My question is - will he ever tell the employer about the program? Even after the point of employment.
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?
#72How 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.
If he's paid based on task completion then no ethical violation. However, if he is paid based on hours worked then there is a grey area of whether he is actually working.
Re: Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I've automated my job?
#73When 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.
You learned that people get sour with jealousy and annoyed when you can produce the same output / unit of work, at a fraction of the time that it takes them?
Re: Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I've automated my job?
#74Interesting question here to me is how to align incentives in a manner that works out best for both, the employer and the employee. Automate your job and then move on to higher level problems, rinse and repeat. Profit share?
Re: Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I've automated my job?
#75I think the problem is actually deeper than whether or not it's ethical, but rather the structure in which we place people gives them more incentive to hide their improvements rather than expose it and help the company flourish. Why should OP ever reveal it to his boss? Ethics? What do those matter on the bottom line for them? He could be fired or disciplined. His experience might be positive, but judging from the comments and how people are reacting to it, I wouldn't be very sure of that.
In this case, I think a positive of some sort to give the employee a reason to reveal this automation. People shouldn't be afraid to tinker and learn in the face of punishment.
Re: Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I've automated my job?
#76When 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. You learned that people get sour with jealousy and annoyed when you can produce the same output / unit of work, at a fraction of the time that it takes them?
It goes further than that. I offered to show them how to automate the job (it's not like I had a promising career making HTML pages to sell furniture) and they didn't take it because presumably it bruised their pride. Even though it was strongly in their interests.
Re: Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I've automated my job?
#77When 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?
Sibling comment by doingmyting seems like a valid contribution to me. Anyone know why it's dead?
Re: Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I've automated my job?
#78I did not expect to see so much contention about this. A company is paying him to do a job, and he is doing that job. Is the problem that he isn't miserable? This baffles me.
That was my first take as well, but it can be easy to overlook this part of the original post: "I even insert a few bugs here and there to make it look like it’s been generated by a human."
The fact that he is engaging in deception to make it look like he's still doing it manually rubs a lot of people, myself included, the wrong way. You could also argue that by introducing bugs, he's intentionally degrading the end product.
Re: Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I've automated my job?
#79If you're a salaried employee assigned a task, you fulfill the task, and are available to respond to requests during business hours, there's no ethical issue here.
If you're hourly and you are spending 3 hours a week and billing for 40, you're in bad ethical place in my mind.
Re: Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I've automated my job?
#80I love questions like this, especially when the person replies to the reactions. I'm less interested in the answers as I am to the question, "Why did you post the question?" There are lots of people saying that they think it is unethical, and the OP has taken time to respond to these reactions with a rationalisation.
In other words, the OP feels guilty and is seeking permission to continue with the course they have already chosen. They feel they won't get it from their employer, so they feel the need to find the permission from random strangers on the internet.
I've done a lot of process improvement in my career and this is always the trickiest bit. People make decisions and build elaborate walls to protect them. Exposing the decision does nothing to remove the walls -- it only prompts the builder to design even more elaborate walls. It pays to be sensitive to this!