Coders Automating Their Own Job • Hacker News Board

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#101

Post by pbhjpbhj » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 9:28 PM UTC

I wonder if management would be happier if you said "I'm going to quit and be a consultant, our company will do my current role for 80% of what you're currently paying me."

?

Not only does that release you from the unnecessary expense of going to work, it frees the company some space and employment expenses too. They save money on getting the task completed, so that can be labelled as a management win "we outsourced and saved with no drop in quality".

In addition you are free to do the same for other businesses. Or indeed to sell extra seats of your solution and put your former colleagues out of work.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#102

Post by pvarangot » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 9:30 PM UTC

hinkley wrote: post #83

kradroy wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I've had very good luck changing the behavior of junior developers and moderate luck changing the behavior of mid level developers that are hungry for a promotion. I can count on my fingers (couldn't say if that's one hand or two) how many senior devs I've gotten to come around. If you're interested in progress and growth, I can say with a high degree of certainty that what you don't want to do is apply to work on a…

I had senior people change habits and practices but at the expense of huge failures or years of leading by example. The patience and the effort are humongous and almost ridiculous when you compare them to how quarterly or even bi-quarterly planing cycles look.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#103

Post by albertgoeswoof » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 9:31 PM UTC

bpchaps wrote: post #46

One thought that keeps me awake at night is that my past automation work has cost others their jobs. I understand that that's "how the world works", but it still deeply affects me that people have lost their livelihoods because of my actions.

That makes no sense. If people were doing jobs that could literally be replaced by automation, they were not great jobs and either soul destroying or they would have gone away anyway.

Progress enables productivity which is a net win for everyone, your work has contributed to productivity a LOT more than the work of the people who needed to move on. Without technology we’d almost all be in poverty.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#104

Post by eindiran » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 9:31 PM UTC

lrem wrote: post #63

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…

Come to SRE. We are seriously expected to fully automate our job away twice a decade and still manage to just keep growing.

How did you get into SRE? Did you start off as a software engineer and transition over?

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#105

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 9:32 PM UTC

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #101

I wonder if management would be happier if you said "I'm going to quit and be a consultant, our company will do my current role for 80% of what you're currently paying me." ? Not only does that release you from the unnecessary expense of going to work, it frees the company some space and employment expenses too. They save money on getting the task completed, so that can be labelled as a management win "we outsourced…

[deleted]

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#106

Post by riazrizvi » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 9:32 PM UTC

forinti wrote: post #69

It's interesting how people expect workers to "earn" their salaries through suffering. It's almost religious. At the same time, lots of businesses charge their clients a percentage of their earnings and it's ok.

David Graeber in Bullshit Jobs, says people have been conditioned to insist that you can't be productive without suffering in the process, and he goes on to makes a case for Universal Income (because modern society is productive enough to feed and house everyone). I think it misses the point. People want a job where they grow as human beings, and you can't grow without suffering/trial. Pointless jobs are depressing. If you figure out how to get paid without doing anymore work, that's cool, but then what are you going to do? If you want to grow and make society a better place, it's better to find something else to do, either with the same company or somewhere better that isn't so dysfunctional.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#107

Post by pbhjpbhj » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 9:40 PM UTC

reificator wrote: post #60

hon wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don't see it as cheating the employer anymore than one "cheats" an employer by driving to work instead of walking Can you expand on this? I don't understand the anology

It seems like they're accounting for commute in hours worked, which doesn't make any sense. Perhaps they're saying that the employer has to (indirectly) pay for a parking lot to accommodate them?

I'd say it's that driving is easier for you, but they get the same result - you attend as necessary. They shouldn't care how you get there as long as you do your job.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#108

Post by ohopton » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 9:41 PM UTC

wvenable wrote: post #8

It should be noted that programmers are not automating themselves out of programming jobs . They're automating themselves out of data entry, or testing, or any number of other mindless tasks easily done by computers.

Bluntly put, smarter programmers than you are automating you out of a programming job.

Not pretending for a second I'm safe.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#109

Post by jtcond13 » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 9:43 PM UTC

Inter Alia, this article is another piece of evidence that a lot of pretty smart people are stuck in jobs that aren’t very complex. The accumulated cost of this to the rest of us is quite high...

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#110

Post by lrem » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 9:44 PM UTC

eindiran wrote: post #104

lrem wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come to SRE. We are seriously expected to fully automate our job away twice a decade and still manage to just keep growing.

How did you get into SRE? Did you start off as a software engineer and transition over?

Straight out of PhD. The interviews went smoothly in part due to earlier experience in an ISP, but these days Google takes in SREs with 4 x coding and 1 NALSD interview. It's the stuff talked about in https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/the-site-reliability/97... and there's quite a few Google-organized workshops on this.