Coders Automating Their Own Job • Hacker News Board

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#281

Post by sbuttgereit » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 5:40 AM UTC

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…

I completely disagree with your first point, and agree with your second with caveats. The employer is usually not paying the employee for "the product"; they're usually paying for the employee's time and general ability. You can see this simply by the fact that most employees are explicitly paid a rate per hour/day/year and not something closer to a piecework basis. Differences in productivity don't effect the pay rate nor does the estimated value of the product. Employees don't work on a "fixed fee basis" on their assignments and for maintenance like work their pay doesn't fluctuate downward when the value of their product diminishes nor upwards when it increases. The product is a consequence of how the employee is directed to spend their time. If the trade is something else, it should be clearly stated in the employment agreement/contract that they employee is paid on some other basis. Unilaterally recasting the terms of your employment into some other basis is merely rationalizing not providing the real thing for which you're being paid.

For those that might say that a job description sets product based terms for employment, it's rare that they are offered that way. Almost all the job descriptions that I've ever seen (and all that I've written) have some sort of phrase to the effect of, "...and other work as might be assigned." A job description isn't a Statement of Work, they're usually just general expectation setting devices.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#282

Post by flukus » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 5:47 AM UTC

I think a lot more would be automated by now had the right incentive structures been in place, there are still tonnes of low hanging fruit in areas that are to small or too diverse to productize.

One example I remember is a company I worked for that had a lot of people doing data entry, basically reading faxes from a variety of sources that could have been 90% automated by OCR and some trivial AI. It was too specialized for any off the shelf system but too expensive for the company to invest in automating. I probably could have built an automated system but it would take a huge time investment to get to a point where they'd be willing to buy it and they would likely not pay enough to support me full time.

Now imagine if I could retain some rights to my automation to my automation efforts? I could take one of these data entry positions and with a bit of my own time invested I could probably automate 20% of the work fairly quickly, freeing up enough time to further automate things without sacrificing my own time. Sooner or later enough would be automated that I could start doing multiple jobs if the company were willing to license it. Eventually I could take on another entry level role and start the process over.

I would come out in front, the company would come out in front and the world would be more efficient, but the incentives just aren't there.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#283

Post by teddyh » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 5:53 AM 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’s like a fox feeling guilty about eating rabbits; it’s an integral part of the process:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_destruction

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#284

Post by bicubic » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 5:59 AM UTC

6nf wrote: post #252

romwell wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Our company culture is the complete opposite of that. We want people to help each other. We want people to challenge how things are done. We want to change things all the time, experiment, see what works. OK, so you are explicitly making this a part of the job description . Which, arguably, was not the case for that particular employee at that particular job. >If someone with this attitude worked for me, I'd get rid…

You're really hung up about this 'not in the job description' thing. If you see a small fire in the cubicle next door, I guess you'll just ignore it cause putting out fires wasn't in the job description. Neither is looking out for fires and reporting it, so just let it burn. You won't last the probation period working with us, thank god for that. I'd hate to be in an office full of people who only does what's in thei…

You sound like a terrible employer.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#285

Post by antidesitter » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 6:01 AM UTC

peteforde wrote: post #272

sonnyblarney wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"God wanted them to find it" I think you'll find that most people who 'keep the wallet' are probably not religious and don't think about it the morality of it all that much, whereas those who are regular temple/church/mosque attenders would be among the least likely to 'keep it'.

That's a nice thought, but do you have any evidence to back this up? The notion that religious people are less likely to do bad things is highly problematic, objectively and logically - and it carries the unfortunate assumption that non-religious people are more likely to do bad things. People should not need to subscribe to a paranormal belief system to understand that theft, rape and murder are bad.

> That's a nice thought, but do you have any evidence to back this up?

Do you have any evidence to back up your claim in the OP?

> The notion that religious people are less likely to do bad things is highly problematic, objectively and logically.

What exactly do you mean by “highly problematic, objectively and logically”?

> People should not need to subscribe to a paranormal belief system to understand that theft, rape and murder are bad.

“Should not” and “do not” are two very different things.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#286

Post by paulriddle » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 6:03 AM 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…

It is a smart decision, but still it's better to build something solid before you start consulting: an online presence, a blog, a podcast, network of people who know you, etc. So that your former employer is not your only source on consulting gigs.

But even then, most companies would refuse, because it means they have to contact their legal department to draft a contract, and change their workflow to accomodate for you, an external entity. I've seen people transition from employees to consultants for one company, it was very smooth though. It's just that some companies would have a kneejerk reaction of "errr, dude, listen, whatever, man, just if you're leaving, then you're leaving, if not, then not, this consulting stuff, I don't think anybody would approve of, so no, either you stay as you are, or leave, sorry." Because they don't think it's important, they don't value you, and don't really care, so by becoming a consultant you're presenting a problem and additional work for them, they would rather avoid it, especially if avoiding it is the easiest thing to do - nothing. HR will find somebody to replace you.

Or it may work out how you described, especially if you sell it to them with charisma and good vibes.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#287

Post by dbg31415 » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 6:03 AM UTC

Back in the 90s I had a high school summer job where I had to run some scripts against a production database. I was told, "You have to watch it in case there are errors." Boring work. Essentially, I sat for 2-3 hours a day watching a status bar move.

I would run a backup script on a production database, then copy the backup over to a local storage drive, then run a sanitation script to clean up customer data, then copy the database again to a public folder where the devs could access it.

I would use the time to try and dissect the script and read up on SQL. A few months in, I added a few lines to the script that emailed me if there were errors (and of course this list of errors evolved over time...), and set it to automatically do the download and sanitation work.

Then I corrected a few parts of the sanitation script to block out a few more bits of customer data that whomever wrote the original script had missed, and then set it up on a schedule to pull a copy every hour... the devs loved that the data was coming down more frequently.

I was so proud of my little automation project, and I showed my boss. I was a little worried he'd be upset that I was running this script on production. He wasn't. He loved it. Then he told me to delete it.

"You cost me $8 / hour, but when you go back to school I'd have to hire someone who costs a lot more to maintain this. The budget is already approved for the year, I can't change it. This is great... and I know what I'm asking you to do is stupid... glad you're learning here... but really I just want you to sit and watch the status bar move."

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#288

Post by 6nf » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 6:06 AM UTC

bicubic wrote: post #284

6nf wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're really hung up about this 'not in the job description' thing. If you see a small fire in the cubicle next door, I guess you'll just ignore it cause putting out fires wasn't in the job description. Neither is looking out for fires and reporting it, so just let it burn. You won't last the probation period working with us, thank god for that. I'd hate to be in an office full of people who only does what's in thei…

You sound like a terrible employer.

Why? Because we want people who act like humans instead of corporate robots? Because we care about people who care about each other?

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#289

Post by Iv » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 6:10 AM UTC

I'll weight in from a slightly different angle: I consider my job as a coder to be 90% bullshit. I call it plumbing. Inject that data stream into these input, buffer this, convert that, cache that shit. Launch a thread to do that in parallel, manage a thread pool, poll that stuff, convert that data format into that other, I could go on for pages.

My real job is in the 10% remaining: understanding the problem, producing an algorithm or an architecture, optimizing things in a way that require a deep understanding of the data, designing the UI the users really need.

I'd gladly automate the plumbing in order to do 80% of interesting stuff instead of 20%.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#290

Post by jeandejean » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 6:13 AM UTC

Well it seems that if your work can be so easily automated, we shouldn't call you coder in the first place.

That's an interesting debate, but basing the article on 2 anonymous reddit posts whose authors couldn't be reached to get the full story is not what I expect from journalists.