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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?

#161

Post by lr4444lr »

There's nothing unethical with this situation as the poster describes it. Is it unethical for you not to tell prospective buyers of your house what other offers you've received? Is it unethical for you not to tell the other side of a legal trial what character, logical, and emotional arguments you intend to use to sway the jurors?

No, some relationships have an inherently adversarial zero-sum component, and maintaining informational asymmetry could only be unethical if the other party will bind him or herself equally to not taking advantage of your sharing it. And speaking realistically, there isn't a snowball's chance in hell a middle manager of a large company with legacy systems would not fire this guy if this information got out and he were told to directly or was generally pressured to keep down department costs.

Re: Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I've automated my job?

#163

Post by notadoc »

I don't see much of a problem.

You are paid to do a task. Is the task getting done, and at the expected quality level? That is what matters, is it not?

Aside from that, if you can automate your job, you could likely create a service or product to sell that automation to that employer...

Re: Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I've automated my job?

#164

Post by hjksddhfa »

simonh wrote: post #28

If he was a company providing a service this wouldn't even be a subject for discussion. It would be a non-issue. Also he's been pretty much instructed by the company not to rock the boat. It seems pretty clear they really don't care as long as the work gets done. I've known plenty of sysadmins that have significantly automated most of their work and mainly just monitor and maintain, good for them. Nobody ever critici…

This.

As sysadmin, 90% of my job is automated. I am available 24/7 if anything goes wrong. But then OTH, I can run errands, watch movies, play video games at work. This is true for almost every sysadmin I know.

My bosses know this, they don't care as long as I am available when needed. Also they prefer that we as sysadmins don't advertise our free time to the rest of company.

Re: Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I've automated my job?

#165

Post by austenallred »

ue_ wrote: post #157
austenallred wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems the greater question is, "What is the employer paying for?" Economic theory suggests an employer pays for value created. After all, if an employee is generating less economic value than they're consuming, it makes sense to fire that person. But that's only true in a fantasy world where you can perfectly measure and compensate that kind of performance, like performing physics equations without air resistance…

>The reality is calculating "value created" is extraordinarily difficult, so we use "hours-of-butt-in-seat" because it's the closest proxy. Some would disagree on this, the Marxian school posits that the employer really is paying for "hours-of-butt-in-seat", technically, labour-time (note, this is not the same as labour, or the value created by the labour). As such, value of the products doesn't come into it at all,…

> As such, value of the products doesn't come into it at all, but rather only the minimum value required to keep the worker. What is this value equal to? The amount required to sustain the worker...

Partially. The employee is paid the minimum amount that the employer can pay, but (again in this fantasy no-air-resistance world) if an employee can produce x units of value for either employer a or employer b, they'll go with whichever will pay more, and both employer a and employer b profit while paying up to x-1 units of value in wages.

And thus, over long periods of time and disregarding practical realities, compensation approaches the point at which compensation = value created, despite employers attempting to pay the minimum possible.

Re: Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I've automated my job?

#166

Post by jnwatson »

rljy wrote: post #129
imh wrote: post #21

This question is a beautiful example of typical incentives workers feel and how screwed up they are. On HN people talk often enough about how if you have a worker who gets their job done in 30 hours instead of the company's usual 40-60 hours, you should give them 30-100% more responsibility, but much more rarely "and 30-100% more pay." Butt-in-the-chair hours are super important culturally and it's been that way for…

Adam Smith began his wealth of nations with a description of the division of labor and an essay on how this division leads to an increase in productivity. Specifically, he gives the example of a worker who's sole job it is to make pins, and who devises a way to make them by machine, while previously, each pin was hammered out by hand over a matter of minutes, the new machine makes them in seconds. This division of la…

Piecework is perfectly legal in the US: https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/wages/industrialhomework

Re: Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I've automated my job?

#167

Post by ruricolist »

rljy wrote: post #129
imh wrote: post #21

This question is a beautiful example of typical incentives workers feel and how screwed up they are. On HN people talk often enough about how if you have a worker who gets their job done in 30 hours instead of the company's usual 40-60 hours, you should give them 30-100% more responsibility, but much more rarely "and 30-100% more pay." Butt-in-the-chair hours are super important culturally and it's been that way for…

Adam Smith began his wealth of nations with a description of the division of labor and an essay on how this division leads to an increase in productivity. Specifically, he gives the example of a worker who's sole job it is to make pins, and who devises a way to make them by machine, while previously, each pin was hammered out by hand over a matter of minutes, the new machine makes them in seconds. This division of la…

The problem with piece work (in an agricultural context, at least) is that is reveals a wide discrepancy in productivity between workers. The most productive workers are usually about 8x as productive as the average. Employers balk at the prospect of paying that much extra, so they create various kinds of mixed schemes that cap the worker's pay regardless of how much actual work they do. So the practical result of piece work is simply to punish below-average workers, without actually doing anything to incentivize above-average work.

Re: Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I've automated my job?

#168

Post by xxSparkleSxx »

jsjohnst wrote: post #105
jkern wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When he was doing the same work by hand he was producing data with errors in it. All he's done is achieve the same error rate he had before. I don't see why the fact he could trivially reduce the errors to 0 is relevant when from the employer's point of view the exact same result is being produced.

Because it shows willful deception. In a court of law, this would likely be a significant point in the case.

Could using printed fonts that look like hand-writing to advertise count as willful deception?

You're trying to trick the consumer into thinking a human made the sign (and by extension the product as well), which was actually made my machines.

I don't see a difference. When I buy a product, there is no disclosure of the manufacturing process.

I could only see a good lawyer losing this case if OP signed a contract that explicitly stated the process in which his work must be produced.

Re: Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I've automated my job?

#169

Post by nemo44x »

He should approach management and offer to automate this process for a lump sum of x-years pay. If they plan on using this method for 5 years then offer 4 years of salary for this tool.

Everyone wins. They save a years salary and don't have to deal with data entry errors. He wins because he is paid and can continue to earn more.

This is an example of automation and capitalism revealing their best features.

Re: Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I've automated my job?

#170

Post by jdbernard »

kelnos wrote: post #84
justboxing wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and op will be free to pursue other activities. Nope. I think op has evaluated this angle and here's what he says in his post. > Although I get the feeling there’s a specific audience at Stackoverflow, mainly the type of people who I imagine can not appreciate living in a place where jobs aren’t aplenty. Most likely they can walk out of their silicon valley office and shout “I want a job” and get 3 offers to start…

Just because it's not easy to get another job, it doesn't mean it's not possible. He works 1-2 hours a week and has a ton of time on his hands! That's plenty of time to start looking for a new job (without quitting the current one), while still leaving plenty of time to spend with his son. Since he has specific requirements about the job (remote, work from home, etc.), it will almost certainly take longer than "usual…

I'm surprised this thinking isn't more prevalent. When I have lots of free time at work with few interesting problems I know it's time to find a new job.

I agree with the guy in that I'd like to have more time with my family, but I can't imagine effectively not working and growing at all. He seems in the ideal position to search for a dream job. What he has is not a dream job.

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