TikTok staff didn't know test would determine redundancy | Hacker News Reader

TikTok staff didn't know test would determine redundancy

rte.ie

Given their reputation, this is like complaining about HR in hades. Yes, working there is terrible.

This is exactly how they were terrible to you? That makes sense.

Unfortunately, a bad performance review should be a heads up to look for a new job. Sounds like that happened even before this test.

I wonder if Irish employees were being let go for not enforcing content moderation dictated by the borg party. Ireland also goes by euro laws where employees have right to quit but employers must have fair grounds to fire.

Company finally uses a qualitative test to make lay-off decisions and gets torn apart on the details unlike the companies that use badge photos to rate employees.

>Mr Saleh’s evidence was that 35 of the 100 posts did not load when he attempted the test.

>He also took issue with the fact that the test was based on TikTok’s rules for the English-language market, which were different to the rules for the Middle East and North Africa where he had primarily worked.

If you're going to do a test, you should probably make sure it works and that it's relevant.

Perfect is the enemy of good. This is hardly an indictment of the approach.

'primarily worked'. If he was also covering the other market he needs to know those rules - he was in a supervisor role. The company is still at fault for the bad implementation though.

The problem is that 50% of staff not knowing the company's moderation rules points to a systemic problem with internal training, not a problem with the staff themselves.

Cynically, I suspect that they wanted to cut staffing costs by 50% and this was seen as an easy way to justify it without going through a consultation process.

In what sense do you need to be cynical to believe the purpose in testing employees and then keeping the 50% of staff that did best when reducing staff was for the reduction of staff?

In many countries, making a large percentage of your workforce redundant requires following special procedures. This is true in the UK and Ireland (as in this case), and if more than 20 people are being made redundant within 90 days a certain process has to be followed, which will add at least 2-3 months before the staff can be let go.

The reason it would be a cynical view is that firing a lot of people for failing to reach some required standard wouldn't be classed as redundancy, but a firing. This also reflects worse on the affected employees when seeking future employment.

I actually hope some of the people challenge this in court, as there are also regulations around this - if the people had already passed their probation period, and especially if they had already been working a significant length of time without issue, and then fired because of this test, it might well be found to be unfair dismissal. And, as I said before - if over 50% of your workforce don't know your policies, that shows a failure in management for not providing adequate training, not a reflection of the employees.

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