Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I've automated my job? • Hacker News Board

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

#181

Post by ue_ » Wed, Jun 28, 2017, 10:41 PM UTC

austenallred wrote: post #165

ue_ wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

How would that work in the case where the employers have the majority of the bargaining power? What motivation is there to keep pushing up the wage? It would seem to work if the employer is choosing only one potential candidate, but in reality employers have an almost constant supply of people who are able and willing to work for almost whatever the employer is asking for. Almost never will two employers go head to head to bid over a candidate.

This is precisely why labour unions exist, because the employer owns the means of production and the employee does not.

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

#182

Post by BeetleB » Wed, Jun 28, 2017, 10:42 PM UTC

wfunction wrote: post #174

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…

> If you've ever thought "I'm done for the day, but I'm going to hang out a little longer to leave at a more respectable time," then you're feeling (and doing) the same kind of thing. Not quite. First, this guy went out of his way to lie and insert extra bugs in his code to make it appear like manual labor. Second, this guy is doing it all the time, whereas normally people might only do this on occasion. You can argu…

> First, this guy went out of his way to lie and insert extra bugs in his code to make it appear like manual labor. Second, this guy is doing it all the time

I don't see the difference. I've known people who intentionally work slowly or pretend to do manual labor when they've already got a process for automating it. They'll just goof around for a while and then run the automation.

Whether you're introducing bugs to fix yourself or pretending to work - the effect is the same.

Not as extreme in terms of time as this guy (more like doing a process that took 4 hours in 2 and pretending it took 4 hours).

Initially I felt it was unprofessional. I kind of still do. However, I also knew the management, and the behavior was consistent with the types of rewards management provided: The reward for this kind of increase in productivity was never financial, and was always "OK, now you can do even more work". One person's boost in productivity would raise the bar for the whole team - everyone felt punished. So as time went on, people would come up with process improvements and ensure the management did not know about them.

Why do I still feel it is unprofessional? Behaving like this is not why I became an engineer, where solving problems makes you regret you solve them. So I thought about it hard, and realized I should find a job that encourages and rewards improving productivity, and not uses it as an excuse to give more work.

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

#183

Post by rljy » Wed, Jun 28, 2017, 10:42 PM UTC

jnwatson wrote: post #166

rljy wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No it is not.

You are allowed to pay by the peice, but you must pay at least minimum wage, you must pay sick leave, you must pay health insurance, you cannot fire for unjust cause (at least in Europe). That marks the definitive end to piece work as we knew it in Adam Smith's time when a stranger could show up at the factory door and be paid by the piece for one day or one afternoon, something which really was even common in the era before the "Fair Labor Standards Act" was passed [1]. To quote from your linked article on the Act "All individually covered homework is subject to the FLSA's minimum wage, overtime, and recordkeeping requirements. Employers must provide workers with handbooks to record time, expenses, and pay information."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piece_work#Minimum_wage

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

#184

Post by s73ver » Wed, Jun 28, 2017, 10:43 PM UTC

maskedinvader wrote: post #91

dsego wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's his tool, why give it away for free?

because the ip belongs to the company because presumably he developed it during working hours using the company's resources.

Only if the contract says so. Since it wasn't a development job, there's a chance that clause isn't there.

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

#185

Post by timthelion » Wed, Jun 28, 2017, 10:43 PM UTC

ruricolist wrote: post #167

rljy wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pi…

Why is it bad for the employer to get 8x as much out of some workers?

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

#186

Post by spyhi » Wed, Jun 28, 2017, 10:44 PM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #48

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…

This particular case is weird in that they hired a programmer to do the job of a data entry person. It turns out that they -- accidentally -- made the right decision, because it's frankly stupid to pay someone for a month of work when you could spend a little up-front time automating it and eliminate the need for the job entirely. So, honestly, I don't think it would be wrong for the company, if they knew about the a…

> I mean, we wouldn't be having the same discussion here if the company had instead hired someone (perhaps even the OP) on contract specifically to automate the job, and that was it.

A small fallacy to this idea: An automation contractor would have been paid differently (i.e. more, maybe even dramatically more) for the job, so it's not directly equivalent. The rates for semi-skilled data input labor vs creating a tool that will yield ongoing, long-term value are completely different, which is the real source of conflict here.

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

#187

Post by nemo44x » Wed, Jun 28, 2017, 10:44 PM UTC

cshenton wrote: post #171

nemo44x wrote: post #169

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.

Except that under most contracts, the company already owns the code currently used to automate the job.

You don't sell them that code. You sign an agreement and write new code.

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

#188

Post by timthelion » Wed, Jun 28, 2017, 10:46 PM UTC

jnwatson wrote: post #166

rljy wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The fact that minumum wage/sick leave ect must be paid is relevant to this specific example, because it is very much unclear how these rules would be applied to the person working 2 hours a week on a job they have automated away. Is that a full time worker who should get mandatory health insurance or a part time worker? Does that status change over time as the automation improves?

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

#189

Post by FireBeyond » Wed, Jun 28, 2017, 10:48 PM UTC

Theodores wrote: post #119

hedgew wrote: post #10

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…

It is the employer's problem, there is also the matter of the competency of the line manager. 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 mana…

> 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.

If I was your manager, I'd have an issue with this. Testers are there to methodically work through the code, acceptance test, and so on.

Not to play "find the possibly invisible needle in the haystack that the dev claims exists as his way of showing they're doing their job right". That's called a wild goose chase.

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

#190

Post by ethbro » Wed, Jun 28, 2017, 10:50 PM UTC

austenallred wrote: post #144

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…

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…

> It seems the greater question is, "What is the employer paying for?"

I would argue that in the US, at least in the CS/IT industry, the answer to this has been perverted into "all work you can be coerced into producing."

Viz lack of overtime, non-competes, right to all work product, non-set-hours, etc

It's almost like capital owners subconsciously realized that technology was likely to be the last place where skilled workers had leverage... and acted to tilt the rewards in their favor as much as possible...