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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

#381

Post by lordnacho »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #317
wobblybubble wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Programming is the new literacy. People who can do it are on a different plane to people who can't. This is what I believe sometimes. Then I look at all the pitfalls of shell scripts and how the time investments on automation tasks just balloon… then not so much. :) But if people have a different experience with that then I don’t doubt it.

YMMV, but I'm 100% in agreement with GP about programming being the new literacy. I quit my old SWE job to run a bloody eBay store and am raking it in because I'm competing against people who can't program. The trick, though, IMO, is not having a programmer solve the problem but getting people with domain expertise literate enough to write some hacky Python scripts. This is, in my honest opinion, the next leap forwar…

This is exactly right. People who are actual programmers are like poets, essayists, or authors in the original literacy. They have a title that actually says "person is literate".

But there were always great poets and authors. The big win was that you got a bureaucrat class with their own domain titles who could use writing to get things done.

Likewise if the boss in the original article had been taught how to hack some scripts together, they wouldn't need to hire the author for $90k.

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

#382

Post by forinti »

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…

How can someone who "manages" not see the value in your work?

It seems some people have a religious view of work: it is valuable only if you are toiling and pushing yourself.

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

#383

Post by sam_goody »

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…

A Tale of Two Programmers should be required reading. Very relevant.

https://knowstuffs.wordpress.com/2012/08/13/the-parable-of-t...

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

#384

Post by marktangotango »

genmud wrote: post #364

Story time: I once had a coworker who told me the story of someone who fell through the cracks and quite literally get lost in the bureaucracy of a fortune 50 company. To set the stage, my coworker was an investigator who primarily focused on physical security, legal and HR investigations. We worked at a very large company (around 140,000 employees) and during the 90s/early 2000s one of the primary ways they grew was…

Although these reads more than a bit contrived, I actually believe the gist of it. I once worked in such a "acquired for the product that won't be invested in and let die" companies/subsidiary and something like this did happen for the entire org. I joined after it'd been going on for about 20 years and they had a hiring spurt because someone got the idea to "modernize". The modernization effort ended when that exec left, and the company and it's products languished for several more years. Eventually the acquiring company was acquired and the new owner was super focused on margins and cut a lot of people. So yeah, it does happen.

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

#385

Post by nefitty »

taberiand wrote: post #349
fersho311 wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Just once I would like to read one of these stories where the conclusion is "and the company rewarded me with a large bonus and a paid two weeks of leave, and when I came back they had lined up some training and a project plan for me to stabilise what I had built and automate as much of the drudgery as possible"

I tried to force this at a company I was at. I was like a robot, automating as much as possible, anything and everything I touched. Spreadsheets, data loading, surveys, analytics, daily reports. I even built a chrome extension to improve a cash transfer approval workflow.

Weirdly enough, the director that forced me out had been a programmer in a past life. All he could see of me was that I was a cost center on his spreadsheet. He never sat down with me to ask what I did all day. He'd see me in a corner of the office wired in and I guess he assumed I was watching cartoons or something.

Fuck 'em. I left and I'm sure dozens of systems I had built and maintained broke, just by virtue of my company email address being shut down. I did try my best to document what I could and onboard others. There's only so much you can do in two weeks when you have to start with explaining what Firebase and Google Apps Script is to multiple people.

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

#386

Post by brokenmachine »

taberiand wrote: post #349
fersho311 wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Just once I would like to read one of these stories where the conclusion is "and the company rewarded me with a large bonus and a paid two weeks of leave, and when I came back they had lined up some training and a project plan for me to stabilise what I had built and automate as much of the drudgery as possible"

And after the program was stabilised and automated, I was fired.

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

#387

Post by gerikson »

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…

Nothing as dramatic as your story, but the reason I learned Perl back in 1999 or so was because I was a contractor for a contractor for a company that imported a CDs worth of XML into a database every week. The importer was written in Java, the import took around 3 days, and frequently broke because the XML didn't have escaped ampersands etc.

I wrote some scripts that chunked the input, sanitized it, scripted loading and reloading (basically baby's first ETL) and got it to run without failing every week.

A few months later I fat-fingered a rm -rf and lost all the scripts. There were no backups because the machine was not rated as being in production.

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

#388

Post by habeebtc »

I use Azure Logic Apps to pay attention to things I should be paying attention to, and then send emails or take other actions when something happens which needs attention.

Some of my colleagues think I never sleep. I think partly because I do work very hard, and long hours at times (just not all the time). However, I make no secret that a lot of these emails are coming from, essentially, simple bots. Some definitely have a mistaken impression about how much I actually work.

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

#389

Post by lrvick »

Early in my career I was the only engineer in a company with a dedicated office building full of people selling my work to Fortune 500 companies as that of a large team. Slept under my desk a lot as the 80 hour weeks made me choose between commuting and sleeping.

It got worse when they hired someone to manage me that demanded I use Basecamp to log every action I take in my day .

I wrote a script to fill it out with technical sounding nonsense. After a few weeks the manager came to compliment me on hearing his demands out and being so detailed in my reporting without productivity going down as I suggested in my early reservations.

I explained that I automated it. He was fascinated and asked how it knows what I am doing, smelling a startup opportunity. I explained that it just makes stuff up to appease non technical managers.

"Did you just do this as an elaborate way to give me the middle finger?"

"Pretty much."

He never tried to manage me again, realizing I had automated his job reporting to his managers too.

Said script for fun: https://gist.githubusercontent.com/lrvick/5ecabfc4bb5a2f5578...

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

#390

Post by tacocataco »

zffr wrote: post #191
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.

I personally know someone who claims to have automated his work with Excel after learning how to code. He ended up telling his manager after feeling guilty. He got a promotion and eventually left the team to become a real software engineer. The rest of his team was eventually let go since they were not needed. This was at a large company you have definitely heard of. Its possible that my friend lied or exaggerated th…

Did you get a bonus or bounty for saving them the labor costs?
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