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Comment by relax88 | Hacker News Reader

The whole concept of at-will employment and employees made to look like contractors is the issue here.

This is a labour rights issue, not an “Amazon is evil” issue.

I don’t see any problem with an algorithm that fires unproductive workers, provided it has real cause to do so.

Instead of bellyaching about how evil Amazon is, perhaps we should be asking why it is so easy to classify someone as a contractor so that you can deny them benefits and terminate them without cause?

Beyond that, why is at-will employment even a thing?

For Canada and most of Europe, the idea that you can be fired for any reason on the spot just because your employer feels like it is ridiculous.

They either have valid cause, or they should have to pay you severance. The courts should not by default side with the mega-corps.

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It's a double edged sword, difficulty firing people will always make hiring more difficult; it becomes a much bigger risk.

At will employment wouldn't be such an issue if we had a more substantial government safety net.

One side of the sword makes hiring more difficult, the other side means you become homeless, lose your health insurance, and cannot provide for your family. It can literally be life threatening to the worker.

The power differential favours the employer so much in this situation that it is ridiculous.

I agree if there was a social safety net like UBI this would be a non issue, but we’re nowhere near that.

On a one by one case, this is very sympathetic.

However, if a company has eager competitors which can leverage an advantage, then keeping the 10 or 20% of a workforce which is minimally productive or counter productive can jeopardize a whole company and all its employees.

Say intel were to not fire low productivity employees but AMD does, then AMD can capitalize on this, intel loses share and then intel folds subsidiaries and so on. On the other hand AMD would be on a hiring spree to meet the added demand.

I agree with your logic here, but ideally Intel and AMD have to follow the same rules and find cause to terminate their employees OR pay out severance based on duration of service.

You might follow this up by saying that this decreases global competitiveness as well, and you’re absolutely right.

When say for example HiSilicon’s employees work 12hrs a day 6 days a week and live in bunks on company property it would certainly be hard for Intel/AMD to compete. We then start getting into issues of worker rights being baked into international trade agreements.

When do we collectively agree to stop the race to the bottom ? Or do we just accept that labour has no value and humans are expendable?

I think most of the problems with this issue are rooted in the fact that capital is becoming increasingly more profitable than labour. It reminds me of “Capital In the Twenty-first Century” by Thomas Piketty.

Companies providing welfare is inefficient, worse for workers, and doesn't help the jobless (of which there will be more if companies are responsible for welfare). Welfare is better left to the state.

I agree with your points. The race to the bottom is a problem.

Addressing the international aspect via trade agreements is a good step.

Better unemployment benefits between jobs would help the domestic aspect.

There is unemployment insurance and COBRA, although I agree unemployment (without the temporary pandemic increase) isn't really enough especially with COBRA premiums. I do think things are slowly going in that direction though.

Allow employers to fire their employees without giving a cause for the first few months, giving them time to evaluate them. Problem solved.

What if the company starts struggling to make payroll 3 months in? What if the employee works hard the first 3 months then stops showing up?

Regulations like that just entrench the biggest players because they can afford the legal headaches of firing. Great way to incentivize people to start companies elsewhere.

Apparently all the companies in the building I'm in didn't get the memo. There is a risk yes, then again there are also way more rewards for the company than the employee so you give some, you get some.

Nobody is claiming hiring would go to zero. Do you know for a fact how many employees would be in your building if laws were different?

My guess would be zero more than now. None of the startups is limited by getting employees and I'm almost certain no funding would be gained by allowing at will employment as it is a non-issue anyways (as it is already possible to do so by just hiring contractors but nobody does this).

edit: Consider that most people would request considerable more than they earn here now if at-will employment would be the case, offsetting any "gains" you might consider. In Europe wages are considerably lower than the US.

Why do you think the vast majority of startups choose the US despite dramatically higher dev salaries?

Because that's what everyone(TM) does. Don't judge what makes sense based on what people do.

If they stop showing up, you would have legal cause to fire them.

That's an extreme example obviously, but still one where there might be significant legal costs if the firee lawyers up.

Not being able to afford an employee is obviously a valid reason to dismiss them. So is them refusing to work. But the scenario you describe is contrived anyway: Someone motivated enough to work hard won't randomly stop being so.

The "legal headaches" are only a serious problem if your legal system is broken.

Which is what is the norm in most European countries (length depends on country and usually duration of the contract).

The Amazon drones sprinting around doing package deliveries are certainly governed by a similar algorithmic approach.

When I and I think a lot of the tech community see that, it looks ugly and dehumanizing, and the algo under the hood plays no small role in why.

This news has similar markings. If you feel there is no issue with Amazon’s Algos and their leverage over a vulnerable workforce: that’s your ethics and I won’t fault you.

But, your blind trust that an algorithmic solution to PeopleOps is problem-free is indicative of a common blindspot for techies. It causes a fair amount of social issues downstream when the algos meet the people being governed by them but the industry that creates the algos can’t see the nuance.

I’m not suggesting that there are no issues with algorithmic HR operations.

I’m suggesting that the abuses of such a system will only be solved in the courts, and that those courts decide the rules based on legislation that outlines worker protections.

Corporations exist to make a profit and you can’t expect them to act against the profit motive out of the kindness of their own hearts, you must compel them.

Corporations are led by people and we expect people to be moral. Seeking profit doesn't excuse you from morality.

Legislation is a good idea as well

Morality is a lot more subjective than labour law.

Do you want to believe on faith that business owners will act in a way that matches your morals?

I certainly don’t.

This is ultimately a human decision. The algorithm gives a score but a human decides what a good score is. Doing this at scale is no different than hiring a hundred middle managers to eye ball it.

At the end of the day- if your company wants to fire the least productive 10% of your workforce on a regular basis to motivate employees, you'll be able to do so.

This is a business practice issue and not a technology one

This is a labour rights issue, not an “Amazon is evil” issue.

There's a lot of room for both to be true. There's no need to set up a dichotomy here, especially when you consider Amazon's attempts to curtail unionization [0] and their lobbying to exempt employees from labor protection [1].

At-will employment is a thing because big corporations (like Amazon) have lobbied for it [2].

0 - https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/16/technology/amazon-unions-...

1 - https://apnews.com/article/technology-business-washington-se...

2 - https://mainebeacon.com/corporate-lobby-groups-set-sights-on...

> For Canada and most of Europe, the idea that you can be fired for any reason on the spot just because your employer feels like it is ridiculous.

The counterbalance is supposed be that you can quit whenever you want and aren't owned by your employer. Economic imbalances and capital having more power than labor affects that.

I can't think of any country in which the employee has to justify why they quit.

>> For Canada and most of Europe, the idea that you can be fired for any reason on the spot just because your employer feels like it is ridiculous.

As employer you may see it differently. e.g if you don't want to be fired make your own company and rule it as you like.

Clearly not a perspective born out of much empathy. Very few people have the requirements to even attempt to start a company and out of that limited pool, most fail within the first year, with luck playing a large role in which companies survive the first 3 years.

It's also bullshit - they do not want anyone to take that advice because employers cannot achieve anything without their employees so if even 20% of their workforce took that advice, their company would implode.

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