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Coders Automating Their Own Job

theatlantic.com

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Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#31

Post by eindiran »

zyang wrote: post #15
eindiran wrote: post #7

I've automated large chunks of my job away, but I've never felt that I ended up not having things left to do as a result. There are always more tasks to automate and more problems to solve. I get the impression from these stories that the dishonest part of what the self-automaters are doing is that they could do other tasks and use automation to increase their productivity, but instead chose to keep their productivit…

Just curious, what's in your automation toolbox?

I usually write scripts in Python or Bash, depending on the task. I've had a fair amount of success using a cron for scheduling, but I've come to really enjoy using Jenkins for automated tasks. A lot of tasks make sense to trigger off of events other than the time and Jenkins is quite flexible in that regard.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#32

Post by jefe_ »

These days I'm much more inclined to automate my own job than someone else's. It seems many of the times I've taken extra steps to more fully automate other people's tasks, it's had the adverse effect of alerting them that even further automation is possible and they inevitably ask, "why can't you just automate the whole thing?" I then proceed to spend about 7 minutes frustrated and determined to automate their entire job away before cooling down and simply adding them to my list of "non-client people who think I should work hard so they can be lazy."

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#33

Post by kradroy »

dropit_sphere wrote: post #21
thaumaturgy wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We may not (yet) be able to automate ourselves out of programming jobs, but we can certainly leverage smart development practices into making the job a lot less labor-intensive. I'm experiencing a shift in that thinking right now. I write reusable, modular, tested code. My co-workers don't. I use a project management system (Phabricator, on my own personal server, which I maintain); the company doesn't. For most of t…

Hopping or starting a company to sell your work are becoming the fastest ways to get "promoted."

I was going to suggest this from my experience.

I hate to burst GP's bubble, but the attitude and environment at his next job probably won't be any better in regard to "best practices." It's extremely difficult to gauge how your attitude toward development compares with a prospective team's after an hour of chatting. I became a manager last year and quickly discovered that changing others' behavior and habits is next to impossible. And if he does happen to find a new team that matches his work ethic he can be certain that 1 or 2 years down the line it won't any longer.

I think the only two ways to avoid this is to become a contractor and switch gigs every 2 years, or start your own company and hope the people you hire share your attitude.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#34

Post by stronglikedan »

JakeWesorick wrote: post #3

Yes the employer is dumb for not realizing the job can be automated. Yes you are smart for writing code that automates the job. But I feel, as an employee of the company, it is un-ethical for you to knowingly see an extreme inefficiency and hide it for your own personal gain. Also, it seems like a huge way to waste your life. Find another job where they can actually use your skill set to do something meaningful.

It's only unethical if you're being paid hourly, where you're being paid to work a certain amount of time, and you're just sitting around goofing off while your scripts run. If you're getting paid salary, then you're getting paid to get the job done, regardless of how you do it. However, if part of your salaried job description is to find ways to do things more efficiently, and you don't share your efficiency implementation, then I can see how that would be unethical, but that is usually at the executive level, not the coder level.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#35

Post by tw1010 »

darawk wrote: post #6

The employer is paying you for the product, not the effort. I see no moral quandary here, nor any compulsion to notify the employer. They're getting what they want, that should be the end of it. EDIT: And I would add, for anyone that has automated their job in this way...what you should really be doing is scaling it up, and finding other companies who are probably paying employees to do the same thing. Then start you…

The employer chooses what he wants to pay for, unfortunately. Some employers will feel like doing this is a breach of trust, and some will use it as a base for firing, and some might even call it theft and press charges.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#36

Post by tareqak »

anonu wrote: post #5

As a former trader/developer/quant I often felt that "automating myself out of a job" was my goal. If we could build properly architected systems that were self-healing when things went wrong, turned themselves on before the market opened, traded all day, made money and shut down for the night... then eventually my role would devolve into monitoring and ultimately into nothing... In practise, achieving some sort of "…

I have the same feeling that "automating myself out of a job" is the goal. Personally, I can't imagine anything else because it always feels incomplete (sometimes even dishonest).

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#37

Post by yhoiseth »

This reminds me of Toyota, which (allegedly) never let anyone off after process improvements, because that would undermine the trust which is necessary for employees to feel safe when suggesting improvements.

These stories seem to me like management failures — leaders haven’t built the necessary trust.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#38

Post by empath75 »

darawk wrote: post #6

The employer is paying you for the product, not the effort. I see no moral quandary here, nor any compulsion to notify the employer. They're getting what they want, that should be the end of it. EDIT: And I would add, for anyone that has automated their job in this way...what you should really be doing is scaling it up, and finding other companies who are probably paying employees to do the same thing. Then start you…

If you can automate your job away, you can also automate someone else's job away, and get paid a lot of money for it.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#39

Post by arif_sohaib »

pathseeker wrote: post #24
darawk wrote: post #6

The employer is paying you for the product, not the effort. I see no moral quandary here, nor any compulsion to notify the employer. They're getting what they want, that should be the end of it. EDIT: And I would add, for anyone that has automated their job in this way...what you should really be doing is scaling it up, and finding other companies who are probably paying employees to do the same thing. Then start you…

>and finding other companies who are probably paying employees to do the same thing. Then start your own company that does whatever this task is as a service. Careful, if it gets out that you wrote the code to automate your job as a coder while actually at your job, your company most likely owns that IP.

I am still in academics so I have a question about this. If your company owns this is, what shouldn't they be rewarding you generously for making it? They are making money out of your extra effort/work. I get that employees who want their own ip should have the right but if the company is paying you extra and giving other rewards and removing the headache of managing your own company, is that not good?

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#40

Post by tomxor »

darawk wrote: post #6

The employer is paying you for the product, not the effort. I see no moral quandary here, nor any compulsion to notify the employer. They're getting what they want, that should be the end of it. EDIT: And I would add, for anyone that has automated their job in this way...what you should really be doing is scaling it up, and finding other companies who are probably paying employees to do the same thing. Then start you…

> for anyone that has automated their job in this way...what you should really be doing is scaling it up, and finding other companies who are probably paying employees to do the same thing. Then start your own company that does whatever this task is as a service.

These tasks might not be worth selling as a service, they could be relatively trivial yet very context specific... I suspect this is the case, and that the real issue is with the employers lacking the insight to realise the these tasks _should_ have been automated and have the initiative to do so as soon as possible.

More specifically they probably neglected to employ people between the grunt worker and executive positions that would _have_ the insight to automate these tasks as soon as possible. That's basically corner cutting in terms of employees, in which case perhaps they deserve to be exploited, the funds are correctly being appropriated to the people who realised they needed to be automated.

EDIT: to be clear I don't find it 100% morally acceptable, going behind the employer like this is underhanded of course, but it can be somewhat justified as I outlined above. I suppose the alternative is to explain to the employer how it should be done and do so and hope to gain some kind of promotion or compensation, but that entirely depends on the moral standards of that company.

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