Once, long ago, I did two weeks' worth of work for a multi-person team in about a day, thanks to a little sed/awk magic. The work would have gotten done a lot faster if I didn't have to deal with the completely shitty X-over-dialup remote access setup they forced me to use. The project manager was actually upset with me because now we couldn't bill the client for 80x5 hours worth of work or whatever it was. Needless to say, I quit that job the following week. It's one thing to have a little downtime now and then to recharge oneself. It's quite worse to be bored because there's nothing fun/interesting/useful to do.
Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I've automated my job?
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Re: Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I've automated my job?
#32I had pretty much automated a past job and when I quit to try to become a software engineer, they asked me for advice for hiring my replacement (what they should be looking for, etc.). I told them not to hire anyone and that I had hardly been doing anything for months. They hired someone to replace me anyway.
Management have incentives to do this, more staff means more prestige and usually more pay.
Re: Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I've automated my job?
#33When I was a student I took a work-from-home job manually generating HTML pages for an online furnishing shop. They somehow had a successful web presence but all sales were done by phone (early 2000s). They wanted to pay me by the hour, but I negotiated paying by the page instead. Of course, I automated the job. And surprisingly, at least to naïve me, they were annoyed that I automated it. Even though they got the sa…
> I learned something that day, though I'm not sure what.
Get paid for your output, and not your time?
Re: Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I've automated my job?
#34What is considered ethical or unethical always depends on who you ask. Ask most slave owners a few hundred years ago if it was ethical to whip slaves (or even own slaves, for that matter) and you'll get one answer, but quite a different answer from the slaves themselves. You'll get different answers to this question whether you ask it of employers or employees, capitalists, socialists, or communists, people who feel…
You're right that ethical axioms are subjective. But most arguments tend to center around the application of those axioms . I often find that people are in complete agreement in their axioms, but come to different conclusions in real world scenarios - due to flaws in their reasoning or refusal to consistently apply their own reasoning for personal reasons (I know this is wrong, but I really want to do it).
Re: Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I've automated my job?
#35I'd say, get rid of the intentional errors. If anyone asks, it's just because they became so good at their jobs that the work is now spotless. Which, frankly, it's the truth: business requirements were discovered in such detail that automation could be performed.
I don't think it is stealing. In fact, they are getting exactly what they asked for – the job is getting done. The fact that it is taking less work (but it is still taking some work, he still needs to do clean up before running the automation) should be irrelevant if it is his only task.
This is assuming there are no specific instructions on how the work should be performed.
If it were a silicon valley-type company, then it is possible that this contribution would be properly recognized and the employee offered another position due to the demonstrated skills. From the looks of it, it's unlikely to happen.
So here are the choices:
Not disclosing, and getting into philosophical arguments on whether or not they are being overpaid. Depending on the complexity, this is the kind of thing that consulting companies thrive on and charge big bucks for. So, in fact, they may even be UNDERpaid, if this is eventually disclosed and becomes company property (maybe when they decide to leave the company?).
Disclosing, will force some tough conversations to happen. They will probably want the software, which they are entitled to, as it was done on company's time. And, once they have it, there's nothing preventing them from firing the person.
And, to be fair, companies do that sort of stuff all the time. They may start doing things manually for customers, figure out some monetary value they should charge to cover costs, plus profit. Eventually things get automated. Do they reduce their prices? Of course they don't. Cost optimization and the like.
EDIT: typo (also, using gender-neutral pronouns is tough)
Re: Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I've automated my job?
#36Is capitalism ethical though? Isn't every employee an exploited person?
“What is the robbing of a bank compared to the founding of a bank?” - Bertolt Brecht
Re: Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I've automated my job?
#37Seriously... Op could quit his job, then go tell his employer he'll maintain the system for a fixed monthly subscription.
They'll have less headcount and op will be free to pursue other activities.
Re: Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I've automated my job?
#38There are two ethical lines the poster may have crossed.
> I even insert a few bugs here and there to make it look like it’s been generated by a human.
As a few others in the original post pointed out, this seems to be the biggest issue. He is intentionally misleading his employer as to the nature of the work he is doing. The automation itself isn't immediately unethical, but the intentional misdirection could be.
The second issue depends on whether he is paid for his time or to fulfill his job duties. In the case he is being paid to fulfill his job duties, he is doing the job he was hired to do adequately, he is meeting the deadlines expected of him by his employer, at the price he negotiated when he was hired. However, if he is being paid for time, it seems clearly unethical to bill the company for 38 more hours than he worked.
Re: Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I've automated my job?
#39How is this the smallest bit unethical?
The person is paid to do a job and that job is done, and seemingly well. End of discussion.
Re: Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I've automated my job?
#40Workplace.stackexchange.com makes me cringe. It seems every post is written by socially challenged people with absolutely no social awareness or confidence. I had to stop subscribing to it.