Coders Automating Their Own Job • Hacker News Board

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#181

Post by crispyambulance » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 11:43 PM UTC

bradknowles wrote: post #156

m000 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

I think people are just assuming that the typical case here is someone automating their job to a degree where they literally don't have to do anything. I suppose that happens sometimes if we are to believe anonymous reddit and stackexchange postings.

What actually happens is that regular people who you would not assume are "programmers" start picking up computer skills and employ them in a piecemeal fashion a little bit at a time until eventually their day-to-day work becomes something quite different from when they started out.

This has been going on for at least as long as there has been a computer on every desk. I think "software engineers" should not be so smug to think that everything worth doing is something that they're going to get a chance bid on and then get a project managers or scrum teams to implement.

As for whether the person that does this gets fired or promoted depends on their skills at managing their peers and superiors, and what kind of environment they work in.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#182

Post by dpwm » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 11:55 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #166

testvox wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> It cuts both ways at least, those with inherited wealth are just as unworthy as those who never accumulated any. In theory, but in practice that just means that those with inherited wealth expend some of it on building a personal myth of being self-made independent of their family legacy. It's often paper thin, but as long as they make the gesture to ritually acknowledge the norm, it seems to suffice in practice. O…

> In practice that just means that those with inherited wealth expend some of it on building a personal myth of being self-made independent of their family legacy.

This happens a fair bit in the UK. Due to the media's obsession with entrepreneurs, we see the wealthy gambling a bit of family wealth on a series of startup ideas that are clearly not made for the reality we inhabit but sound snappy and fin-techy (blockchain for banks, with no understanding of banks).

> Obviously, no parallel equivalent exists in the other end of the economic scale.

If you take away the spending of money bit, there is an equivalent at the other end of the economic scale.

There exists some person with inherited wealth that builds a personal myth of their inherited wealth not being responsible for their current wealth.

There exists some person in inherited poverty that builds a personal myth of their inherited poverty not being responsible for their current poverty.

The latter does happen.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#183

Post by vorg » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 11:57 PM UTC

Many programmers who automate portions of their workload will use the extra time they gain to place bugs in the systems. When those systems fail, they quickly fix them and look like a savior. If they are on after-hours standby, they make extra money from the callouts. They thus reduce the stress in their own jobs, but increase the stress in other peoples jobs.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#184

Post by imgabe » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 12:03 AM 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…

I think this doesn't quite get it. Will "hard work" lead to success? No, not exactly. I don't think anyone believes that. A prisoner in a work camp works hard.

Hard work combined with personal agency leads to success. Are you responsible for yourself? That is, are you taking responsibility for yourself? If so, you will find a way to make yourself successful. If you are looking for someone else to take responsibility for you, for your healthcare, for your retirement, for your general environment and well-being, then naturally you will be at the mercy of whoever happens to assume that responsibility.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#185

Post by DennisP » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 12:04 AM UTC

ohopton wrote: post #167

DennisP wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's been happening ever since the first computers. The first programmers hand-entered machine code, then someone automated that with an assembler. Then the first compiler automated much of the work in writing assembly code. Since then we've gotten ever more powerful languages, libraries, and all sorts of tools. None of this has reduced the demand for programmers.

Couldn't agree more, that doesn't mean it's always going to be the same. A lot of programming jobs these days are putting information from a database on a screen, then updating it in the database after it's been edited. Doesn't feel like that should be an impossible thing to automate in a fairly sophisticated way. Though that's been true for a long time and we don't seem to have made much progress.

I spent a lot of my career doing that. There was usually a fairly large gap between what made sense in relational database design, and what was convenient and sensible for users.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#186

Post by korantu » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 12:09 AM UTC

vorg wrote: post #183

Many programmers who automate portions of their workload will use the extra time they gain to place bugs in the systems. When those systems fail, they quickly fix them and look like a savior. If they are on after-hours standby, they make extra money from the callouts. They thus reduce the stress in their own jobs, but increase the stress in other peoples jobs.

This is borderline criminal, and should be caught with processes / code review.

Did you really see a lot of such cases??

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#187

Post by tspike » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 12:10 AM UTC

lwhi wrote: post #161

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…

When most people or organisations are purchasing a service, they're usually mainly concerned about the value that service will bring them. The amount of effort required to produce that value, helps to dictate market conditions and the amount of competition; aside from this, ultimately I don't think effort matters so much when you consider it in terms of B2B transactions. Eventually, if a service is easy to supply—com…

It's because there's a conflict of interest in who reaps the benefits. If the company makes the decision to automate, it's clear that it's the company that reaps the benefits. If a worker chooses to automate, it's ambiguous.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#188

Post by zaptheimpaler » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 12:12 AM UTC

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.

So its perfectly ethical for a company to hire you for $50K to produce say $100K revenue, and continue paying you $50K even though you produce $1M in revenue after automating (or even fire you and keep the code)?

Why is it ethical for companies to get away with paying you FAR less than the value you produce for them?

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#189

Post by godelski » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 12:17 AM UTC

imgabe wrote: post #184

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…

I think this doesn't quite get it. Will "hard work" lead to success? No, not exactly. I don't think anyone believes that. A prisoner in a work camp works hard. Hard work combined with personal agency leads to success. Are you responsible for yourself? That is, are you taking responsibility for yourself? If so, you will find a way to make yourself successful. If you are looking for someone else to take responsibility…

I think the quote "The harder I work the luckier I get." applies here.

Hard work results in being able to take advantage of more opportunities. But you still have to have those opportunities.

I think this is a case where people confuse correlation and causation. Hard work correlates with success, but it doesn't cause success.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#190

Post by tspike » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 12:22 AM UTC

cortesoft wrote: post #153

imh wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Take the complexities of society out of the picture for a moment and reduce the scenario to a family unit living on subsistence farming with nobody else around: if the family is somehow able to automate their food, water, shelter and energy needs, are they entitled to live forever on that work?