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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?

#421

Post by quickben »

Bakary wrote: post #403

This ethical question seems bizarre in a world where large blocks of the economy rely on effective misrepresentation or information asymmetry (advertising, etc.) and wealth itself is concentrated in the hands of a few. Those are stereotypical and cliché statements to make but I don't think that makes them less relevant. As far as I am concerned, this person can provide for his family, and has given the company the re…

Well that's the point. The society is trained to think that if something can be automated, the people laid off can starve.

Most of people discussing ethics in this example, are oblivious to this filter through which they are viewing reality.

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

#422

Post by wfunction »

WaxProlix wrote: post #416
wfunction wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't see the difference. Really now? Are you sure it's not a case of you not wanting to see the difference? > Whether you're introducing bugs to fix yourself or pretending to work - the effect is the same. Being at work and not working is quite a far cry from actively lying that you did things that you didn't do, or from inserting defects in your code so that they pay you to remove them. It's at least honest to…

Why do you feel like this guy owes X company jack shit? Just like every other business in existence†, they'd drop him on his ass in a heartbeat if it helped their bottom line and you and I know it. This is business to them and it should be to him, too. † Yes, some places at least act like they care. It doesn't matter if your dad's dad had or worked for a place that seemed to give a damn, that's not the point and you…

You don't understand the difference between honesty and dishonesty? This has nothing to do with who cares about people and who cares about money, it's a question of who is honest and who is dishonest.

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

#423

Post by lz400 »

dkersten wrote: post #253
rubidium wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't say I thing about your browsing, but I would give you more work :)

Why should the person who more efficiently does their work be punished with more work when others can do less and still get paid the same?

I would see it this way: I would offer to give that person more responsibility and more and perhaps more complex work. He could decide to perform as before and keep browsing reddit but if they choose to take more work that's likely the best path upward in the organization. Eventually the one who chooses no. 2 gets a promotion and gets paid more.

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

#424

Post by tome »

scorpioxy wrote: post #356
cuchoi wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel that the manager of Team B has some responsibility in this story

You'd think so but (bad) managers never take the blame or responsibility for something unless it succeeds. That's been my experience at least.

But Team B were succeeding and he wasn't shouting about it to his superiors!

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

#426

Post by tome »

WalterBright wrote: post #255
danielharrison wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everyone has this bias. I think it comes down to how logically or emotionally driven the individual is.

> Not everyone has this bias. Are you sure about that? As research in "Thinking Fast and Slow" by Kahneman shows, people exhibit the usual cognitive biases even while adamantly asserting they do not.

Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger are unusually good at avoiding that bias:

http://www.cnbc.com/2014/10/16/buffett-sells-off-huge-mistak...

http://nypost.com/2017/05/05/warren-buffett-sells-a-third-of...

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

#427

Post by kyberias »

Wow. How can anyone be confused about this? This is clear cut. The stackexchange answers are correct and this HN thread is filled with really unethical, almost childish advice. What the guy is doing is basically fraud. The employer expects him to do efficient work. If he can automate it, that automation is owned by his employer.

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

#428

Post by crdoconnor »

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…

>And thus, over long periods of time and disregarding practical realities, compensation approaches the point at which compensation = value created

Compensation is determined by supply and demand, not value created. It doesn't matter if every developer becomes 20% better at their jobs if the market is, at the same time, flooded with new developers. Wages will go down.

Value created (where measurable), puts a ceiling on compensation, not a floor.

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

#429

Post by dredmorbius »

timthelion wrote: post #208
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…

I'll admit, that I didn't finish it. I got to the part where he starts going on and on about the proper price of things and the relationship to the price of gold, and "the torpor of my mind rendered me not only incapable of relishing or bearing a part in any rational conversation, but of conceiving any generous, noble, or tender sentiment, and consequently of forming any just judgement concerning many even of the ord…

I encourage you to read it. Pick up a copy (or get one of the many electronic versions), and go through it a bit at a time.

The book is well organised, though Smith is Very Wordy. Realise that he's building an argument, based on a great deal of observations, conversation, correspondece, lectures, and study. He's not a perfect guide, but he's a good and early one.

He's also been tremendously mis-cast by a great many others, and reading Smith in his own words is very often an antidote to that.

I'm working my way through various economic works, in a bit of a hop-scotch. There are a few good histories of thought -- The Worldly Philosophers, by Heilbronner, was popular in my uni days (1980s). Backhouse's The Ordinary Business of Life is more comprehensive, though exceedingly dry.

I found Arnold Toynbee (the elder), Lectures on the Industrial Revolution, to be fascinating. I'm going through a bit of John Stuart Mill (both he and his father wrote economics texts), and want to work through Marshall and Keynes. I have a sense that the state of economic theory around the turn of / early 20th century was important.

For more recent theory -- I'm pretty disappointed in economics (it was my major field of study) -- but suggest a mainstream textbook as at least an anchor. Steve Keen, Herman Daly, Nicholaus Georgescu-Roegen, W. Brian Arthur, and the chap at Oxford University I can't think of right now (Eric? Nick?) are interesting. Ah: Erick Beinhocker.

http://www.worldcat.org/title/worldly-philosophers/oclc/9894...

http://www.worldcat.org/title/ordinary-business-of-life-a-hi...

https://www.ineteconomics.org/research/experts/ebeinhocker

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

#430

Post by dredmorbius »

timthelion wrote: post #185
ruricolist wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

What is the source of the additional output?

To whom should that surplus flow? The labourer? Or the employer of that labourer?

Defend your answer.

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