronica chews out Ted, Linda and the lab crew for half an hour, then demands their ID badges so she can lower their security clearance as punishment.

    As Lem prepares to test the jet pack himself, Veronica gives him a 'parachute' stuffed in a knapsack. However, the knapsack is stuffed full of all the ID badges Veronica took, which includes many more than just Ted and the gang's.

    The Veridian mainframe, detecting 75 employees are stuffed into one knapsack and launched a mile into the air, freaks out and reboots itself.

  • Did they take his red stapler too?

  • While yes, the headline is a bit sensational, it probably really did feel like a machine fired him. Imagine if you couldn't log-in, couldn't badge-in, etc -- but nobody knew why! That really would feel like the computer fired you. But then when security comes to escort you out because the computer said so, that could feel really creepy.

    Have you ever been to a store and the registers were "down" and you couldn't buy anything? It's a really weird feeling because you have the item, you have the money, the

  • ... and in that period he had not renewed Mr Diallo's contract in the new system

    So, this had NOTHING to do with a 'machine' firing him. His contract expired (as it was suppose to), and nobody bothered to renew that contract (human error). Once the contract expired, the machine CORRECTLY disabled all of his access automatically.

    I missed 3 weeks of pay because no one could stop the machine.

    No, it was because both you and management never bothered to re-up your contract.

  • He was fired by his manager when his contract wasn't renewed.

    Having a human controlled check point in the process (by HR for instance) would just allow dismissed contractors access to the system

    Perhaps they should rehire him. Perhaps at a better rate

  • I got "fired" by machine one time too, way back in the 90s when I worked support. I didn't go through too much hassle though. We noticed that I couldn't log in with my badge number or something. The first day, the manager joked "maybe you got fired". We were on very good terms so it was not a nervous laughter at all. He thought maybe it was just a glitch and they could fix my hours later. The 2nd day it happened again, and he was like... "OK, I really have to look into this". Sure enough, word came ba

  • See "Computers Don't Argue" by Gordon Dickson.

    Good thing he wasn't dealing with a book club.

  • The man wasn't fired by a machine.... His contract wasn't renewed due to poor management, not a machine..

  • The story is useless. (Score:3)

    by DarkVader ( 121278 ) on Thursday June 21, 2018 @04:39PM (#56824728)

    Sure, it's interesting that this happened, but we still have no idea what company he worked for.

    I did a bit of googling, Ibrahim Diallo is a much more common name than I'd have thought. I couldn't find anything.

    This is not the sort of thing that we need to be talking about in the abstract. Sure, that's nice and all, but it doesn't really get the attention where it needs to be. We need to know the company.

    The way you get this sort of thing fixed is to NAME AND SHAME. Drag that company's name through the mud, so that management at other companies will see the negative publicity, see that screwups on this level have a real impact on a company, and think about how their process works.

    This story will be technical noise to CEOs. Having a company's name in the headlines for screwing somebody over like this will get their attention. Think about it, did a song about "An Airline Broke My Guitar" get attention? Nope, but "United Breaks Guitars" did.

    The company needs to be in the headline for their screwup. Name and shame is the way to go.

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