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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?

#461

Post by ohyes »

tripzilch wrote: post #448
ohyes wrote: post #46

I think the real question is whether this person is salaried or hourly. If they're hourly, then yeah, billing 40 hours a week when you only did 2 is fraud. If salaried, I think it's okay. Here's why: Individuals in the company will be good or bad, ethical or unethical. The company itself will (likely) be largely amoral and driven solely by a profit motive. So when this person announces that he's automated himself out…

> That is what it is, but if the company is allowed to be driven by profit motive, he should be too. It is within the best interests of his profit motive to continue with the automated work. For some reason when the person is an employee, it's no longer okay to be a sociopathic profit-motivated machine, we're actively disgusted by this type of behavior. I can go along with this fairness argument, but you can hardly a…

I agree wholeheartedly. Modern corporate ethics are a travesty.

It wouldn't be that everyone should do this. It is that everyone engaging in business with a sociopathic entity is required to. Otherwise the sociopathic entity gains a snowballing economic incentive by exploiting the social norms of the non sociopaths.

Per example, you'll note, in a realistic situation there is no scenario where this person gives up his script and is compensated for even 20% of the value that has been created for the company.

I will note that I am a hypocrite, that is I'm not good at playing the profit maximizing machine role; few normal people are. I also don't believe it is particularly healthy to do so.

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

#462

Post by Mouse47 »

nvarsj wrote: post #394
zzalpha wrote: post #271

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. Well that's definitely not elitist...

It's also the kind of thinking that leads to racism - because most people in highly paid jobs tend to be white. It's an extremely narrow, ignorant world view to think that people in factory jobs are less intelligent. Meritocracy and the American dream is generally only accessible to the affluent.

It's also an extremely narrow, ignorant view of ability/intelligence in general. I've never struggled with math or CS at any time in my life, cruised through college, but I find myself agonizing over the stark difference in social ability between myself and people who spend time doing more blue-collar stuff. As a developer, I've come to realize that my usefulness is bottlenecked mostly by my lack of social skills, and I feel as hopeless trying to learn that as I'd expect someone struggling with math might feel. If anything I'm getting worse.

The point is, intelligence is not one dimensional -- and it's possible to do well at some things and poorly at others. I wonder how much of that 'specialization' is innate vs. learned? If the blue-collared social savant had spent his formative years learning math instead?

It's a bit disingenuous to point out that a factory worker is bad at math when their circumstances likely caused them not to focus on it. Especially when they display abilities above your own in other areas...

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

#463

Post by austenallred »

WaxProlix wrote: post #417
austenallred wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I mean - if we're talking zero-friction circular cows, then if the unemployment rate is over 0%, there are more employees. The unemployment rate is always well above zero.

But there may not be employees willing to take that job at That price with that skill set. The unemployment rate now is zero, but if I'm trying to hire a machine learning engineer for $10/hr I'd have a hard time.

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

#464

Post by emodendroket »

navane wrote: post #458
zimmund wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 jus…

I still don't see the analogy. The lower quality was not intentional and, what's more, they clearly labeled it as an inferior product. This seems more akin to designing a processor so that it will fail just out of its warranty period and you need to buy a new one, but not mentioning that to anyone.

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

#465

Post by emodendroket »

kungito wrote: post #106
emodendroket wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I mean, generally, any tools you create on company time, with company resources, are assigned to the company, if you're an employee.

Only if the contract says so. And just because the contract says so doesn't mean it's morally correct, only that they managed to get you to sign it.

OK, but if you have a job as a software developer you almost certainly signed such an agreement.

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

#466

Post by dmh2000 »

gerbilly wrote: post #99
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…

You learned that people value effort over results. Here's a common situation from programming. A programmer, Steve, works long hours but writes sloppy code. Steve is often seen by management fixing critical issues in production, and 'saving the day'. Eventually Steve, leaves to work at a bigger company and is replaced by a new programmer, Dave, who is more methodical. Dave eventually cleans up the code and gets it to…

so true. that exact situation happens where i work. One department's managers prefer flailers who work long hours fixing their mistakes over folks who deliver a working product with little drama. I observe that the latter example is interpreted as 'obviously it was easy'.

