111–120 of 543 posts
How 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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You have no idea how much I hate the people who are paid for 8 hours of 'butt in the chair' but they only show up for 6 and of course it's their code that breaks first and of course they've already gone home when the bug report comes in and of course the code is so obscure that one would have to ask them or else spend 5 additional hours on it.
Flip your premise around a bit: what kind of world do you live in where "obscure code" makes it to a production environment after hours? Do you not do code reviews to ensure good quality? Do you not test your releases before launch? Do you not have a release strategy that allows you to launch code when people are in the office ? Why aren't you fixing that rather than blaming your coworkers?
> Is this the kind of example you want to set for your son?
Yes. I can nearly touch the very smart and decent person behind that post (which I didn't fully read because you bolded this and I had to get my opinion out before reading on :P)
Use a lot of your time on that son, and some of it on helping people here and there who don't have much time. Spend little money and lots of time! You can answer your son's questions, you can play with him.. don't sacrifice that luxury light-heartedly. Don't spend that penny without turning it over lots, it's the first of that nature you got, and many people don't even know a person who had one.
Of course, as others said, also learn interesting things and keep your eyes peeled for a job that would have meaning to you you can be 100% straight about to everyone involved. But I assume you're already doing that anyway.
This stroke of luck might not last forever, but it is a stroke of luck IMHO, from the sound and content of your post I'd say a nice thing happened to a nice person who put in the work to deserve it. Nothing unethical I can see about it. If they want it automated, they can hire a programmer. Wanting to have it automated by someone for data-entry wages, now that's unethical. So if you want ethics, calculate a generously low programmer salary for 6 months, then coast along some more until they paid you this much.
One thing I'm sure, suffering 40 hours a week when there is no need is kind of the worst example you could set for your son. IMO, of course. His father at least for a moment is free from bondage, but also free from delusions that often come with "aristocracy" (for lack of a better word, I just mean most people who "live the easy life" pay with it dearly in ways they don't even register). That's as rare as it is beautiful. Take the advice of anyone who never tasted this with a grain of salt. Especially if you use free time to seek out things you can do or create that are interesting to you -- I don't believe in relaxation or entertainment that much, I love being focused and busy, but I believe in autonomy and voluntary cooperation.
Everybody should... well, okay, 2 hours a month wouldn't be enough by a long shot, but I do believe life work life and starvation levels for all people on Earth could and should be compatible with a dignified, strong personality. But we're really programmed to not even want that, to not even recognize that as the minimum responsible adults should settle for, but rather belittle it as utopian. Yeah it's a hard problem, but it doesn't get easier by working on unrelated gimmicks instead.
As you said yourself, the company already gets the end result out of you what it wanted out of you for that money. Now they get the bonus of you improving yourself and the world and spending more time with your son than you otherwise could. At least on a human level, anyone who doesn't see this as an added bonus to be happy about is petty. This makes the world much better than you saving the company a job would, which often is just pissing down the drain. You didn't get this job with the intent of automating it, and you probably started trying that without even knowing if it would work, because you like coding. And then you knew that they wouldn't just say "good on you, enjoy the time with your son". I know I'm trying a bit hard here, but if you squint you might say you have to "lie" to get them to "do the right thing".
> You cannot strengthen one by weakening another; and you cannot add to the stature of a dwarf by cutting off the leg of a giant.
-- Benjamin Franklin Fairless
This is true. And yet, if you would let them, they would do it. To be fair, I know none of the people involved, but for a general "they" this is too often true. And nothing would be gained, only something would be lost, and you would have lost the most.
I say you got lucky, it's yours. Use a lot of it selflessly, but use it! Maybe ask a lawyer for advice, don't be reckless of course. But if your only danger to this is your conscience being infected with the general pathology of society, rectify that. Fuck survivor guilt, you know? Good for everyone who gets as far away from the prison system (in the sense of System of a Down) as they can. Don't leave us in the ditch, but never get dragged back in either.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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?
I graduated in the recession without any real skills or an applicable / usable degree (lib arts in a language I could barely speak). The first job I got after college was for data entry where I was expected to go to an email inbox which received some automated messages with some strings in them and to copy these strings and paste them into an Excel spreadsheet. I was expected to do this for ~6 hours a day every day.…
There are many college grads who would just keep quietly copy pasting strings from emails for 6 hours/day.
Incidentally, my first job also required some VB scripting, but the management was actually smart enough to recognize that it was needed and that manual data entry was unsustainable.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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).
>due to flaws in their reasoning or refusal to consistently apply their own reasoning for personal reasons That's not the entirety of it. The problem is that these ethical problems exist within a certain societal framework, and that framework is made of multiple overlapping assumptions, habits, traditions, and expectations, some of them contradictory. Two people's axioms might be identical, but they may come to two o…
The way I see it, this is the employer's problem. In a good company, what benefits the company, also benefits the employee. In this case the employee and the company have different incentives, and the company does not care enough to solve the problem of incentives. There are many, easy ways the employer could solve this problem so that both parties benefit. The employee does not have the same ability to pursue mutual…
Have you ever been asked to implement a feature with the first question being 'how long will it take?' for you to pluck a figure out of the air?
In these scenarios a voice inside my head wants to ask 'well, you are the manager, aren't managers supposed to know these things?'
There is an aspect of this going on here. The manager should have some idea of what is involved in the task and have an idea as to how best to solve the task.
Once upon a time I learned a lesson about lying from The Simpsons:
Homer: Marge, it takes two to lie: one to lie and one to listen.
There is an aspect of that to this situation. I also am not too sure that the deliberate errors are the wrong thing to do. With my coding errors I often jest that these are 'deliberate mistakes' there to just see if anyone is paying attention. I have also joked before now that there is 'one deliberate mistake' in there to check that people are doing the testing properly.
In a fake-news world where people can be economical with the truth the OP has the option to weasel out of the deception that way.
So how to rescue the situation in such a way that everyone wins?
Maybe the OP can taper down the deliberate errors to make the work perfect. If there is also a claimed drop in 'time taken' to do this and some vague talk of 'macros' used to 'double check the work' then a slightly more honest bargain can be struck where it is acknowledged that some initiative has been taken to do things better is rewarded and not punished.
For the line manager this can be a definite win with nobody apparently played as a fool.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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).
Maybe so, but I don't think that accurately describes the groups the parent post listed.