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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?

#341

Post by conanbatt »

dredmorbius wrote: post #316
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…

You might be interested in what this commentator on economics had to say about piecework: "Some workmen, indeed, when they can earn in four days what will maintain them through the week, will be idle the other three. This, however, is by no means the case with the greater part. Workmen, on the contrary, when they are liberally paid by the piece, are very apt to overwork themselves, and to ruin their health and consti…

Marvelous quote.

Adam Smith is truly liberal. I wish he didnt have the reputation of a ruthless capitalist intellectual.

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

#342

Post by gnaritas »

rkda wrote: post #315
mmmpop wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, it's most certainly not! I wish someone could tell us how it is "elitist" to point out that some people are "smart" and some aren't. Not every person can be nor desires to be an engineer/surgeon/attorney and that's totally okay, the world needs big dumb jocks too.

It's not that. It's that not everyone who desires to be an engineer/surgeon/attorney has the resources or opportunities to do so. Some people are barely surviving as it is. Intellectual pursuits are a luxury for them.

Anecdotally, intellectual pursuits simply aren't of interest to them. Those interested in intellectual pursuits (aka nerds/geeks) are a minority of the population.

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

#343

Post by austenallred »

ue_ wrote: post #181
austenallred wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 h…

In theory there is never an infinite supply of employees, and at a certain point you run out of people that will work for $x.

In practice that's not a question that can be answered in one comment, and right now it depends on who you ask. In my mental model of the world that's where the perfect simulation starts to break down and run into real world constraints.

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

#344

Post by ehnto »

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…

I did not realise piece rate was outlawed in so many places. In vineyard work in Australia, workers are often paid per vine or per bucket and it is labelled piece rate so it's not like it's a sneaky work around.

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

#345

Post by jdale27 »

avg_dev wrote: post #267
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does TPS stand for in this context?

It's a reference to the movie Office Space. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fy3rjQGc6lA

Actually I think it's a reference to one of the principles of the Toyota Production System (TPS):

A leader must understand the daily work in great detail so that he or she can be a best teacher of your company's philosophy. -- https://missiontps.blogspot.com/p/14-principles.html

That's different from the TPS reports of Office Space fame (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TPS_report).

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

#346

Post by jdbernard »

ryandrake wrote: post #275
jdbernard wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It seems that he gets paid full time, but due to his ingenuity, gets to spend most of it with his family. If that's not a dream job, what is?

Well, if he's not making any progress career-wise it's a dead-end job. Personally, I'd love to scale back to like 20 hours a week and spend more time with family, but in those 20 hours I'm working I'd want to keep growing. Chances are that the job he has will end before retirement. I would want to be prepared for that eventuality.

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

#347

Post by codyb »

rkda wrote: post #315
mmmpop wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, it's most certainly not! I wish someone could tell us how it is "elitist" to point out that some people are "smart" and some aren't. Not every person can be nor desires to be an engineer/surgeon/attorney and that's totally okay, the world needs big dumb jocks too.

It's not that. It's that not everyone who desires to be an engineer/surgeon/attorney has the resources or opportunities to do so. Some people are barely surviving as it is. Intellectual pursuits are a luxury for them.

Are they? In a world with libraries and vast amounts of knowledge in the palms of our hands?

My Pops never graduated college but he's one of my biggest inspirations because he goes out and builds things (well, stays in and builds thing I suppose). He started by building fiberglass boats and eventually ended up having a career as a graphic designer (a much less menial job than factory worker to be sure), but when he left work he'd use his time to persue crafts such as woodworking, photography, and these days even stained glass making.

These are of course slightly affluent crafts (although his tools are primarily purchased used and he frequently refinishes their edges or replaces their blades), but my question is, what percentage of people are persuing activities like these in their free time?

Unless of course your implication is that today the factory worker may not be as common as the two/three job clerk barely making ends meet with little to no _time_ for these persuits, and that perhaps the luxury status comes not from the monetary values required but from the less fungible resources of our lives.

In which case, yes, totally agree. But I also think there's something to be said for the people who don't primarily spend their free time scrolling through social media, watching television, and partying and instead perform small iterations frequently towards larger more rewarding goals. And I think that whether through nature or nurture or both, a lot of people just _don't_ do those things.

And then there's less affluent parts of the world where the luxurial aspect may actually be monetary, and places where it is temporally and monetarily luxurious as well.

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

#349

Post by zimmund »

barrkel wrote: post #216
emodendroket wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems hard to claim making a mistake and deliberate sabotage are the same.

The product being bought and sold is the same, by objective measure; and that's what counts in a business transaction, rather than a personal relationship.

So if -for example- you knew the details of fabrication of your car: you consider that you'd still buy a car with a chassis that was deliberately weakened by an employee, instead of just buying a car with an -unknowingly- faulty chassis?

Why would you accept something that, if not tampered, would be better than the alternative? When there's bad intentions or tampering, you'll have a result that is broken to some degree for sure. If everyone does their jobs as good as they can, you'll only face a chance of something being broken. You can always improve over mistakes, not so much over bad intentions.

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

#350

Post by coldtea »

FascinatedBox wrote: post #306
nwatson wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Usually the people who take a crap job like that simply don't spend that much time on intellectual pursuits to begin with. There are many who through circumstance or poor (or good?) choices ended up with the crap job but nevertheless pay attention to the larger world around them learn as much as they can. Maybe they studied history and are working in an Amazon warehouse. There is a lot of "squandered" intelligence…

I wouldn't be so quick to call it squandered potential. Sure, that person may have studied history and now works in Amazon. But perhaps some of the lessons they learned from their deep study at some point have a parallel to their job. Perhaps it comes up as a topic of conversation at work and is used to build a lasting friendship. What if that person, after studying history, decided that they didn't want to pursue a…

>What if that person, after studying history, decided that they didn't want to pursue a job in it.

They still would have not decided, if the food on the table thing wasn't pressing, that they should get a job on Amazon (warehouse) over it.

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