91–100 of 115 posts
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…
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)
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... was that an HN profanity filter or an awesome colloquialism? (Flowers for Algernon)
It's a book.
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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…
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…
Here is an anecdote: A similar data-entry grunt creates a set of excel macros on his private time at home, then presents his work to his team at a meeting. He surely expected to be met with praise, for saving countless hours of mind-numbing work so that the man-hours could be used on more creative and challenging tasks. His high hopes for his fellow coworkers and his own future would be dashed though. The employee wa…
I worked on a project which required generating a report that had to be sent to some senior execs at our client location every Monday morning. The report would essentially give a trend, and the trend would in turn help the execs take a decision on whether further investment in hardware was needed for our existing IT infrastructure.
Originally the process was based on 3-4 people working and generating the report with heavy manual text heavy lifting. When I joined the project it took me 3 weeks of observation and a Perl script to automate the entire report generation process. My manager pulled me up for making 4 people jobless now. And thereby I had denied them billing for four people, I was considered to be making wrong moves for the company. I was given bad ratings for doing so, I lost a lot in terms of cash, and many be a chance to get promoted.
4 people where back doing to heavy lifting job. But six months later our client moved the project to a different outsourcing vendor. His reason 'Inability of the team to automate tasks that could have easily been automatized' and thereby not showing any value to the client apart from day to day work.
That day I learned a very big lesson. Like patio1 says The size of the pie is fixed, the allocations of the pie are controlled by other people, If you don't automate and get productive somebody else almost certainly will.
The purpose of work is to continuously be more and more productive with time. And learn to do work that has a more intellectual demanding than manual labor. I find it strange that people often complain and surprised that they were fired because was replaced by some form of automation. Isn't that obvious?
Throughout human history the clock has been ticking, productivity has always increased in a way or the other.
I actually like the what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi says in his book 'Flow'. Every person when he works in the flow enjoys it to the full, until he squeezes the last bit of fun and excellence left in the job. Now he saturates, every thing becomes repetitive and not longer challenging .He is now prepared for the 'next step'.
Everybody must think of these 'Next steps' no matter what you are doing, where you doing it.
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Happened in America too. Boss took the "hacker" to the side and said "Look, I'd have to fire my entire staff if the higher ups learned of this and then I'd be out of a job too." Ah, nothing like firing the guy who could save your company tons of money just in self-interest.
What was stopping the guy from skipping his boss and talking to the higher-ups himself? He could probably prove his boss right by taking his boss' job.
Its futile to complain to a manager about another manager in general. Those people know each other, and they will never side with you. All that politics will only back fire on you.
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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.
We are not like sports coaches. The stuff we deliver sells for higher price, compared to if we would sell the time taken to build it.
He should have sold the program, not this time to build it. Just like how a painter would sell his painting not the time taken to paint it.
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.
Team work is everybody working to achieve something. Not one person making up for everybody.
I work hard because I want to be rich, I can't share my work and money just because somebody won't work hard for whatever reason.
I earn my money, they earn theirs.