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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?

#21
Be careful. There is a possibility the person who's job you are automating will not appreciate it.

Someone I used to work with had what I would consider a tedious portion of her job automated away by an officially sanctioned project involving multiple people in multiple groups. She thought everyone was trying to get rid of her.

I can't tell you how to communicate your intentions so they are not taken the wrong way, just that there is a reasonable likelihood that they will be.

Sibling comments address other pitfalls.

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

#22

Quit, start your own company, come to your former boss with an offer for a service he can't refuse. Possibly approach other companies who could benefit from this...

This is the option to go with if the thing they've built is a big enough deal to change business dynamics. No way of telling from the post, but something tells me OP isn't from that category. That sounds like a ballsy approach though.

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

#23
This sounds almost exactly what happened to me and got me inspired to move into tech. I was working at an economic data company that had a bunch of grunts uploading publicly available data into our databases so our users could use it with our software. I figured out how to automate and simplify the some of the steps of the update process and shared it around with coworkers. I didn't get rewarded for it at all, then quit to do a coding bootcamp.

My advice: if the coding part is what you enjoy, pursue that. Go become a software engineer.

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

#26
A lot of engineers have the mentality that “I’ve built something the company needs” and is “better than what we have”. None of that is valid until you discuss it and get feedback.

IME, 4 out of 5 times it’s complete wrong, feelings will get hurt. Engage your manager if you feel comfortable, but I would scale back the ambition/expectations and start from there.

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

#27
Only one word of caution. Your manager might ask why you were spending as much time as you were coming up with this solution instead of asking for more work. Most likely the answer is reasonable, but best to have an answer prepared before talking about it.

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

#28
Let’s get real: you’ve built a toy prototype. The real business use case is more complicated as you’ve discovered because there is team and budget and process allocated to the current solution. Your solution is maybe 1/10th of the current solution: no team, no budget, no process, and a nice demo.

Acknowledging that, you have a bunch of really bad options and few good options.

The absolute safest thing you can do is to keep it to yourself, and to use it when you can to make your own job easier. If you’re able to find time to use the tool to load your own data because the team that owns this process is overloaded, then they’ll appreciate the relief, so long as your tool doesn’t break or violate their standing policies.

The best advice in this thread is going to your manager and asking for time to develop and demo an automation solution. No one wants to hear that you’ve already built it because that raises thorny political and management questions. The best you can hope for is a sanctioned meeting where you can demo the capability to your manager and the manager of the other team.

If you’re fortunate enough to get authorization to proceed, make sure to tell everyone that your solution only handles the common simple cases and that the tricky special cases still need manual review- an 80% solution. The achieves two goals: allowing you to get away with having bugs, and allowing the other team to believe that they are more specialized and, hence, more valuable now with your solution than before.

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

#29

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 ab…

It also clearly shows this is a very bad idea. Whether the code works or not.

Nobody wants to lose their job especially these days.

Yes OP will make an enemy even at the suggestion this code exists. Plus OP will be labeled by employees in the company as someone to not trust.

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

#30

Quit, start your own company, come to your former boss with an offer for a service he can't refuse. Possibly approach other companies who could benefit from this...

Just make sure you can prove you developed it at home, not on ex-company time/hardware et cetera.
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