51–60 of 115 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In addition to Artur's point, I would affirm that yes, that is definitely the reason. Every day without fail, there is a post in /r/relationship_advice that goes something like "My fiancee just sold my cat and wired all of my money to her secret boyfriend in Albertville. Am I right to be mad?".
Just stick to programming and other interesting sub-reddits. Avoid politics etc
If I were a member of management, and I found out that he was doing this, I would be furious. Not because he gamed the system and received the bonuses, but because he didn't share his innovation with the rest of the team and improve everyones' efficiency. If he had done that, I would recognize his talent and initiative and promote him, allowing him to do more rewarding, higher-level work.
Absolutely. Maybe office politics works differently in the states (where I presume he's from), but it sounds like he's keeping it quite so he can screw around at work. If I made a script that deals with 98% of all of my work I could not imagine not sharing that with my bosses. To me (and I'm sure lots of people don't share this sentiment) it would feel morally wrong not to.
I have a friend that did this in a summer job about 12 or 13 years ago. Got some temp work doing data entry, did it for 2 days before realising it could be done better. He wrote something in VB and did 15x more than everyone else over the course of a day. They (obviously) thought something was wrong so examined what he'd done. When he explained about the program, they told him if he left the temp firm he was employed…
Why is the employer wrong here? If they were hiring 10 temp workers to do the job of a simple program, they really didn't need them in the first place.
One of the typists found out that the client did not check the data at all. (It was all just packaged and resold.) She just hit OK for every single OCR scan that she was supposed to correct/verify. She was doing ten times as much as anyone else and doubling her salary with her bonus.
When made aware, management went along with it. I think it bordered on fraud.
On the flip side, I automated most of my sysadmin (and a lot of other co-workers) work and freed half of my work week. What did they want me to do? Data entry...
If I were a member of management, and I found out that he was doing this, I would be furious. Not because he gamed the system and received the bonuses, but because he didn't share his innovation with the rest of the team and improve everyones' efficiency. If he had done that, I would recognize his talent and initiative and promote him, allowing him to do more rewarding, higher-level work.
He probably rightly senses that his boss wouldn't feel the way you hope you would. In fact I don't think most people would offer him a rational incentive at all. If he saves the company $1 million a year are you actually going to cut him a $200k+ bonus? I'd be very doubtful of anyone who says they would. Most people would give him $20k if they're especially generous and a pat on the head.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
His naive approach will lead to either him or his entire department getting replaced by a computer.
Which is a good thing. There's no point in having a bunch of people do manually what can be done automatically with greater efficiency and at less cost. Keynesian economics does not apply to individual organizations.
I have a friend that did this in a summer job about 12 or 13 years ago. Got some temp work doing data entry, did it for 2 days before realising it could be done better. He wrote something in VB and did 15x more than everyone else over the course of a day. They (obviously) thought something was wrong so examined what he'd done. When he explained about the program, they told him if he left the temp firm he was employed…
Your friend just turned out to be a lousy business person and his employer was not.
Like others are saying, he should (gradually) reduce the output of his automation system to something more believable/less noticeable. Instead of going after the meager bonus, he should put his time into doing some kind of side work. Of course, that would be highly unethical and possibly grounds for firing, but I think his employer might angrily react with the latter if they found out what he was doing already. Incid…
It was decided that it was okay, so long as his assigned tasks were being completed. Of course, one wonders why he was ratted out if he was completing his tasks... :-) Jealousy. You never need to put a cover on a bucket full of crabs because anytime one crab tries to climb out the others will pull it back in. Sadly, people (even friends) often act in this same manner when someone they know is excelling in some way.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or he could simply be replacing himself with no reward. Oh, you've automated it? Thanks. Bye.
That's possible, but only if they're stupid. They'd be losing someone who can knows their business and could automate their next manual process. I'd suggest he say this: "hey boss, I think I can automate this process, increasing accuracy and productivity. Would you give me salary X if I can do it?" If the boss says "awesome, yes!", then he's got a better job. If the boss says no or is lukewarm, he could keep doing wh…
That's a question of how to deal with a broken system. Automation is by definition the destruction of manual work. Most of the time, of boring manual work. This is great. We should automate as much as we can. Oh, but it happens right now: hourly productivity, according to my source[1], more than tripled since the fifties.
But, as you point out, sudden increase of productivity mechanically creates unemployment, if you don't have a massive consumption growth to absorb it —not a good idea in the long term, and doesn't happen anyway.
There are several solutions out of this dilemma, which you can apply in parallel. The most powerful one is: work less (at the national level). Get nearly everyone to work 32 hours per week (typically 4 days a week) instead of the usual 40. (You can use incentives instead of force if you don't want to appear too communist) If Productivity grows again too much in the next decades, get down to 28, 24, or even less.
There. I'm happy to be a programmer, whose main job is to destroy others'. Except the system is broken, and shows no sign of being fixed. Getting back to your difficult question, I don't know what I'd actually do. I'd probably tell no one, given the risks, both for me and my coworkers. I'd feel bad about reaping all the bonuses, though —but I would save them to buy a house or whatever.
[1] http://www.roosevelt2012.fr/propdetails?propid=13 (French, see 3rd chart. Watch out, it seems Wikipedia disagrees —maybe they're not measuring the same thing?)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
He probably rightly senses that his boss wouldn't feel the way you hope you would. In fact I don't think most people would offer him a rational incentive at all. If he saves the company $1 million a year are you actually going to cut him a $200k+ bonus? I'd be very doubtful of anyone who says they would. Most people would give him $20k if they're especially generous and a pat on the head.
You'd be surprised. I know several guys who pay regional sales manages 15% of net. No matter how much is sold, they get 15% every month. This encourages them to work hard and allows them to directly influence the income. And yes, if they sell 1 million bucks of goods and services, they get 15% of that.