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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?

#451

Post by stuaxo »

I did exactly the same thing in a data entry job, after the 2001 internet bubble burst.

Semi-Automated a highly repetitive job that took 5 minutes per document to process, down to under 1.

Once we changed jobs, I went to the IT department, they were not happy with people outside their department automating things and had a similar project already.

In the end, a year later my manager was replaced by another that was his ex-wife and suddenly the fact I was wearing trainers to work was an excuse to let me go (though a lot of data entry people did).

It may or may not have been down to the fact, that with my automation, her department would potentially be 1/5th of its size.

That company no longer has their large offices in the town I was in, with inefficient manual processes involving lots of paper.

The good thing that came out of it, was pushing me towards software development.

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

#452

Post by Bakary »

blackflame7000 wrote: post #392
lordnacho wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might be against some contract he's signed, which would make it illegal. Aside from that I'm not sure I buy this "duty of loyalty" idea. What social purpose does it serve? Sounds like something that's common because at some point it became normal to be able to get people to agree to it. After all, most people in history could not work remotely. There's also plenty of other professions where you can work for severa…

Yes I totally agree. Too many corporations view their employees as boarderline indentured servants and it's from that sense of ownership where the need to control ones time originates. Time is after all the most valuable thing we have.

It's the only thing we have.

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

#453

Post by kazen44 »

lloeki wrote: post #440
kazen44 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Butt-in-the-chair hours are super important culturally and it's been that way for a while it seems to me that this is directly related to the fact that many parts of management theory have been developed as part of a manufacturing industry instead of a service/"tinkering" industry. With manufacturing, more hours directly correlates to more units produced and thus more value created. This is not the case anymore tha…

True enough, and possibly that line of thinking is tentatively translated to automation by saying "well, you automated things, now you've got free time, stay in that chair and use it to automate more!" as if such automation were itself a manufactured good. Obviously this is a false premise, as no software/automation/process is exactly the same as the previous one and you can't apply economies of scale to the end prod…

also, your market value just increased by a fairly large margin. So your wage in relation to your labour should be a lot more positive then doing manual labor.

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

#454

Post by LeifCarrotson »

sidek wrote: post #312
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a source for that 8x figure? I have heard the term tossed about in the context of engineering, but agriculture is a surprise! When I picked blueberries as a summer job there certainly wasn't an 8x difference between workers. Perhaps between us and the you-pick people?

I've worked jobs with such a disparity. For a govt census job, the top two workers out of 20 visited 3x the dwellings per hour and had a ~4x success rate per dwelling compared to the average, so they were literally doing as much as the other 18 employees.

What were they doing differently? And why were the other workers not trained to do the same?

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

#455

Post by Para2016 »

I wouldn't tell the employer. I'm guessing they don't care about you and they will take your idea, use it, maybe get rid of you without any compensation for creating the automation.

The job you've been hired for is being completed by a tool you made, and you're getting paid. Maybe look for something more appropriate to your skill set like another post suggested.

Oh and if you're feeling guilty you can read this story about Alcatel stealing IP and forcing a guy to work like a slave.

http://www.salon.com/2004/08/18/evan_brown/

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

#456

Post by anovikov »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #454
sidek wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked jobs with such a disparity. For a govt census job, the top two workers out of 20 visited 3x the dwellings per hour and had a ~4x success rate per dwelling compared to the average, so they were literally doing as much as the other 18 employees.

What were they doing differently? And why were the other workers not trained to do the same?

They've almost certainly been just nicer people who people liked to communicate better. Like, young pretty girls with pleasant voice. And they knew how to build right approach to people. That's it, and it can't be trained.

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

#457

Post by OJFord »

ourmandave wrote: post #280
timthelion wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I don't understand the down votes and all these answers. If I'm paying strictly for pieces produced (e.g. apples picked, widgets assembled) why would I balk at paying you for all of them if you're capable of 8X the average. I'm not losing anything. Hell, I should be studying you to see how you're so efficient and apply that to my production (assuming you're not Superman hiding out). Of course, that's not the same as…

Exactly - you pay more over a shorter period, or, in the case of a continuous widget assembly line, you pay fewer people more.

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

#458

Post by navane »

zimmund wrote: post #349
barrkel wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 degr…

Isn't this close to how computer proccessors are sold?

I never checked this, but I always thought that slower CPUs are just CPUs with some 'production faults' in it. Basically, the manufacturer always tried to make 300mhz CPUs, but sometimes they didn't reach that speed so they sold them as 233mhz, 166mhz.

Now I was under the impression that most people didn't know this, so most people were buying CPUs which were just designed to be slow, but in fact they were accidentally slower.

This is exactly your car example, and there is nothing unethical about it -- either way.

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

#459

Post by artur_makly »

arcticfox wrote: post #93
dsego wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

How is this his tool if he made it at work, on his employer's dime?

maybe he made it during his recreational / non working time ..

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

#460

Post by lerpa »

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…

It would if you were explicitly told to do it without automation. Otherwise you're paid to do a job, and you did it, so all good.
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