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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?

#291

Post by Dylan16807 »

timthelion wrote: post #188
jnwatson wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> 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 an important question? Presumably that person is running their automation enough that they get more than minimum wage.

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

#292

Post by late2part »

Natsu wrote: post #244
jgamman wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

everyone knows that quote but I doubt you've read WofN - about 1 paragraph later he says that this will drive the worker insane and may literally lead to the collapse of society: "The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding or to exercise his invention in finding out exped…

That sounds about the same as normal factory work if we're being honest, which is still around. Yes, it really does bore you to death. No, it doesn't make you incapable of thinking. Usually the people who take a crap job like that simply don't spend that much time on intellectual pursuits to begin with. What it does do is to drain you of all energy such that it's hard to get away from it to something more decent.

"if we're being honest"

Can't I assume you always are?

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

#293

Post by Natsu »

dogecoinbase wrote: post #290
Natsu wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds about the same as normal factory work if we're being honest, which is still around. Yes, it really does bore you to death. No, it doesn't make you incapable of thinking. Usually the people who take a crap job like that simply don't spend that much time on intellectual pursuits to begin with. What it does do is to drain you of all energy such that it's hard to get away from it to something more decent.

Usually the people who take a crap job like that simply don't spend that much time on intellectual pursuits to begin with. What it does do is to drain you of all energy such that it's hard to get away from it to something more decent. You have the key point, but backwards -- poverty and lack of opportunity are what causes the drain of energy, and taking the mindless job is the consequence. Then, the mindless, exhaust…

You're definitely right that they feed off of each other, but it's not all one way or the other. I've seen it go both ways in my circle of acquaintances.

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

#294

Post by Natsu »

late2part wrote: post #292
Natsu wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds about the same as normal factory work if we're being honest, which is still around. Yes, it really does bore you to death. No, it doesn't make you incapable of thinking. Usually the people who take a crap job like that simply don't spend that much time on intellectual pursuits to begin with. What it does do is to drain you of all energy such that it's hard to get away from it to something more decent.

"if we're being honest" Can't I assume you always are?

How many people do you know who can honestly tell you they've never ever told even a harmless lie?

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

#295

Post by Dylan16807 »

Trundle wrote: post #287
webnrrd2k wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think thst there is also a fundamental imbalance between people's general expectation of what's fair for a company to do, and what's fair for a person to do. After all, if a company had discovered a way to make, say, an expensive medication for almost nothing, would the company be expected to disclose their secret? Would a company be expected to announce to the world: "we can make this for almost nothing now, so we…

>Would a company be expected to announce to the world: "we can make this for almost nothing now, so were dropping the price to almost nothing!". There are many people all over reddit at least that think that yes, yes they should.

People don't need medication of their own free will, which is why >100% profit markups go from eye-rolling to genuinely upsetting.

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

#296

Post by ufmace »

rljy wrote: post #183
jnwatson wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 co…

Using those same arguments, working for wages is also illegal because of the same legal requirements for minimum wage, breaks, insurance, and whatnot.

Sounds to me like saying "Piecework is illegal" is oversimplified to the point of being false, if not highly misleading.

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

#297

Post by SOLAR_FIELDS »

gutnor wrote: post #177
kelnos wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> And at the end of the day, the company thinks they are paying the guy to do one thing, which they believe takes a significant chunk of time, but that's not the case. If he wasn't remote, and had to come into the office every day, his deception would probably be quickly found out, so in essence he's abusing his remote-work arrangement. Good litmus test to know if there is abuse is to reverse the role. Is it wrong fo…

Good answer. If the employer is paying the employee to do a role, and that employee is doing nothing but fulfilling the role, the contract of employment has been met. There is an inherent imbalance of power in almost all employer-employee relationships, so chastising the employee for only doing the requirements of the job is unfair.

Since it's already on the onus of the employer to judge the performance of the employee, if they are unable to recognize that the employee is a high performer and has worked himself or herself out of the current role, that responsibility lies on the employer and the employer alone

Under the OP's current situation, if he/she is doing nothing but meeting the requirements of employment, he/she should expect nothing in the way of extra compensation but cost of living adjustments. In the same way, if that's the only requirements the employer sets, there should be no expectation to deliver anything further than what they have asked.

In a pure capitalist perspective, employment is nothing but an agreement between the employee and employer. If the employee meets those agreements, they are satisfying the market. Expecting anything more from the employee is not being a pure capitalist. You cannot have your cake and eat it too as an employer. You either subscribe to the idea of the market dictating supply and demand or you don't. If you find that the employee is gaming the system just like you are, there shouldn't be any judgement or hard feelings.

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

#298

Post by whiddershins »

I think the discussion ignores the labor law regarding salary employees. At least in New York, a salaried employee must be paid in full for any day he works any part of, at least that's my understanding. In general, the law tends towards the position that salaried employees who are except from overtime are also except from being docked pay for missing an hour of work on any given week. (Although I believe the employer can take it out of your vacation time etc)

So, at least from a legal standpoint (IANAL) my understanding is as long as the poster takes even five minutes a day to verify his work, he is performing his duties as a salaried employee. It is up to the employer to determine if he is worth his salary or not.

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

#299

Post by moron4hire »

afandian wrote: post #27

When 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…

Honestly, clients should have to pay more for the same amount of work done in less time.

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

#300

Post by m_mueller »

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…

I think it's also a beautiful example of how it is becoming paramount to distribute the gains of automation among all members of society.

UBI could be one way. Another way could be to teach programming together with math and reading comprehension as a basic skill, and replace all or most employees with hired guns, and the specifications for those hired guns are the work of consulting businesses (essentially what is already happening). Wages should then be completely based on work output, and minimum wage should be defined as what's possible for a trained human to input / process by hand with zero automation. Anyone can then go and either program bots and let them run or even buy bots from others that do the same work.

The problem comes in at the point where a business figures out that running these bots themselves is cheaper than hiring all the contractors to do it, so you still end up with a massive concentration of wealth at the top. One potential way to solve that in a socialistic manner is to tax computing power heavily and progressively and then distribute that tax income as a dynamically floating UBI - but that would just open up a massive black market for microchips, i.e. require a heavy handed government operation on the order of magnitude of the war on drugs. Any other ideas?

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