Ask HN: What are some repetitive tasks you do at work?

#1

Post by zihua » Fri, Apr 12, 2019, 5:28 PM UTC

Hey guys: I’m starting to realize that a sizable chunk of my work is actually quite repetitive. For instance, I’d have to log into GCloud console every once in a while to check if I still have enough credits… Do you guys have these repetitive tasks at work? I’m thinking of using coding up some automation scripts and I’d love to see where else people might use it on!

PS: what kind of jobs do you guys do? I’m a software engineer at a small startup

Re: Ask HN: What are some repetitive tasks you do at work?

#2

Post by jadeydi » Fri, Apr 12, 2019, 5:33 PM UTC

I'm a software engineer too, I'll check us error logs nearly every day.

Re: Ask HN: What are some repetitive tasks you do at work?

#3

Post by zwischenzug » Fri, Apr 12, 2019, 5:40 PM UTC

I wrote a framework for these kind of things, a wrapper on top of (p)expect:

https://github.com/ianmiell/shutit

Re: Ask HN: What are some repetitive tasks you do at work?

#4

Post by hprotagonist » Fri, Apr 12, 2019, 5:42 PM UTC

I used to generate python project stubs over and over, then i found https://github.com/ionelmc/cookiecutter-pylibrary

Re: Ask HN: What are some repetitive tasks you do at work?

#5

Post by Proven » Fri, Apr 12, 2019, 5:43 PM UTC

Drink coffee

Re: Ask HN: What are some repetitive tasks you do at work?

#6

Post by Rerarom » Fri, Apr 12, 2019, 5:46 PM UTC

None. (I am a pure math researcher.)

Re: Ask HN: What are some repetitive tasks you do at work?

#7

Post by henripal » Fri, Apr 12, 2019, 5:46 PM UTC

I do machine learning/data science consulting, mostly for startups. Literally 80% of my time is cleaning data and coding up basic ML for their excel spreadsheets :)

Re: Ask HN: What are some repetitive tasks you do at work?

#8

Post by m-p-3 » Fri, Apr 12, 2019, 5:53 PM UTC

Hardware inventory taking, I need to figure out a faster and less tedious way of doing it. Was thinking maybe building a kind of barcode system to speed up the data-entry process when going out on a floor to eliminate the possibility of mistyped data.

Re: Ask HN: What are some repetitive tasks you do at work?

#9

Post by zihua » Fri, Apr 12, 2019, 5:53 PM UTC

henripal wrote: post #7

I do machine learning/data science consulting, mostly for startups. Literally 80% of my time is cleaning data and coding up basic ML for their excel spreadsheets :)

Man that's so annoying... what do you mean by "for their excel spreadsheet" though? Also, have you tried something like AutoML?

Re: Ask HN: What are some repetitive tasks you do at work?

#10

Post by henripal » Fri, Apr 12, 2019, 6:01 PM UTC

zihua wrote: post #9

henripal wrote: post #7

I do machine learning/data science consulting, mostly for startups. Literally 80% of my time is cleaning data and coding up basic ML for their excel spreadsheets :)

Man that's so annoying... what do you mean by "for their excel spreadsheet" though? Also, have you tried something like AutoML?

Most of the data outside software startups is in Excel spreadsheets :) And yes - believe it or not I rolled out a Beta version of an AutoML app for spreadsheets app today!