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Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I've automated my job?

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Re: Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I've automated my job?

#321

Post by Gracana »

photojosh wrote: post #281
bjourne wrote: post #196

What's wrong with us workers? Do you think the Apple executes have some secret message board where they ask questions like: "Is it unethical for us to sell iPhones for $800 when they only cost $20 to produce?" Capitalism is what it is, you play the game and shouldn't feel bad the (few!) times you win.

> Is it unethical for us to sell iPhones for $800 when they only cost $20 to produce? If you're going to make an argument, why make a strawman? My $1000 iPhone 7+ costs roughly $220 in materials. [1] Apple's stated gross margins are 39%, and last quarter was a net profit of $17.9b on revenue of $78.4b [2], so that's 22% net profit. So overheads are somewhere around 17%. To sum up where your $1000 on an iPhone goes: $…

> I'm more than happy to allow Apple $220 of profit on my iPhone. You may not, but let's debate that rather than a ridiculous claim that they're only $20 to produce.

Huh? Your extensive nit-picking doesn't refute the parent's point or even relate to it in a meaningful way.

Re: Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I've automated my job?

#322

Post by scelerat »

undersuit wrote: post #153
gerbilly wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You learned that people value effort over results. Here's a common situation from programming. A programmer, Steve, works long hours but writes sloppy code. Steve is often seen by management fixing critical issues in production, and 'saving the day'. Eventually Steve, leaves to work at a bigger company and is replaced by a new programmer, Dave, who is more methodical. Dave eventually cleans up the code and gets it to…

So how much does adding drama to my work routine help my compensation rate?

True story (radically abbreviated and redacted):

One group, group A writes crap code. Another group, group B is meticulous and careful, constantly refactoring, using good testing and code review practices, taking care to design their software with forethought before ever committing code.

Group A's code is in a constant state of breakage. Group B's code always just works.

On the other hand, Group A is extremely vocal. Their manager makes sure to give updates at every meeting. Hosts (mandatory) all-nighter pizza parties to fix the crap they broke during the previous cycle. Large parts of the company are privy to the drama. "They're working so hard, really pulling their weight! So dedicated to the company!" Back slaps and high fives when things kind of, sort of, stop breaking. This is a constant, regular cycle. All the non-engineers think this is the hardest working group in the company. In a way they are. In that same way they are the stupidest group in the company.

Meanwhile Group B steadily builds good software quietly. No late nighters, engineers go home at reasonable hours, sometimes early. Same with managers.

Restructuring event. Cuts must be made. Who gets pink slips? The quiet ones. And their managers. Not the retards putting out unmaintainable crap day in and day out.

Re: Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I've automated my job?

#323

Post by md_ »

dredmorbius wrote: post #316
rljy wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adam Smith began his wealth of nations with a description of the division of labor and an essay on how this division leads to an increase in productivity. Specifically, he gives the example of a worker who's sole job it is to make pins, and who devises a way to make them by machine, while previously, each pin was hammered out by hand over a matter of minutes, the new machine makes them in seconds. This division of la…

You might be interested in what this commentator on economics had to say about piecework: "Some workmen, indeed, when they can earn in four days what will maintain them through the week, will be idle the other three. This, however, is by no means the case with the greater part. Workmen, on the contrary, when they are liberally paid by the piece, are very apt to overwork themselves, and to ruin their health and consti…

It's an interesting argument, but is it based on empirical evidence, or merely supposition?

(More recently, you can observe a seeming correlation between the decline in hours worked and the increase in labor productivity in the US in the 20th century--and I think in the rest of the developed world--but I don't know if this is causal or not.)

Re: Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I've automated my job?

#324

Post by caconym_ »

webnrrd2k wrote: post #126
kazen44 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Butt-in-the-chair hours are super important culturally and it's been that way for a while it seems to me that this is directly related to the fact that many parts of management theory have been developed as part of a manufacturing industry instead of a service/"tinkering" industry. With manufacturing, more hours directly correlates to more units produced and thus more value created. This is not the case anymore tha…

I think thst there is also a fundamental imbalance between people's general expectation of what's fair for a company to do, and what's fair for a person to do. After all, if a company had discovered a way to make, say, an expensive medication for almost nothing, would the company be expected to disclose their secret? Would a company be expected to announce to the world: "we can make this for almost nothing now, so we…

> I think thst there is also a fundamental imbalance between people's general expectation of what's fair for a company to do, and what's fair for a person to do. After all, if a company had discovered a way to make, say, an expensive medication for almost nothing, would the company be expected to disclose their secret? Would a company be expected to announce to the world: "we can make this for almost nothing now, so were dropping the price to almost nothing!".

I came here to say this. Corporations strive to maximize profits, are most often not transparent about how much it costs them to make what they sell, and often attempt to justify the high costs of their products with half-truths and/or outright lies. Why should employees be held (or hold themselves) to a higher standard?

If a customer (the company) purchases a service (employment in a certain role) from some entity (the employee) who provides that service, and said entity figures out a way to greatly increase their profits while the customer continues to pay the same price for the same service and is happy with the deal, what's the problem? That seems like a win-win to me.

