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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

#411

Post by holoduke »

sokoloff wrote: post #376
andrewflnr wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't mean the managers are wrong.

That is definitely (and self-evidently) true! Of all managers who rate everyone on their team as having achieved the highest performance standard, what fraction of those cases do you think are subjectively “correct”? In my experience, it’s way, way, way under half. Further, it’s rare for the managers giving the 100% top performance evaluation to individuals to be leading groups with high overall accomplishment/delive…

It's a bad metric anyway. A persons rating should not be depending on the work performance. It should be depending on the happiness factor of the person. The performance of that person is the responsibility of his/her manager. So whenever a person performance bad, the manager must either fix it or leave. This principle is having so much more success than your example.

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

#412

Post by hn_go_brrrrr »

bckr wrote: post #342
hn_go_brrrrr wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, paid hackathon, but participation was voluntary. There were a few limitations: * It had to directly relate to the product. * You could not use the time to work on some existing project. * You had to be able to finish it by the end of the hackathon. Hackathon projects were sometimes adopted by a permanent team, if there was a good fit.

How many incidents did those nice new features cause?

They didn't cause problems in the way you're implying. We took the time to polish hackathon projects before releasing them. We didn't just shove them out the door as soon as they were done.

That said, one of them was an unmitigated disaster. Leadership loved it, users hated it, you know the drill. The company eventually gave in and turned the feature off three years later.

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

#413

Post by sumedh »

jerf wrote: post #148
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.

Like TheDailyWTF stories, this is in the category of stories where even if the literal person who wrote that wrote fiction, something that is effectively the same story is true for someone. As developers who start writing big servers learn, scale matters. Crap you'd never think twice about when running a script on your workstation will bring your entire service down. There's 7-ish billion people in the world. Entire…

> I'm sure this story is happening at least a thousand times over somewhere in the world in some form.

I have done something similar in the past, I just kept quiet and let the script do all the work without telling anyone.

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

#414

Post by beachy »

holoduke wrote: post #411
sokoloff wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is definitely (and self-evidently) true! Of all managers who rate everyone on their team as having achieved the highest performance standard, what fraction of those cases do you think are subjectively “correct”? In my experience, it’s way, way, way under half. Further, it’s rare for the managers giving the 100% top performance evaluation to individuals to be leading groups with high overall accomplishment/delive…

It's a bad metric anyway. A persons rating should not be depending on the work performance. It should be depending on the happiness factor of the person. The performance of that person is the responsibility of his/her manager. So whenever a person performance bad, the manager must either fix it or leave. This principle is having so much more success than your example.

What? That sounds like Alice in wonderland.

Sure a manager can affect performance but ultimately it's down to the individual.

And happiness is all nice and good but if work is the only thing that affects your happiness then you have some deep self-discovery urgently pending.

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

#415

Post by ncmncm »

munk-a wrote: post #293
macintux wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the people whose jobs likely went away as a result, however.

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 automat…

The difference is whether you are automating a "profit center" or a "cost center". Automate a profit center, and you free up people to do more profitable stuff. Automate a cost center, and they can lay everybody off and cut costs.

The whole notion of "cost-" and "profit centers" is a terrible construction of modern management theory. But it is how almost all businesses work nowadays. Never work in a cost center department (unless you can use it for grift the way HR directors do).

The notion of cost centers is why most web sites are crap. For most businesses the web site is a cost center, and everybody working on it is piling on superfluous tech to pad their résumé with, and to make themselves more essential.

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

#416

Post by lavp »

bqmjjx0kac wrote: post #360
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.

I think people are misunderstanding your comment. If I'm reading correctly, you're saying that it's sad that their hard work went to waste.

You can definitely interpret that both ways

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

#417

Post by OOPMan »

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…

Thank you for your heartwarming tale, it made my day

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

#418

Post by heartbreak »

dccoolgai wrote: post #187

Some of these firms literally give their associate attorneys $400K bonuses (on top of a 200-300K salary). I wouldn't feel bad about it.

You’ve inflated biglaw bonuses for >= 8th year associates by 10x. They’re high, but they’re not that high.

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

#419

Post by achalkley »

geomark wrote: post #408
TravelTechGuy wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

re: the performance review: don't know about your work place, but the first quarterly review I got at [insert name of large known company], my manger sat me down and explained she is budgeted a certain amount of bonus points for her 5 team members, and required to "grade on a curve". Hence, 1 team member will be "above average", 3 will be "average", and one "below average" every quarter. And for fairness, she rotates…

I was a manager in a nearly identical situation. I had 5 engineers working for me at a remote office. The "curve" had not been used in past years. Now they insisted on applying it. Since 4 out of 5 had substantially exceeded their goals it would have been a lie to state that any of them had not met expectations. So I told my boss no, I'm not doing it. You can take whatever raise you planned for me and spread it acros…

This.

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

#420

Post by pklausler »

geomark wrote: post #408
TravelTechGuy wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

re: the performance review: don't know about your work place, but the first quarterly review I got at [insert name of large known company], my manger sat me down and explained she is budgeted a certain amount of bonus points for her 5 team members, and required to "grade on a curve". Hence, 1 team member will be "above average", 3 will be "average", and one "below average" every quarter. And for fairness, she rotates…

I was a manager in a nearly identical situation. I had 5 engineers working for me at a remote office. The "curve" had not been used in past years. Now they insisted on applying it. Since 4 out of 5 had substantially exceeded their goals it would have been a lie to state that any of them had not met expectations. So I told my boss no, I'm not doing it. You can take whatever raise you planned for me and spread it acros…

(I think this is a true story, but it was somewhat before my time.)

Control Data decided to lay off 10% of its employees, and to do so across the board. Seymour Cray had a group of only 20 engineers in his lean development group in Chippewa Falls, so they told him to fire two. So he and Les Davis, his right-hand man, quit and started Cray Research.

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