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I automated my job over a year ago and haven't told anyone

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Re: I automated my job over a year ago and haven't told anyone

#121

Post by neom »

wonderwonder wrote: post #102
neom wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Employees are resources to the business, as the work changes, the resources change, it's not his job to decide how he should be resourced in the business. It's literally why HR is called HR.

Friend what you are suggesting is a very slippery slope and leads to employees not making any suggestions at all to improve business processes as its not part of their job description. You are essentially saying that OP would be better off just never attempting to automate the process at all and to just continue the existing process that was not working after all its the role of whoever is in charge of efficiency to…

"Hey folks, I'm going to implement this script, I'm concerned in doing so, you will just fire me and keep the script, I enjoy my job and working with you all, is there a way we can find additional tasks for me to do in the business" is a fine conversation to have with your manager, sure.. you don't have to, but in my humble opinion, then pretending you're not stealing from the company knowing what you know, is questionable at best.

Re: I automated my job over a year ago and haven't told anyone

#123

Post by [deleted] »

neom wrote: post #67
wonderwonder wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how is he taking it on himself to decide what work needs to be done? He was hired to perform a set of tasks, and has written a script to accomplish them. You could argue he has taken it upon himself to decide how the required work is done and then one could say "so what?". If the business is happy with his output then everyone is a winner. To think its an employees job to suicide their employment is not the actions a…

Employees are resources to the business, as the work changes, the resources change, it's not his job to decide how he should be resourced in the business. It's literally why HR is called HR.

[deleted]

Re: I automated my job over a year ago and haven't told anyone

#124

Post by smm11 »

I worked at a Big Important Place, and two or three times a day I'd shut down an online transaction system, back up a file, move a new file into place, then bring the online transaction system back up. Took maybe two minutes.

On any given day, I'd do literally five minutes of work, maybe eight.

I didn't need to check any logs at the end of the day. That wasn't my job.

Re: I automated my job over a year ago and haven't told anyone

#125

Post by vangelis »

brimble wrote: post #113
CountDrewku wrote: post #58

Ugh that subreddit is just a cesspool. Most of the stories are fake and it attracts the bottom feeders of society. People need work to feel fulfilled. I get that a corporate job may not meet that demand but this idea that you can just eschew any work and be mentally ok isn't true.

> People need work to feel fulfilled. I, too, worry about the idle rich and think we should do something to help them find work.

Work, as they say, makes you free.

Re: I automated my job over a year ago and haven't told anyone

#126

Post by patrickk »

oneoff786 wrote: post #93
mensetmanusman wrote: post #50

I helped someone do this for their accounting job once since I saw them working with obscure data re-entry moving from old DOS systems to SAP. They had a ton of material to manually move over and it seemed painful ergonomically. I used Sikuli from MIT to deal with the randomly changing window locations. Management got mad at them for completing the task so quickly (it took a week instead of a few months) since it fel…

+1 for sikuli. Very nice little tool that makes it very easy to do something that would otherwise require a lot of specific knowledge

AutoHotKey and Pulover's Macro Creator[1] (which spits out AHK scrips from mouse and keyboard input) can do a similar job in a windows environment, and can trivially click on UI elements on the screen via PixelSearch. It runs lightning fast too, and is simple to learn.

I've used it to automate simple web games for shits and giggles.

[1] https://www.macrocreator.com/screenshots/

Re: I automated my job over a year ago and haven't told anyone

#127

Post by phillc73 »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #80
adrianN wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a software engineering job where I clocked in and time was tracked. Pretty good deal for people who tend to overwork themselves.

In Austria (and I think in Germany it's the same), for most jobs, including IT, employees must track their working time for legal reasons, so I had to clock in and out via a device at the entrance like a factory worker, to prove to HR, accounting and the bureaucratic government institutions in charge of taxing me, that I'm indeed at my workplace 8h/day. One company I interviewed at had a work-time time tracking machi…

I can confirm this is the case in Austria. However, my experience is mostly using a computerised system via the company Intranet. There's an option to use an access card and touch it to a login pad at the office entrance, but I can also work from home, logging the time via the Intranet based system. I don't get paid overtime, but I do receive time off in lieu of excess hours worked.

Re: I automated my job over a year ago and haven't told anyone

#128

Post by pavel_lishin »

patrickk wrote: post #104
keiferski wrote: post #47

This story is a pretty accurate fable for the pointlessness of the modern economy and its inability to provide real value to anyone. Man spends all day playing video games, because he automated his largely superfluous job at a law firm which itself likely only exists to deal with bureaucratic or unnecessary cases (assuming this is true, as they have a single absent IT person who handles their entire infrastructure.)…

This description falls under the "duct tapers" category of Bullshit Jobs[1], according to David Graeber: > duct tapers, who temporarily fix problems that could be fixed permanently, e.g., programmers repairing bloated code, airline desk staff who calm passengers whose bags do not arrive; In this case, perhaps its easier and cheaper to simply pay this guy 90k per year to run this script rather than get an entire law f…

Isn't this more of a box-ticker? OP created a permanent solution; at this point, however, he himself is not doing anything useful:

> box tickers, who create the appearance that something useful is being done when it is not, e.g., survey administrators, in-house magazine journalists, corporate compliance officers, quality service managers;

Re: I automated my job over a year ago and haven't told anyone

#129

Post by hogrider »

binarytox1n wrote: post #7

Many subreddits are simply themed containers of creative writing. With all the media attention the AntiWork subreddit has gotten lately that brings more karma farmers and therefore more fiction. It's an entertaining read, but not likely true.

Well, this being the post truth era an all I pretty much think everything is sponsored content or trolls, someone doing some free writing is pretty harmless. That said, lawyers are prettt clueless as to what they would need of this kind of worker so I can see it happening.

Re: I automated my job over a year ago and haven't told anyone

#130

Post by pavel_lishin »

keiferski wrote: post #47

This story is a pretty accurate fable for the pointlessness of the modern economy and its inability to provide real value to anyone. Man spends all day playing video games, because he automated his largely superfluous job at a law firm which itself likely only exists to deal with bureaucratic or unnecessary cases (assuming this is true, as they have a single absent IT person who handles their entire infrastructure.)…

> the pointlessness of the modern economy and its inability to provide real value to anyone

Plenty of people get value out of the modern economy. There are always outliers, and OP is a Spiders Georg.

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