Re: Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I've automated my job?

#325

Post by DSMan195276 »

spyhi wrote: post #186
kelnos wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This particular case is weird in that they hired a programmer to do the job of a data entry person. It turns out that they -- accidentally -- made the right decision, because it's frankly stupid to pay someone for a month of work when you could spend a little up-front time automating it and eliminate the need for the job entirely. So, honestly, I don't think it would be wrong for the company, if they knew about the a…

> I mean, we wouldn't be having the same discussion here if the company had instead hired someone (perhaps even the OP) on contract specifically to automate the job, and that was it. A small fallacy to this idea: An automation contractor would have been paid differently (i.e. more, maybe even dramatically more) for the job, so it's not directly equivalent. The rates for semi-skilled data input labor vs creating a too…

I would also add, I think it's relevant the employer never actually asked him to look into automating the process - And it's not even clear they would have wanted him to do it or to continue using it if they found out he is doing it.

He quite literally just did the work of an automation contractor at the rate of a data-entry person (Or even possibly for free if he did it after hours) without every being asked to do so, so in some ways I have a hard time 'feeling bad' for him in this respect. Before ever writing the program/scripts/etc. he could have told his manager he thought he could automate the process and propose being paid differently (And/or moving into another position or taking on other work once it is done). If they are/were actually interested in automating, they would have likely taken him up on the offer and paid him more or given him a different position, considering it still would have cost less to have him do it then to fire him and hire someone else. And if they didn't want it, then he doesn't do the work in the first place.

Re: Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I've automated my job?

#326

Post by holografix »

In my point of view, no it's not.

Your employer's organisation's sole purpose is to make a profit for its shareholders. Unless you are either one of the shareholders or will be paid more for increased production you have no incentive to produce more.

Bar your personal relationships of course, if your boss is a great person and you feel like doing them a favour then that's an incentive.

If you believe you could be paid more for increased production, via a raise or promotion, discuss this with your boss in the form of:

"I have an idea, which I need to spend X hours working on and I'm fairly certain I can get it to work and it would provide Y% more productivity. If I do raise my productivity by Y% what would this mean to me?"

If they state something attractive as the outcome, get it in writing. I interpret this as basically the company paying you for your IP, specially if your automation can be replicated to other employees.

Now if your sole job is automating stuff / increasing productivity at the organisation... then that's a whole other story.

Just remember that if YOU automated your job, the organisation could ALSO do it and not need you anymore - so maybe use the extra time to find a job not easily automated.

Re: Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I've automated my job?

#327

Post by buremba »

JauntTrooper wrote: post #209
buremba wrote: post #143

If he's getting paid for the result, then it's fine but most probably they pay him based on the hours that he works and he fakes it in order to get full wage. That's not ethical as stealing is unacceptable and even if your children are starving. I would probably tell my employer that I wrote the software during weekends and it's done last week (Since I would probably get fired if I tell them the truth and I will live…

You say he's being unethical and 'stealing', yet then you say in his position you'd lie to your employer and claim you developed the code on weekends instead of on company time in order to charge the employer a monthly subscription fee and also sell it to potential competitors. Really?

It's unethical because he puts some errors to make the work look like human work and he also reports his employer 40 hours instead of 2 hours which is not acceptable.

On the other hand, he doesn't want to lose his job and even gave the example of "starving children" so it looks like he's stuck with it.

If he developed the software during the working hours and used the company resources while developing it but still tries to own the software and selling it to his employer, it's also unethical but I already told that "I would live with this lie" because his employer never asked his to automate the job, he did it himself. By selling the software, he can even save their money by avoiding the verification and also will have to lie once and then he can relax himself. So it's a grey area for him and probably better than trying to legitimate himself or losing his job.

Re: Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I've automated my job?

#328

Post by bitJericho »

afandian wrote: post #67
kelnos wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I learned something that day, though I'm not sure what. You learned that, despite the fact that you negotiated to be paid by output rather than time, the pay that the company was comfortable with was actually based on their impression of the time it would take to build each page. If they had known you could automate it, they likely would have expected you to agree to a lower per-page fee. I don't think you did anyt…

True, I saw an efficiency and exploited it, so in a way I 'won'. And I was taking a bet myself, as I didn't know the precise details of the job before taking it and just how much I could automate it. But they didn't logically 'lose' anything, business-wise, they got exactly what they asked for. I suppose what I learned is that it's humans who run a business, and humans aren't always logical and act based on feelings.

Dale Carnagie wrote that in order to be successful, try to make the other guy feel like he's a winner, even if you got the upper hand. I would have kept the amount of automation under wraps!

Re: Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I've automated my job?

#330

Post by flukus »

It feels as though everyone is focusing too much on the specifics and not considering that there might be a bigger picture. If this person has a spouse to support, kids to feed and cloth and a mortgage to pay then the also have an ethical responsibility to not risk their income by coming clean. Even if it's just themselves there is an ethical responsibility to provide for themselves.

I think it's probably unethical behavior, but probably for entirely ethical reasons.

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