Coders Automating Their Own Job • Hacker News Board

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#151

Post by testvox » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 10:40 PM UTC

kbenson wrote: post #131

peteforde wrote: post #119

You know how sometimes you love an article so much that you are annoyed you didn't write it? This does a better job than I could have of tieing together a dozen threads of conversation that I've had with various friends for years. I actually believe that there's a culture war implied in this debate; the question of who deserves to reap the gains of automation is more than just philosophy or ethics. The question "is t…

> there exists a large contingent of people who believe with all of their heart that God wanted them to find it, that the person who lost it should have been more careful, that they are just having a lucky day. A large part of how America sees work, poverty and wealth was historically influenced by the Protestant Work Ethic, and I think that lingers quite a bit today. I think it's why a lot of people view the poor as…

It cuts both ways at least, those with inherited wealth are just as unworthy as those who never accumulated any.

> The so-called Protestant Ethic then prevalent held that man was a sturdy and responsible individual, responsible to himself, his society, and his God. Anybody who could not measure up to that standard could not qualify for public office or even popular respect. One who was born "with a silver spoon in his mouth" might be envied, but he could not aspire to public acclaim; he had to live out his life in the seclusion of his own class.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#152

Post by bradknowles » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 10:41 PM UTC

tabtab wrote: post #130

michaelbuckbee wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Development jobs are shifting as more and more towards "plugging APIs together" and much less end to end development. Modern web dev is fantastically more productive and efficient than it was 10 or 15 years ago. Most/many SAAS apps are substitutes for aspects of what previously would have been part of a developers job to put into place.

Re: Modern web dev is fantastically more productive and efficient than it was 10 or 15 years ago. I have to disagree. The esthetical expectations of the user/customer are higher now. If it's not "in style" they think you are sticking them with old tech. And you have the desktop/mobile split that frameworks only get half right and require days of black-box fiddling to get working right on all devices. And JavaScript g…

I submit that having ten thousand node.js/npm dependencies is far worse than any DLL Hell that has ever been experienced to date.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#153

Post by cortesoft » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 10:43 PM UTC

imh wrote: post #74

cortesoft wrote: post #30

> Wary self-automators, he speculates, “don’t trust our workplaces. The boss is going to say thank you, good work, now do it again.” Well, no shit. That is what the job of a programmer is - to keep automating things. There are an INFINITE number of useful things we need to do as a society, so we shouldn't be upset if we automate one of them away. Move on to the next. Of course, programmers should make sure they negot…

I'd bet many employees would be happy to work an hour or two per week. I'd be few employers would be happy to have employees work that little. It's not just a fear of being fired. It's a fear of the managerial mindset of "if they can do more each week, they aren't being challenged enough."

That is a larger societal question, though - how long should you be able to live off work you do? Is it fair for a worker to work for a few weeks, automating a job that used to be paid year after year, and then earn that money forever?

Obviously there is a balance - a company shouldn't get ALL that savings (although in the long run, that savings would need to be passed on to customers, since competitors will also be able to automate the same tasks).

At the same time, I don't think it is fair (or sustainable as a society), to expect to live forever off of work you did over a few weeks (no matter how valuable that work might be).

If we allow people who automate things to live off the work of that automation FOREVER, then we are creating that sort of distopia that anti-technology people claim; that WOULD be taking jobs, because ALL of the benefit for the automation would be going to the automater and none to society. Society would still be paying the same amount for the resource, it would just all be going to the person who made it.

Obviously, it shouldn't all go to a company either, but if ALL (or many) companies in the same field also automate, they will HAVE to pass on the savings to customers to compete. This will provide a net gain to society, since the resource is now cheaper for everyone (at the cost of the people who used to do the job).

The cost decreasing with automation is REQUIRED to make it a net positive for society, and the automater taking all the rewards for the automation in perpetuity ruins that.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#154

Post by bradknowles » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 10:45 PM UTC

ambicapter wrote: post #145

bmj wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about programmers automating other programmers out of jobs? My employer's core product line is designed in such a way that it can be configured for specific customers via an API. Much of that work is done by "operations developers." The complexity of their work varies based on the customer's needs. We are currently developing a designer tool that will allow the configuration to be developed via a graphical inter…

Those "operations" engineers can be moved to making sure Ops are running well at home (you apparently have an API) or into Technical Sales if they'd rather stay in the field. Informing the customer of all the configuration that is available to them, for example. Just because there's a nice graphical configuration tool, doesn't mean any clients are actually going to look at it when they have an issue. They'd much rath…

Nope.

Operations is a pure cost center. Cost centers only exist for the express purpose of being compressed twice as much this month as they were last month, so that you can make them half as expensive.

Developers are valuable. They create value.

