I work in Finance/Investment Industry and was "let go" from one of the companies I worked at because I automated a large portion of my job (among other things). I even wrote an instruction manual for the entire process (not knowing that I could/would be let go). They ended up replacing me with a guy who didn't know how to program, but had 20 years of experience. Live and learn.
Coders Automating Their Own Job
411–420 of 499 posts
Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job
#412Earlier quoted context omitted.
Our most recent stocktake I took the day off from programming, grabbed a handheld and went around doing the same job as anyone else doing stocktake, I have about half a dozen small-medium sized changes I can make that will vastly reduce time for next stock take. I've also spent time in our sandblast units and our loading docks and sales team. How can I architect and build good software if I don't have a good understa…
Trying to get access to the people who actually do the jobs that can be automated is almost always a struggle. It seems weird and counter-intuitive to me so I have never figured out what to say to get this critical resource. Typically you have to gather user data through a telephone game-like chain of middle managers. And that doesn't really work,
In my case it's because my boss is smart and because I have a tendency of operating on a 'better to seek forgiveness than ask permission' model.
I have a huge amount of latitude in how I spend my time so if boss sees me in the loading dock scanning deliveries he assumes that I'm doing it for a good reason.
One of many reasons you'd need a crowbar and a tub of grease to get me to leave, I've had offers with 20% better compensation or more including some developer management roles but never even considered them, I'm well paid for a developer relative to the local market, I work a 37.5hr week, week in/week out and my work is both appreciated and has a measurable impact, it's close to programmer heaven (except for the mess I inherited but that's slowly getting sorted).
There is more to life than money including actually having time for a life.
Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job
#413I work in Finance/Investment Industry and was "let go" from one of the companies I worked at because I automated a large portion of my job (among other things). I even wrote an instruction manual for the entire process (not knowing that I could/would be let go). They ended up replacing me with a guy who didn't know how to program, but had 20 years of experience. Live and learn.
That's one big problem in companies. If you are below a certain level any kind of improvement you make may actually threaten your job and the company will not move you somewhere else.
Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job
#414Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
That's just my experience. If a customer pays for a new gizmo, they want the "latest and greatest". If it doesn't look latest and greatest to them, they feel slighted. I'm not saying it's necessarily rational, only that it's the way customers on average react. They don't always say it directly, but word gets around. I've seen it many times. Humans judge books by covers. As far as old-looking sites like Ebay, if an Eb…
Right, but it seems to me that an entire - and unbelievably rich - industry is moving along with “just my experience“ when it comes to UIs.
Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job
#415Earlier quoted context omitted.
One thing I find fascinating about the article is that it's assumed the cleverness was the code written to automate. This is incorrect; the cleverness is in noticing when a task can be automated. Typically, the code itself is trivial. I have told my work more than once that if they wanted to get the most out of me they should put me on the "front line" for a month or two, and let me decide what needs to be automated.…
I have also asked this, I can't understand why my managers always think its a joke idea.
Same here. Instead we have all these meetings where a ton of managers talk about their workers instead of letting the workers talk directly.
Using your software for the intended work can be very eye opening. I have had many occasions where I had to use stuff I had written and quickly saw a lot of inconveniences that could easily be fixed. When I asked users about this they agreed but they never asked because they thought it would be a difficult change.
Recently I had to use our SAP system and there would be a ton of opportunities for small changes with huge time savings but somehow it seems they never trickle up to the devs.
Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job
#416You 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…
> Typically, the code itself is trivial. There are tremendous financial opportunities waiting behind automation of expensive tasks usually performed by developers. For many of those tasks, the moment is right now, and the code itself is not trivial.
Sure, but that's because developers are expensive, and poorly quantized - In a professional capacity, you can't really hire a developer for a weekend. That requires a direct connection, usually a personal one. There's probably a hundred thousand tasks that could be automated but have never been within ten feet of a developer because it never comes up. Something that you and I would do in ten minutes of perl would likely be someone's full time job.
This absolutely increases in complexity as the benefit increases, mostly due to the low-hanging, prime fruit already being picked... but there's still tons of stuff being handled by humans still. Moreover, as techniques and computing power become cheaper and cheaper, stuff that used to be hard (OCR!) becomes easier all the time.
Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job
#417I work in Finance/Investment Industry and was "let go" from one of the companies I worked at because I automated a large portion of my job (among other things). I even wrote an instruction manual for the entire process (not knowing that I could/would be let go). They ended up replacing me with a guy who didn't know how to program, but had 20 years of experience. Live and learn.
That should look really good on your resume, or probably could be the basis for a consulting business.
Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job
#418Earlier quoted context omitted.
Managers always think that they are smarter than coders. Lets face it if they admitted that we could make business decision well there wouldn't be much need for them.
Works just as well the other way around. Every time managers are mentioned at HN, some programmer is sure they can do a better job than their/most/all managers.
That's because programmers can do management. It's not unusual to see engineers get tracked into management. I have certainly never seen it go the other way (partially because managers usually make more than engineers I'm sure.)
Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job
#419You 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…
I think you have hit the nail on the head.
Maybe it is only paranoia, but over the course of my career I have seen an increased treatment of the employee like chattel. The rights of employees have eroded, almost by choice, through social media, smart phones, monitoring technology.
I, personally, had had enough. I decided to remove myself from that environment. I believed that it was dehumanizing and degrading. I started working remotely on contracts. That worked pretty well for a while. But I started working for one company where slowly they wanted me to become more and more like one of their employees and less of an independent contractor. In addition to the work covered by the contract, I was asked to help on other projects or with interviewing. Initially I didn't mind because I wanted to help. After a while I realized what was happening and that is what prompted me to create my own company to work through and to be paid for the end result rather than the time spent on the result.
With respect to the article, there are some things that I think you have to accept as an employee. You probably have signed away the rights to the IP you create at your place of employment. After all, you probably did it on company time with company equipment. But ultimately that is the agreement you entered into so you cannot turn around after the fact and complain.
However, my sympathy lies with the person that automates their work rather than the employer. I think that the ethical problem is interesting. Recently I watched the Crash Course on "meta ethics" and the problem they considered was a burglar who intended to steal from a little, old lady but inadvertently saved her life instead. And the question is, 'was the burglar good or bad?' I think there is a parallel to the issue of automating your job. I am no philosopher, but I think this is an interesting question.
Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job
#420Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Yes. I think that was the main point of all this.