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Redditor: Am I a scumbag for automating my manual work and making more money?

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Re: Redditor: Am I a scumbag for automating my manual work and making more money?

#81

Post by stfu »

staunch wrote: post #18
feverishaaron wrote: post #12

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.

This incentive question is really a good one. I personally always viewed these rates as ridiculously low so that people would be fools to think about how to eliminate their own jobs.

It would be very interesting to analyze if indeed higher monetary incentives do rise the level of innovation within a company.

Re: Redditor: Am I a scumbag for automating my manual work and making more money?

#82

Post by gotrythis »

This is what I used to do for a living:

1) Go to offices and learn their goals and systems 2) Automate them with software 3) Get paid lots of money for selling them the software

While one result of automation is lost jobs, the other is that businesses have more operating capital to grow, expand, hire more, etc.

He's not a scumbag, but he's missing the opportunity. Why isn't this guy selling the software/process to the company he works for, and making far more money in the process than he gets from his bonuses?

Re: Redditor: Am I a scumbag for automating my manual work and making more money?

#83

Post by droithomme »

feverishaaron wrote: post #12

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.

"I would be furious"

Furious? Would you punish him then?

Re: Redditor: Am I a scumbag for automating my manual work and making more money?

#84

Post by brucehart »

matwood wrote: post #9
georgieporgie wrote: post #6

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.

People do get very jealous even if it doesn't affect them. I automated something similar in one of my grad school courses (image processing). Each assignment required a report to be generated in a particular format that showed all of the results from each step in the assignment. It could be very time consuming because if you made any adjustments to your code based on incorrect results in later steps, you would often have to go back and edit the entire report to reflect your changes. I wrote a script to automatically generate these reports as I worked on the assignment. If I made any changes to my code, I could generate a new report in seconds.

A student in my class looked over my shoulder and saw me run my script in the lab. I thought she was just going to ask if she could have a copy of it, but instead she angrily accused me of plagiarism. When I asked where I was supposedly plagiarizing from, she instead just accused me of cheating. She went up to our professor in class and demanded that I received no credit for the assignment. The grades in this class were not curved in any way, so my grade would have no impact on her's. Luckily, the professor just laughed at her and said "What? I'm supposed to give him an F for being smarter than you? Write your own damn script if it's that useful.".

Re: Redditor: Am I a scumbag for automating my manual work and making more money?

#85

Post by droithomme »

SCdF wrote: post #31
feverishaaron wrote: post #12

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.

He's ten times more productive than anyone else there and you feel he is screwing around too much and is morally in the wrong.

Would you punish him?

Re: Redditor: Am I a scumbag for automating my manual work and making more money?

#86

Post by thespin »

gotrythis wrote: post #82

This is what I used to do for a living: 1) Go to offices and learn their goals and systems 2) Automate them with software 3) Get paid lots of money for selling them the software While one result of automation is lost jobs, the other is that businesses have more operating capital to grow, expand, hire more, etc. He's not a scumbag, but he's missing the opportunity. Why isn't this guy selling the software/process to th…

I would guess because he developed his solution while at work and his employment terms require all inventions are assigned to the company. Hence it's not his to license.

Re: Redditor: Am I a scumbag for automating my manual work and making more money?

#87

Post by irunbackwards »

patio11 wrote: post #11

You don't have to Flowers for Algernon your own productivity just because other folks working in the same firm, in the same industry, in the same country, whatever haven't caught on that computers are eating the world yet. There's nothing unethical about earning the lion's share of the bonus pool assuming the human-assisted script is, indeed, an acceptable substitute for elbow grease. (There are plausible reasons why…

... was that an HN profanity filter or an awesome colloquialism? (Flowers for Algernon)

Re: Redditor: Am I a scumbag for automating my manual work and making more money?

#88

Post by culturestate »

SquareWheel wrote: post #58
matwood wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've never heard the crab expression, is that really true? Are crabs just vindictive little creatures?

As a guy who grew up in Florida buying bushels of blue crabs: it might be true somewhere, but it's not true in my sphere of experience.

Re: Redditor: Am I a scumbag for automating my manual work and making more money?

#89

Post by bsphil »

jlarocco wrote: post #70
SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

£2/hour more than a temp data-entry position isn't market compensation for an entry-level programming gig. Converting to US wages, temp workers often make $8-$12/hour -- the temp AGENCY may be making $20-$25 for that, but the worker only pulls in up to $24k/year. If they'd doubled his salary to ~$48k/year (assuming he previously was earning ~$12/hour) then that starts to be a decent wage for an entry-level programmer…

Nonsense. The guy accepted the $2 raise. He could have said, "No, I want $xx an hour," or "I'll sell you the script for $xxxxx," but he didn't.

He also never said he was using a script to do his work for him. He "accepted" the raise by not letting them know how he did it.

Re: Redditor: Am I a scumbag for automating my manual work and making more money?

#90

Post by stdbrouw »

irunbackwards wrote: post #87
patio11 wrote: post #11

You don't have to Flowers for Algernon your own productivity just because other folks working in the same firm, in the same industry, in the same country, whatever haven't caught on that computers are eating the world yet. There's nothing unethical about earning the lion's share of the bonus pool assuming the human-assisted script is, indeed, an acceptable substitute for elbow grease. (There are plausible reasons why…

... was that an HN profanity filter or an awesome colloquialism? (Flowers for Algernon)

It's a book.
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