When all the good Operations staff has left because they're tired of being treated like mushrooms, all the Operations stuff gets thrown over the wall and then the Developers get told that they are now DevOps.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#155

Post by bradknowles » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 10:46 PM UTC

forinti wrote: post #64

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.

Exactly. I wonder how their bosses don't realise that these tasks can be automated.

It is hard to make someone understand some fact when their continued existence depends on ignoring the fact in question.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#156

Post by bradknowles » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 10:51 PM UTC

m000 wrote: post #96

crispyambulance wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Well, no shit. That is what the job of a programmer is - to keep automating things. I think that many of these scenarios are occurring when NON-programmers realize that their jobs are automate-able and they set out to automate them. It means picking up new skills, practicing them and putting them to use without the consent nor permission of management. It is not necessarily an easy path, it takes time, and there's…

What if you automated your job on your own free time?

Then they get to pay you less because you work fewer hours to do the same job.

Or they fire you because they don't need you anymore.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#157

Post by kbenson » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 10:51 PM UTC

testvox wrote: post #151

kbenson wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there exists a large contingent of people who believe with all of their heart that God wanted them to find it, that the person who lost it should have been more careful, that they are just having a lucky day. A large part of how America sees work, poverty and wealth was historically influenced by the Protestant Work Ethic, and I think that lingers quite a bit today. I think it's why a lot of people view the poor as…

It cuts both ways at least, those with inherited wealth are just as unworthy as those who never accumulated any. > The so-called Protestant Ethic then prevalent held that man was a sturdy and responsible individual, responsible to himself, his society, and his God. Anybody who could not measure up to that standard could not qualify for public office or even popular respect. One who was born "with a silver spoon in hi…

Originally, sure, but I think it's been perverted over time (in the USA at least) to the point that it's really only applied to the destitute. Also, I think it's become enough of a cultural norm that the non-religious (or those subscribing to a different religion) still feel some pull towards the concept since they were raised where it was prevalent.

It also comes down to it being easier to spot someone in poverty than to spot someone that's rich but hasn't worked for it themselves. That might explain most of it.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#158

Post by eksemplar » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 10:51 PM UTC

peteforde wrote: post #119

You know how sometimes you love an article so much that you are annoyed you didn't write it? This does a better job than I could have of tieing together a dozen threads of conversation that I've had with various friends for years. I actually believe that there's a culture war implied in this debate; the question of who deserves to reap the gains of automation is more than just philosophy or ethics. The question "is t…

With the way things are going, I’m not sure learning a little bit of programming will help. Digitization has really begun rolling with RPA, because we now automate system processes for systems with no apis and no direct data manipulation.

But even though RPA is mostly screengrapping and macros, we’ve found it impossible to teach to people who aren’t developers.

Similar with better BI tools it’s become possible for sql savvy business process people to do BI, but without s fundamental understanding of data efficiency, which we can’t seem to instill in these highly educated people, what they make is often useless because it slows the systems.

Programming is completely trivial, but understanding what you’re doing, and why. Is much harder to teach than programming. Especially when you’re working toward productiveness where you can’t just write best practices for everything because best practices are often unnecessary for some systems and necessary for others.

I know this wasn’t really that related to the article, it’s just a general observation, and believe me, we tried to decentralize our RPA processes because maintaining them is hell.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#159

Post by vmarshall23 » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 10:53 PM UTC

Isn't that precisely the job?

I had to automate my job when working full time in grad school, otherwise I never would have passed a class.

Since I entered the work force, most jobs have been some version of "automate some task for other people (customers) to exchange for pieces of paper representing effort($)" or "automate some internal task so company spends less $ paying meatware to do things saving effort($)". Rinse, and repeat until either:

a) company makes $$$$! b) company runs out of $

If you manage to automate all-the-things and haven't hit state a) or b) then you start flame wars on internal mailing lists about how the free company snacks suck or whatever. :-)

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#160

Post by buboard » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 10:53 PM UTC

tabtab wrote: post #130

michaelbuckbee wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Development jobs are shifting as more and more towards "plugging APIs together" and much less end to end development. Modern web dev is fantastically more productive and efficient than it was 10 or 15 years ago. Most/many SAAS apps are substitutes for aspects of what previously would have been part of a developers job to put into place.

Re: Modern web dev is fantastically more productive and efficient than it was 10 or 15 years ago. I have to disagree. The esthetical expectations of the user/customer are higher now. If it's not "in style" they think you are sticking them with old tech. And you have the desktop/mobile split that frameworks only get half right and require days of black-box fiddling to get working right on all devices. And JavaScript g…

> If it's not "in style" they think you are sticking them with old tech

Is that even true? Is there any survey showing that users consider those bad or old tech? Because with things like the reddit, ebay, paypal, gmail redesign, the common thing i ve noticed is that nobody asked for those.