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Coders Automating Their Own Job

theatlantic.com

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Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#351

Post by lwhi »

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…

Intelligent choices will lead to success. Including creating roles that make sense.

As an employer .. if something can be automated, and you're paying someone to do it manually—do you deserve to get burnt?

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#352

Post by internet555 »

kaitai wrote: post #236
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…

Looking at the history of religious thought in the US, it's not the Protestant work ethic per se, but in large part the "prosperity gospel" or prosperity theology [1] -- this belief that God will reward the right kind of Christians with material wealth. There are strong currents in Protestantism that posit that rewards are for the afterlife and that one may have to endure poverty in this earthly life and that's ok. […

Which is funny because when I examine the writings of some Christian saints (e.g. St Teresa, Catholic in this case) they say things like (paraphrase) “try not to laugh at Christians who want you to pray for them to get money for being completely insane, they’re buying our food so you have to even if they are ridiculous” and then talk about how desire for immense suffering is a sign of spiritus progress

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#353

Post by jillesvangurp »

If you are getting money for not working because you automated your job away, good for you. But you should be aware that your company will likely not survive very long because it is being mismanaged. Chances are that it has smarter competitors already. Usually it is just a matter of time before the shit hits the fan.

So, you might want to consider using your time preparing for that eventuality. E.g. spend some time learning new stuff or jump ship to a better company.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#354

Post by aplummer »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #353

If you are getting money for not working because you automated your job away, good for you. But you should be aware that your company will likely not survive very long because it is being mismanaged. Chances are that it has smarter competitors already. Usually it is just a matter of time before the shit hits the fan. So, you might want to consider using your time preparing for that eventuality. E.g. spend some time l…

I think you underestimate how defensible some businesses are. For example, a supermarket or bank in Australia. “A matter of time” could be your entire career.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#355

Post by nitrogen »

turnitoff wrote: post #344
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because they don't want you to do their job. Job protectivism (?) is a serious thing.

No. By the time you get hired and you are appointed a set of things to automate, it's usually followed by a long line of deliberation and resource management and prioritizing that's determined on the higher up. There is a thing called "process debt", in the same way as technical debt, that some things are done manually. This can be mundane routine work, that might be up to 80% easy to automate, but allows for oversig…

> saying "I'll see something that you haven't noticed in years!"

It's also arrogant to assume that a fresh perspective will never yield fresh results.

I'm starting to think that the only way to work around the problem (if you actually are good at seeing things that the rest of the organization has blind spots for) is to become a consultant who is expected to suggest changes. Otherwise you will be stuck fighting against primate hierarchy instincts.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#356

Post by nkozyra »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #353

If you are getting money for not working because you automated your job away, good for you. But you should be aware that your company will likely not survive very long because it is being mismanaged. Chances are that it has smarter competitors already. Usually it is just a matter of time before the shit hits the fan. So, you might want to consider using your time preparing for that eventuality. E.g. spend some time l…

This is a big generalization. Not everyone is looking to automate tasks, so it's not a sign of mismanagement that someone has employed a novel way to reduce work. Efficiency is a goal of management, but not the only one. It's unrealistic to expect a company to pursue and capture every inefficiency. Often it's cheaper to allow aspect of "work" go unabated than to invest in both the feasibility and implementation of its automation.

If you're referring to mismanagement due to knowing what an employee is doing, I think that too is a generalization. Dovetailing with the above, if someone is getting a job done, why invest time and resources into auditing how that's done? In 99% of cases that's waste.

In the grand scheme of things, big companies are vulnerable to degrees of malice and abuse by their employees (not necessarily ascribing those terms to these actions). But they don't necessarily fail to exist because those vulnerabilities were used.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#357

Post by hannasanarion »

darawk wrote: post #44
pathseeker wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>and finding other companies who are probably paying employees to do the same thing. Then start your own company that does whatever this task is as a service. Careful, if it gets out that you wrote the code to automate your job as a coder while actually at your job, your company most likely owns that IP.

True, though presumably if you have an automatable job, you're not actually employed as a programmer and as such may not have a clause like that in your employment agreement.

You probably do. IP assignment is boilerplate. I had it in my contracts at Ross (the discount clothing store), Radioshack, and a local cheesesteak joint between 2012 and 2015.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#358

Post by vorg »

korantu wrote: post #186
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??

When I worked in IT, both in mainframe programming and before that in ops, I saw many cases of this. "borderline" is just another word for "plausibly deniable". Programmers doing it can claim to have made a mistake. Managers turn a blind eye to it because it's easier than getting pay rises for staff they don't want to leave.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#359

Post by shodan666 »

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.

That is fallacy. How could you explain poverty per country or continent then?

For example people in Algeria or Morocco are working 12h 6 days per week, and guess what? They are poor and unsuccessful.

You doesn't mater in global economy - no matter how hard you gonna work, you can't win if economy of entire region is shit.

Same story in UK in 2008: people suddenly become "successful" not because they suddenly became dumb and lazy - but because of global economy crisis that lead them out of work, credit and stability.

In UK, in 2010 it were the university computer science graduates who had LARGEST percent of unemployment in entire population.

Sudden laziness of entire generation?

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#360

Post by nkozyra »

peteforde wrote: post #127
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…

One thing that I find maddening about this topic is the assumption that people who automate their jobs won't take the new time they get back and put it to better use. For some, that could be learning skills or working on a startup, and others might just want to spend time with their kids. That said, it seems incredibly wrong to judge someone for being clever enough to relax and get paid for it. And if someone enjoys…

> One thing that I find maddening about this topic is the assumption that people who automate their jobs won't take the new time they get back and put it to better use.

I think it's fair to say they will, but will they do so for their company's benefit? Possibly, but why? This is effectively gifted time.

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