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Ask HN: I automated part of someone else's job in my free time – how to proceed?

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Re: Ask HN: I automated part of someone else's job in my free time – how to proceed?

#11

Post by twblalock »

The first person who needs to know, and approve, is your manager. Don't blindside them. Managers do not like that, and your manager is definitely going to find out if anyone else does.

After you tell your manager, you won't be in control of what happens next. Consider whether or not you should just keep this to yourself and treat this as a fun learning experience. Perhaps you can gauge their potential reaction by asking, hypothetically, whether or not they think working on automation might be a good idea.

I've done something like this before, but with the knowledge of the other people on the team, because we didn't like the manual work we were doing and felt that it was taking time away from other things we needed to do. Hopefully that is the case for your colleagues, or this will not be well received.

Re: Ask HN: I automated part of someone else's job in my free time – how to proceed?

#13

Post by CodeWriter23 »

thatguy0900 wrote: post #9
saimiam wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what do “wolf” and “sheep” mean in this context? Genuine question.

He's implying that a wolf would sacrifice his fellow workers job to advance for themselves, while a sheep would stay with his flock of fellow coworkers and not release the project.

Almost. I'm implying a wolf would feed on their fellow workers to advance themselves and the other wolves.

Re: Ask HN: I automated part of someone else's job in my free time – how to proceed?

#14

Post by thr0wawayf00 »

Why not go to the person whose job you're trying to supplant and show them your POC? Approach from the angle of "this can free you up to do other things" and not "I'm trying to figure out how to replace people".

As far as ownership of this project goes, you need to think carefully before making any sort of claim. Depending on the language of your employment agreement, the IP of this project likely belongs to the company because it's based on their systems. "I did it on my own time" probably isn't going to hold up in a lawsuit either. And companies tend to have a lot more money to spend on lawyers than individual contributors, especially in cases where significant aspects of their operational model is threatened.

Re: Ask HN: I automated part of someone else's job in my free time – how to proceed?

#16

Post by twblalock »

thr0wawayf00 wrote: post #14

Why not go to the person whose job you're trying to supplant and show them your POC? Approach from the angle of "this can free you up to do other things" and not "I'm trying to figure out how to replace people". As far as ownership of this project goes, you need to think carefully before making any sort of claim. Depending on the language of your employment agreement, the IP of this project likely belongs to the comp…

> Why not go to the person whose job you're trying to supplant and show them your POC? Approach from the angle of "this can free you up to do other things" and not "I'm trying to figure out how to replace people".

No no no. Go to your manager first. Otherwise that other person might tell your manager, who will be very displeased about being blindsided.

If you know your manager would react badly, even if they heard about this directly from you, then you already know what to do: keep this to yourself.

Re: Ask HN: I automated part of someone else's job in my free time – how to proceed?

#17

Post by jddil »

No idea if this is you but the number of times I've seen an over eager employee (usually more junior but not always) think they've stumbled upon a great solution to a problem but really they were just missing some details is very high ... we are a very overconfident bunch.

> As I understand it, significant time is spent on the manual part of it all.

Get more details about the problem space before doing anything else.

Re: Ask HN: I automated part of someone else's job in my free time – how to proceed?

#18

Post by scombridae »

thr0wawayf00 wrote: post #14

Why not go to the person whose job you're trying to supplant and show them your POC? Approach from the angle of "this can free you up to do other things" and not "I'm trying to figure out how to replace people". As far as ownership of this project goes, you need to think carefully before making any sort of claim. Depending on the language of your employment agreement, the IP of this project likely belongs to the comp…

No post body was provided.

Re: Ask HN: I automated part of someone else's job in my free time – how to proceed?

#19

Post by Tarsul »

whomever you tell (I like the idea of telling your direct manager), consider the option of only telling the following: "Hey boss, I have an idea how to automate this task of my colleagues and I am quite sure I could do it. However, since I already have a job for 100% of my time, I could arrange to do it in my free time for a bonus etc. etc."

What I've learned with automating my own tasks (I am in an administrative role myself), is that there's usually not much of an advantage in telling it. Which is why nowadays I don't tell anyone and just use the added free time however I want. (well, part of the reason is that I don't like my team enough to share it with them, as harsh as it sounds. I liked sharing with my prior team because there I knew that everyone was doing their part...) The incentives usually are not set up well for automating your own (or your colleagues') tasks. Would probably be different if you were in a manager role, though.

Re: Ask HN: I automated part of someone else's job in my free time – how to proceed?

#20

Post by YTheLastCombo »

I’d suggest exploratory convos with the people who own this part of the process - like you’re curious and want to learn more. Find out how many hours that part takes them on a weekly basis. Whatever your automation reduces that to is the value of it. Find out why they haven’t automated it before now. What would the people doing this manually be utilized to do if they weren’t busy with this? You may figure out that there are things your automation needs to account for that you weren’t aware of. When you’ve gotten more information, you could approach your manager with a proposal about what you are willing to do in your spare time for an agreed upon bonus and / or promotion - as if you haven’t done anything yet and of course, sell them on your ability to do this and why it should be you. You’d probably also want to understand if they’d lay off the people involved or just give them different work to do (don’t expect them to be honest though). If they’re interested and willing to pay you for it, great, go off and “finish it” and bring it back to them and implement it / integrate it. If they’re not willing to pay you for it, it’s not your problem to solve and you’ve learned a new skill - just maintain with them you’ve not built anything. The only way you should give this away for free is if you’re confident it’s going to put you on a better career track with that company (promotion, pay raise, etc). Great initiative - but it’s worth money and they should compensate you for it - because they will compensate themselves by either cutting costs through reducing their headcount, or increasing the output of their operations to make more money.
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