Page 78 - Bloomberg Businessweek July 2018

◼ TECHNOLOGY Bloomberg Businessweek July 2, 2018

facial recognition and recommend that police test problems in other ways. Executives recognized that
regularly for algorithmic bias. In April a group of civil poorly defined roles, dysfunctional teams, and
rights organizations said it was “categorically unethi- peremptory managers were among the factors often
cal” to deploy real-time facial recognition analysis of left unexamined, according to a person familiar with
footage captured by police body cameras. the matter. Workers facing termination also lacked a
Some, including the EFF’s Lynch, argue that forum to discuss such factors, the person says.
their concerns will only increase as the technol- Amazon is borrowing a page from union griev-
ogy improves. An accurate image merged with ance processes that don’t apply to most corporate
personal information about an individual such as employees. But only about 30 percent of those who
location, family ties, voting records, and the like appeal their manager’s criticisms prevail, meaning
can be pulled together by authorities using prod- they can keep their jobs or seek new ones within the
ucts such as those from Palantir Technologies Inc. company with different bosses, according to peo-
to create a digital dossier on people without their ple familiar with the matter. Eighteen months after
consent or knowledge. “Even if we have a 100 per- its debut, the hearing process has created resent-
cent accurate system, I don’t want that system,” ment and raised questions about fairness, according
Lynch says. “That means we can no longer walk to current and former workers as well as attorneys
around and interact with people without the gov- familiar with their situations. “It’s a kangaroo court,”
ernment knowing who we are, where we are, and says George Tamblyn, a Seattle employment lawyer
who we’re talking to.” �Lizette Chapman and who helped one former Amazon worker plan her
Joshua Brustein appeal earlier this year. “My impression of the pro-
cess is it’s totally unfair.”
THE BOTTOM LINE Microsoft says it’s cut its facial recognition Amazon declined to share metrics about the
error rate to zero for most demographics, but as with rivals, those
numbers could rise in the real world. program or answer specific questions. “Pivot is a
uniquely Amazonian program that was thoughtfully
designed to provide a fair and transparent process

22 for employees who need support,” the company
Inside Amazon’s said in an emailed statement. “When employees
are placed in Pivot, they have the option of working
People’s Court with their manager and HR to improve with a clear
plan forward, of leaving Amazon with severance,
or of appealing if they feel they shouldn’t be in the
program. Just over a year into the program, we’re
● Workers refereeing one another’s firings pleased with the support it offers our employees and “There’s a

has raised questions about fairness we’re continuing to iterate based on employee feed- huge financial
back and their needs.” incentive
Employees whose direct managers recently to reduce
Jane was working in Amazon.com Inc.’s Seattle head- changed tend to make compelling appeals, says turnover, if you
quarters when she was asked to a meeting with her a person familiar with the process. Workers who can do it in a
manager and a human resources representative. lose still get to choose between severance pay or a sensible way”
Under a program called Pivot, they gave her a doc- performance- improvement plan. The downsides
ument outlining concerns about her work perfor- of appealing include the stress of litigating a case
mance and spelled out three choices. She could against one’s boss before strangers and trying to get
quit and receive severance pay, spend the next sev- along with a manager after publicly challenging him.
eral weeks trying to keep her job by meeting certain Jane says her manager had recently changed her
performance goals, or square off with her manager job and set impossible new goals for her (deadlines
in a videoconference version of the Thunderdome, within days for projects that required weeks). She
pleading her case with a panel of co-workers while had an hourlong meeting with a company- appointed
her boss argued against her. Jane, who asked that “career ambassador” who listened to her concerns
her real name not be used to discuss a personal mat- and said she’d have a few thousand words to rebut
ter, chose the last one. her manager’s complaints about her performance.
The employee appeal process is Amazon’s lat- The ambassador later suggested revisions to her
est experiment in managing its growing workforce draft, including removing details Jane thought were
of more than 500,000. When it announced the pro- important for the panel to consider.
gram last year, the company acknowledged it had Jane had the option of choosing one manager
been quick to fire people instead of trying to resolve or three nonmanagers as her jury. She got a list of