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

Yeah, just consider all the places where PDFs are still used instead of a more computer-appropriate format (fixed layout is generally not needed, sometimes even not for printing, and is sometimes even an hindrance, and (m)HTML can be used as a standalone file too...)

You'd be surprised how often that isn't the outcome. It definitely does happen, but a lot of the time the company is left with a task that's now automated and an employee that's received a ton of training on the business systems. There are almost always other products that sales wants to push that there simply wasn't the bandwidth for before...

There is always more business - sometimes companies choose to put automated employees towards that (and get huge moral boosts to the employees that automated the thing - the employees that were automated - and everyone nearby who appreciates how useful automation is) and other times they decide to trim a marginal cost off the bottom line and end up discouraging further innovation and, probably, losing a lot of people they actually still need.

Companies that, essentially, get some of their labour replaced for a free (or marginal cost) should realize that there are a lot of more savings like that to be had - and that if they use that savings to invest in growth it will pay off in the future. Companies that choose stagnation die (and you should leave them to die without you as an employee).

Don't be like this: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/we-should-improve-society-som...

Agreed - accountants are a unique breed. They do a fair amount of basic numeric analysis and rote work that is of the sort that is beneficial to automation. But they're often very averse to technology, often stop learning any new tools early on in their career, and tend to stick to the methods they learned as juniors, even many years later.

That's a broad brush, and is certainly unfair to and untrue of some accountants. Some are Excel gods and can VBA it up with the best of them, and would have been productive software engineers in another life. But it's surprisingly true for much of the profession.

I once got a contract, early in my career, migrating marketing landing pages to a new format in which the contents of the pages (anything inside of the tag) were moved into `marketing_page_name.tmpl` files in a directory. From there they'd be pulled into a shell, and all kinds of tracking and link magic could happen from there. A few things like anchors needed new template variables instead of hard-coded links.

I realized I could automate this after the third or fourth page. There were hundreds of them, so I did a quick calculation: How long will it take to automate this? How long will it take to do it by hand? You know, the one we always do, then ignore because we want to automate stuff anyways.

In this case the automation made sense. I was paid per hour so I only stood to lose money.

I realized automating it and lying about how long it's taking would be immoral. I needed the money (I think this was my second job, ever, before ever getting a full time job. Maybe year 2005!). So what, do I just do it by hand and struggle through the monotony? No, that would be dishonest in a sense, too.

I talked to the people who contracted me and explained the options, showed them a sample of how well the automation worked, talked it through. They were really happy. They gained trust in me and my abilities. After I completed the project, they wanted to hire me for full time work. They gave me great references for years.

I couldn't handle automating my job away and slacking off. I love learning. I love doing my best work for people, providing real value. The cool thing to me about my job is that I can offer more and more value over time at a scale I couldn't in any other job my brain could navigate.

So all that is to say: this guy's story sounds awful to me. Let me automate it, then if I'm redundant, I'll go find something else interesting to do. I'm sure as hell not going to sit around playing counterstrike.

Not to say this person is bad or wrong or whatever. It just sounds like misery to me. The key difference might be that I enjoy my work and this guy doesn't, really.