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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

#441

Post by tacocataco »

dave5104 wrote: post #228
Aissen wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if that were true, no harm done… But imagine for a minute it isn't. What's the point of farming karma on a throwaway account ? Plus, we are social creatures, and sometimes we just need to offload our personal stories. Quite often there's a new fun thing that I wish I could write about or tell the world, but I don't because of real consequences to some people, or even myself. Recounting these stories is cathartic…

> What's the point of farming karma on a throwaway account ? reddit accounts are built up and then sold[0][1], and then used for who knows what. Helps to have an "established" account with high karma and a post history. In more popular subreddits (like /r/funny), you'll see frequent re-postings of content from 5+ years ago just for the "karma whoring" as it's called. [0] https://www.soar.sh/service/buy-reddit-account…

It's not just reposting content. These bots go as far as to copy the top couple of comments from the post made years ago.

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

#442

Post by unwoundmouse »

bubblecheck wrote: post #427
belval wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even disregarding how much goodwill the company had burned at that point. Your solution implies that they would've set up a backup method once the employee left. For most company the exit interview is done to tick a box. The feedback given will not be listened to at all. I can absolutely understand why he didn't feel like it was his job to setup and entire source control system on his way out the door.

Points taken. However, at a minimum, it is a reasonable professional courtesy to disclose the significance of the backup issue upon exit. The company did not mistreat the employee, just that it undervalued the employee.

I think the question boils down to do you believe the employee is obligated to disclose the backup issue within the responsibility of the employment contract? I would say no, since the entire creation of the software was not within the responsibility of the contract, why would the documentation of the backup issue be within it?

I think the situation is analogous to the company giving the employee a big unwarranted pay raise, and then the employee lazily not doing more work, then the company firing the employee, but then arguing that at a minimum, the company has a reasonable professional courtesy to give the employee hours for their vacation days, even though it isn't specified within the contract.

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

#443

Post by sebringj »

sumedh wrote: post #424
sebringj wrote: post #144

If this is true or not, I had a situation in my past where I was developing an ecommerce API as a business that had both web and backend. Basically, it made integrations take a day instead of 3-4 months. I hired some offshore developers to use my API to setup for new clients, effectively making a killing as I could still charge quite a lot for this specific integration and yet undercut all the competition. Long story…

> code was stolen from under me by the offshore people I hired and I subsequently was made obsolete in my business model. I dont get it, did the offshore guys contact your clients directly and got their business?

I suspect one of them I let go for subcontracting his work contacted one of my competitors. The timing seems suspect.

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

#444

Post by andrewflnr »

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 doesn't have to be a big fraction, just non-zero. Trying to ban the expression of improbable states is a form of trying to force the territory to fit the map, then also suppressing the creation of more accurate maps. I can't overstate how stupid this is.

Under such a moronic system, with your reports' welfare on the line, I believe marking everyone as a top performer is an admirable form of rebellion.

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

#445

Post by a1369209993 »

wobblybubble wrote: post #204
lordnacho wrote: post #96

People are focusing too much on whether the story is actually true. It sounds plausible to me, but the real story here is that a heck of a lot of processes would benefit from having a programmer look at them. Programming is the new literacy. People who can do it are on a different plane to people who can't.

> 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.

As anyone who has read random fanfiction.net stories or middle school penmanship homework can attest, being able to write is not that same thing as being able to write well.

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

#446

Post by CRConrad »

lrvick wrote: post #389

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 t…

Maybe he got suspicious because "assessment" was misspelled the exact same way every time it occurred?

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

#447

Post by zbtaylor1 »

yibg wrote: post #298
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 have a some what similar stint. Worked at a start that got acquired by big co for the product and customers, although not the product my team was responsible for. Our product got quickly put on maintenance mode with promises to rewrite the whole thing at some point. So by that point I had been working there for a year and some, knew the system pretty well and we had pretty much nothing to do. No new features, very…

I'm still in my first "real" job, almost 6 years later, and while it's not quite as lax as what you describe your comment made me realize that the slow pace is probably a big factor in my own lack of motivation to look for something else. It's awful easy to get comfy.

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

#448

Post by bckr »

hn_go_brrrrr wrote: post #412
bckr wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ah, thanks for responding. I was in a cynical mood and probably came across somewhat rude.

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

#449

Post by beezle »

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote: post #433
pklausler wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(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.

"March 1972 an appalling rumor swept through the hallways at Control Data--Seymour Cray had resigned! The rumor was quickly confirmed by a press release. The press release was worded carefully to soothe investor fears. Seymour was reported to be "phasing out" of full-time employment with Control Data It was emphasized that development would continue at the Chippewa Lab. Trading in Control Data stock was briefly suspe…

Still have my dad's "Programming Univac Systems Instruction Manual 1" from 1953 when he started working for Sperry Rand. 1950s-1960s must have been a phenomenal time to work in the nascent computing industry.

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

#450

Post by 41b696ef1113 »

CRConrad wrote: post #446
lrvick wrote: post #389

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 t…

Maybe he got suspicious because "assessment" was misspelled the exact same way every time it occurred?

People can consistently misspell words?
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