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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

#331

Post by CountDrewku »

antihero wrote: post #89
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.

How is working a job that you know is completely mind-numbing and pointless to enrich some other person meaningful in any way?

Reading comprehension. You neglected to pay attention to most of my comment.

Who is forcing you work a mind-numbing job?

Do you want everyone else to pay for you to do nothing? Do what you want, but don't expect others to donate what they've earned to your finger painting or whatever it is you think you should do to be fulfilled daily. This idea that everyone will just suddenly become creative happy geniuses as soon as "mind-numbing" work is alleviated is false.

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

#332

Post by allenu »

At some point in my 20-year career, I've realized there isn't a tight coupling of the work you do when it comes to effort, time, and overall impact and the pay that you receive.

I've been on both ends where I worked extra hard and didn't get anything out of it, and I've done barely anything and got paid and management was happy. There's a kind of cognitive dissonance you encounter if you have this notion of "fairness" when it comes to work done and reward earned. It feels like you're cheating someone if you don't do enough work, but then you can do a whole bunch of work and it becomes meaningless if someone up in the management chain decides on a whim that your project isn't essential.

This story does sound truthful to me because there are so many things we pay for because we don't know what goes into it and we're happy to be ignorant of what goes into it, so long as it gets done. You're paying for the security of knowing the job will be done. As others have said in the posts here, I also would feel unfulfilled doing something like this because there's still an inherent need many of us have to do something productive regularly.

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

#334

Post by rackjack »

fersho311 wrote: post #313
efsavage wrote: post #310

I once almost completely automated my job, and didn't hide it. The job was to load data files into the backend system. The problem was there there were almost as many formats (~80) as there were partners sending data (~120), not just in structure but in content (deltas, full replace, etc.). This job was burning people out every 6 months, and I was the hapless next victim who was just looking to break into a tech posi…

That’s a bit sad, the way you told the story sound like you didn’t make the place better even though you could have.

Not really his problem.

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

#335

Post by CountDrewku »

ravedave5 wrote: post #177
lezojeda wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you kidnapped or held against your will by your employer?

Are you able to keep a shelter over your head and food in your belly without work?

Huh? Are you expecting others to take care of your needs while you do nothing?

At what time in history has this ever been an option. You would be dead in a ditch with this attitude for most of our history. Maybe you need to go out into the woods and survive without help to force an attitude change.

You have a skewed since of reality egged on by a society that's let you survive off of doing basically nothing and yet you still complain. The problem here is that you believe all of the stuff to keep you alive just magically appears without anyone doing any work.

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

#336

Post by LanceH »

armchairhacker wrote: post #307
steve_adams_86 wrote: post #299

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 rea…

I think the r/antiwork mindset of “no loyalty, no social connections, no extra effort, no two-weeks notice, work only work the wage” only applies when you’re working for a job that treats you like shit. If you have a half-decent employer you should provide some loyalty and extra effort when necessary or you’re a garbage employee. If you have a good career and you get a bad employer you can just leave. The context wit…

It seems to be axiomatic there that all employers deserve this treatment. Literally, "all", there is no wiggle room for any company or manager.

My concern is the bleedover into /r/jobs where I like to answer with advice on how to handle a situation/search/interview.

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

#337

Post by CountDrewku »

brimble wrote: post #289
dfadsadsf wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vast majority of rich are not idle and live very active life. While they may not do work as you understand it, they do philanthropy, investment, etc. Few if any just stay home to watch TV - which is equivalent of automating work and not telling anyone.

Oh. So making them not dependent on losing 8 hours of their work per weekday to a boss, and giving them freedom to do what they like in that time, isn't making their lives worse? But if the same state is achieved by a poor person then...? I would agree that also not needing to be available for a boss at all , even "just in case something goes wrong", is better, but that doesn't seem to be the argument. Rather, that a…

Dude you're a fool if you don't think rich people put in hours and hours of work. They're almost never not working. Their entire lives typically revolve around work and nothing else.

You might have a point if you're talking trust fund babies but those people are miserable because they do nothing. They're not happy. The vast majority of wealth is not handed down.

>Rather, that attaining freedom from being told what to do much of your waking hours is morally or psychologically harmful.

Do you understand how this is achieved at all???? BY HARD WORK. Go out and create something of your own, no one is stopping you. If you think it's not going to be work I've got news for you. No one is going to just give you this freedom, nor should they because it would then be meaningless.

I'm sorry but you just sound incredibly young, naive, and lacking in any real world experience. You need to grow up and realize that almost nothing in life that's easily obtained is worth a shit.

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

#338

Post by trilinearnz »

geocrasher wrote: post #176
mikewarot wrote: post #60

I didn't automate my job, I just did a good enough job that things stopped breaking, and I had less and less to every day. Eventually I'd just show up, make rounds, wait for things to break, make rounds again after lunch, wait until quitting time. I did try to improve the office productivity as a whole a few times by patching up the wonky database they used for accounting, but got shut down each time because of fear…

I watched a similar thing happen once. A greybeard was brought in to whip things into shape. He did so. Automated everything and made 100+ linux boxes run like a top. New owners came in, and they weren't the nice kind. He got stressed out and had a heart attack and was gone for several weeks. Things hummed along while he was gone, and his perceived value went down because things "ran just fine without him", ignoring…

That's a very sad story. I hope he's doing well now, if he's still around.

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

#339

Post by mirkules »

ironmagma wrote: post #118
patrickk wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Is that really bullshit work? I seriously doubt you’d be able to completely solve the problem of lost luggage. You could cut it down, yet you can’t scale down the number of jobs dealing with it very easily (one per airport at least, and you can’t hire half a person if there’s only half a workload). A similar thing could be said of bloated code.

I know nothing about luggage transit, and any idea of a solution for lost luggage I could come up with is more likely naive than not.

Could you define why lost luggage is an unsolvable problem? What makes it so difficult?

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