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

#467

Post by observation »

Mouse47 wrote: post #462
nvarsj wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also the kind of thinking that leads to racism - because most people in highly paid jobs tend to be white. It's an extremely narrow, ignorant world view to think that people in factory jobs are less intelligent. Meritocracy and the American dream is generally only accessible to the affluent.

It's also an extremely narrow, ignorant view of ability/intelligence in general. I've never struggled with math or CS at any time in my life, cruised through college, but I find myself agonizing over the stark difference in social ability between myself and people who spend time doing more blue-collar stuff. As a developer, I've come to realize that my usefulness is bottlenecked mostly by my lack of social skills, an…

It is possible to become a social savant if you apply yourself and practice. Most social skills are a handful of routines and checklists coupled with practice in real life situations.

You shouldn't label yourself 'bad at social' or 'bad at math' because it'll hold your confident to improve in check.

If you keep a notebook, deliberately put yourself into social settings and keep score it'll be intimidating but you'll improve.

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

#468

Post by keksicus »

How ethical is it to tell your boss and then lose all that time with your son. What ethics do you care more about? Making sure your boss gets all the time he thinks he's paying for out of you? Or your son getting as much time as you can give him? Are you more loyal to your boss than your son? If your ethics are driving you to cuck-out and screw yourself, it's time to delete your "ethics" and install new ethics. There is such a thing as fear of success, I'm hoping you don't have that fear.

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

#469

Post by keksicus »

abramz wrote: post #149
ohyes wrote: post #46

I think the real question is whether this person is salaried or hourly. If they're hourly, then yeah, billing 40 hours a week when you only did 2 is fraud. If salaried, I think it's okay. Here's why: Individuals in the company will be good or bad, ethical or unethical. The company itself will (likely) be largely amoral and driven solely by a profit motive. So when this person announces that he's automated himself out…

So the guy is acting ethically because tit for tat? Fuck no

Nature doesn't give a s* about ethics. You either eat, or be eaten. Ethics are human-invented hacks on nature, ones which (often times) are inefficient compared to letting nature run.

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

#470

Post by observation »

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.

I'm blue collar.

I program computers. I read books. I clean toilets, clean windows and presently am organizing myself to construct a house, everything from framing to finishing.

While at university I realized two things that caused me to drop out after three years of computers science.

1. I was never going to be paid very much (in the UK) for knowing what I did about computation, despite it being very difficult for a majority of the population and having a sunk cost, which was suspect to me.

2. My old summer cleaning job paid better than computer programming and I could 'level up' by buying my own equipment, hiring workers and pay myself at a much faster rate. I could also control my costs far more adeptly since I wouldn't have to live in a major metropolitan area with sky high rents/taxes.

All this I believe is indicative of the deep nature of Moravec's Paradox, probably the most important law nobody has heard of and that few programmers seem to understand.

I read books all the time, I love learning new things. I'm working through interesting old books on a kaleidoscope of topics.

Formal education for me was a complete and total waste of my time. It is a road to nowhere, just as the formal job market is. An actual intellectual behaves like Gwern or DredMorbius, not the hordes of semi-institutionalized people who actually inhabit today's universities.

I have decided to construct a house, a system really, that will enable my lifestyle to be extremely low cost so that I may recover my time and use it for what I will.

Don't get me wrong, I understand your point, it is true that on average blue collar workers are less bookish than white collar workers. However there exist 'traps' in both fields that consume people. For blue collar it might be the effort of exploring new things as Smith pointed out. For white collar it is much the same but in a different way. How many of your peers can build a house with their own hands? I don't think anybody looks at that Primitive Technology Guy and thinks "Gosh, what an unintellectual idiot".

tldr; Have a multifaceted model of reality and don't fall into cognitive traps.

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