Coders Automating Their Own Job • Hacker News Board

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#211

Post by peterwwillis » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 1:20 AM UTC

The article is a red herring. They're asking the question "Is it immoral to fire someone for automating their job?", when the question should be "Why aren't more companies encouraging their employees to automate their job?"

Yes, a person can automate their job until they're not doing anything, and yes, a company can punish an employee for sitting idle. But the latter is inherently stupid. Automation both achieves the goals originally set out for an employee, and frees them up to do more work, without any additional cost.

The business's goals should include adding value and productivity and reducing cost. If an employee automates their job, they've improved on their job productivity, which adds value to the company at no extra cost. In the article, the company has a choice:

A) fire the employee and hire a new one to keep doing the job manually.

B) fire the employee and keep the automation.

C) keep the automation, keep the employee, train the employee for a new manual job.

D) keep the automation, keep the employee, train them for a new manual job, and have them automate that.

If the company chooses A), they're just stupid. If they choose B), they're at least eliminating an unnecessary position. If they choose C), they do the same as B), except they also retain a person that is already trained and accustomed to the company, which saves time and money. If they choose D), it's the same as C), plus they can continue to lower costs and add value.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#212

Post by baddox » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 1:21 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…

Okay, I’ll bite. I don’t think this large contingency of people exists. I’m sure a lot of people would keep lost money rather than turn it in, but I’m very skeptical that there is a widespread view that this is an acceptable or justifiable action.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#213

Post by jorblumesea » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 1:21 AM UTC

peterwwillis wrote: post #211

The article is a red herring. They're asking the question "Is it immoral to fire someone for automating their job?", when the question should be "Why aren't more companies encouraging their employees to automate their job?" Yes, a person can automate their job until they're not doing anything, and yes, a company can punish an employee for sitting idle. But the latter is inherently stupid. Automation both achieves the…

> The business's goals should include adding value and productivity and reducing cost.

This is a business goal that rarely translate properly into the real world. For as much as companies tout these values it's rarely played out. Companies plod along, doing the same thing they've always done because cash flow is king and change is scary. It's easy to become complacent and addicted to steady money.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#214

Post by deytempo » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 1:53 AM UTC

michaelbuckbee wrote: post #49

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.

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.

A lot of work that many programmers/coders do is not maintained and no one will use it after they leave the company. Not always but often enough for me to notice it. Every company has derelict projects that once had use or are still used but in a non maintained way. Like a Jenkins installation that everyone uses but no one has any clue how to modify.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#215

Post by bpchaps » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 1:55 AM UTC

munk-a wrote: post #54

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.

I understand this guilt but it doesn't belong to you. We're rapidly entering a post-scarcity economy and most of the western world are employed in service industries anyways. I think the lack of more societal guarantees to survival is a critical issue especially in the US, it'd be nice to see UBI or alternatives explored more and rolled out so that losing one of these tedium jobs isn't devastating on the former emplo…

Yeah, probably. My career started in a job that could have easily been automated, but never was (intentionally). So in a lot of ways, I feel indebted to it and the idea of entry level tech jobs, because it allowed me to build a career without a degree. From that experience, it feels kind of sad that certain automation can displace potential careers.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#216

Post by eslaught » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 1:57 AM UTC

The funny thing about coding is that every time we automate something away, we just go on to take on ever more ambitious projects. We've been automating away our own jobs for decades, and... the jobs haven't gone anywhere. If anything, there is more demand now than ever. Short of strong AI, I don't see this changing.

This is actually one of my biggest reasons why I don't think we'll ever develop a true engineering discipline of software. In other engineering disciplines, there's a notion of a routine set of tasks that require skill and displine to perform. In software, whenever we discover routine anything, we automate it away. Therefore there is a relentless force moving against the routinization of our work, that is precisely what has made it so lucrative to be in software.

Who knows, maybe some day that trend will end. But at least for a good while, I suspect the more likely possibility is that we'll keep expanding the scope of our work as the tools keep taking on more of the work.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#217

Post by gricardo99 » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 2:09 AM 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…

  the cleverness is in noticing when a task can be automated. Typically, the code itself is trivial.

I’d actually argue the reverse. It’s trivial, especially with a little programming background to say “we could automate X”.

The devil is in the details. Robustly automating anything of reasonable complexity involves a lot of implementation hickups, dealing with corner cases, gracefully failing, and adding structure and regularity to otherwise disparate, adhoc and unstructured components.

It takes skill, experience and a lot of effort to do this without it immediately falling over.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#218

Post by cortesoft » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 2:21 AM UTC

tspike wrote: post #190

cortesoft wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Right, but that is not what is happening here. Other people are still working full time to provide the things he needs; food, energy, entertainment, etc.

In return, he is giving the output of something he worked a few weeks on.

In your example, it would be like the son invented a machine to do HIS chores for him, but then sat around while the rest of the family still did their work

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#219

Post by rectang » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 2:22 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…

> Hard work combined with personal agency leads to success.

Unless you get hit by a truck. Or unless you have a stroke. Or unless you are otherwise unlucky.

Because we do not live in a just world.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#220

Post by peteforde » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 2:31 AM UTC

gricardo99 wrote: post #217

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…

the cleverness is in noticing when a task can be automated. Typically, the code itself is trivial. I’d actually argue the reverse. It’s trivial, especially with a little programming background to say “we could automate X”. The devil is in the details. Robustly automating anything of reasonable complexity involves a lot of implementation hickups, dealing with corner cases, gracefully failing, and adding structure and…

I'd never presume to critique your lived experience, but in my life and career away from core developer circles, the instincts required to recognize the potential for automation were just... not part of the conversation.

It's similar to how most people will complain about the traffic while a very small number of people will start companies to dig tunnels for maglev vehicles to travel on.

Now, I choose to believe (I'm a realistic optimist) that some of these instincts - to recognize patterns, to ask orthogonal questions, to pay attention to what others take for granted - can be acquired. It's less about training and more about practice. You can decide that you're going to learn how to ask good questions.

It's a conscious act, and that is key.

Anyhow, there's certainly skill and experience required to automate well. However, it's SHOCKING how many people learn to build simple systems in MS Access or Excel to solve their own problems.

They often don't even realize that they are programming.