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Coders Automating Their Own Job

theatlantic.com

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Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#381

Post by yurishimo »

meuk wrote: post #275

It always bothers me how things could be automated better if people just put in a little more thought. For example, where I work, we use both entity framework and raw SQL scripts. A common chore is to delete all migrations, delete the database, run "add-migration SetupDB", "update-database -script", and save the script (with some added boilerplate) in a specific folder However, the "update-database -script" command d…

Aren't there ways to automate this though? Even if it's not 100%, maybe you could get the first parts, and then get everything setup so you only need to click a window and then "select all, copy, tab, paste" to finish.

I'm sure with some clever thought, you might even be able to use a GUI scripting program to work with the VS window. I'm thinking of a series of keyboard shortcuts to reliably set the state of the VS window to where you can script a mouse click in the appropriate spot and then more keyboard shortcuts to copy and save the output.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#382

Post by mrcogmor »

projectileboy wrote: post #235

One thing I find fascinating about our culture is how much we elevate corporations above people. If a corporation found a way to automate production in such a way as to keep their product prices flat but increase their profit margin, most everyone would applaud. This is the exact same thing , but a decent portion of society finds it to be unacceptable behavior.

They wouldn't applaud unless the reduced cost for the business lead to a reduction in the purchase price for consumers.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#383

Post by yurishimo »

morenoh149 wrote: post #227
abledon wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

look for excel heavy data entry jobs

any other tips? what if you have plenty of experience programming, wouldn't it be too obvious?

I would imagine that you wouldn't want to disclose that information. There are a lot of businesses out there who want people with GEDs to do simple data entry. That's probably where I would start looking. Maybe craigslist or similar?

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#384

Post by myWindoonn »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #303
peteforde wrote: post #119

You know how sometimes you love an article so much that you are annoyed you didn't write it? This does a better job than I could have of tieing together a dozen threads of conversation that I've had with various friends for years. I actually believe that there's a culture war implied in this debate; the question of who deserves to reap the gains of automation is more than just philosophy or ethics. The question "is t…

One thing I find fascinating about the article is that it's assumed the cleverness was the code written to automate. This is incorrect; the cleverness is in noticing when a task can be automated. Typically, the code itself is trivial. I have told my work more than once that if they wanted to get the most out of me they should put me on the "front line" for a month or two, and let me decide what needs to be automated.…

You're probably coming off as an arrogant prick.

Try something like "In order to write better tools and automation, I need to empathize with the people using the tools and experiencing day-to-day pain. Can we find somebody who is willing to let me watch over their shoulder for a few minutes on one day?" Note the implicit bargaining for small amounts of time and only small intrusion, as well as the understanding that you are not a decider, but an observer; not an automator, but a pain-reliever.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#385

Post by ekzy »

Immortalin wrote: post #229
anonu wrote: post #5

As a former trader/developer/quant I often felt that "automating myself out of a job" was my goal. If we could build properly architected systems that were self-healing when things went wrong, turned themselves on before the market opened, traded all day, made money and shut down for the night... then eventually my role would devolve into monitoring and ultimately into nothing... In practise, achieving some sort of "…

Shameless Plug: https://KloudTrader.com/Narwhal Doesn't make the decisions for you but manages the other 80% of the complexity involved in deploying a trading strategy.

Is it your product? The "get started" buttons don't work. As well as none of the links under "What does Narwhal Offer?"

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#386

Post by wartijn_ »

collyw wrote: post #377
SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your work is "laughing off" your suggestions and putting you down I'd seriously consider finding a better employer.

Managers always think that they are smarter than coders. Lets face it if they admitted that we could make business decision well there wouldn't be much need for them.

Works just as well the other way around. Every time managers are mentioned at HN, some programmer is sure they can do a better job than their/most/all managers.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#387

Post by projectileboy »

mrcogmor wrote: post #382
projectileboy wrote: post #235

One thing I find fascinating about our culture is how much we elevate corporations above people. If a corporation found a way to automate production in such a way as to keep their product prices flat but increase their profit margin, most everyone would applaud. This is the exact same thing , but a decent portion of society finds it to be unacceptable behavior.

They wouldn't applaud unless the reduced cost for the business lead to a reduction in the purchase price for consumers.

At a minimum, investors would.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#388

Post by yason »

If your work really is so simple that all of it can be automated then it initially sounds like a golden deal: the employer is getting what they're paying for and the employee has a lot of... free time.

But the trouble is that most decent programmers just couldn't stand that. They absolutely need to feel they're doing useful work. So they'll either expand their duties in the company (likely with no similar expansion in their pay) or leave for another company (that pays them to do the both challenging and useful work).

Another case are companies where you absolutely need to automate lots of stuff to get to do real work. If you fight the system you'll run out of energy sooner than the system ever would, but if you automate the fight you can stay operative yourself.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#389

Post by mmsimanga »

I used to train clients on the BI product the company I worked sold and supported. This was mostly taking users through the demos. The users would follow what I was doing on their training PCs. The problem was that in one class it was possible to have users who might have been exposed to the software before or were just fast learners. Sometimes the software would have issues on the training PCs and I would have to trouble shoot what the error was. In a nutshell it was tough running demos and attending to slow users and issues with PCs.

So I automated the demos part by creating screencasts of the demos. I would play the demo whilst I was helping out my students. The first class loved the demos. They asked for copies which I gladly gave them. Management didn't like the idea and I was told not to use my screen casts.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#390

Post by gaius »

coj337 wrote: post #365

I used to intern for a large Australian bank and we had a fairly complex access management workflow. A month into the job after I'd figured out how it all works, I spent a week automating it and was promptly told I was allowed to run my scripts do it if it was kept secret from the higher-ups (to avoid the red tape and the intern they don't trust much). This automated a backlog of work that had a team of 5-10 people s…

the bosses wouldn't approve it, despite showing a 0 failure rate compared to a pretty big one from the bored employees.

A boss’s prestige is in how many people they manage, not how many scripts they run. That’s the key to understanding these kinds of decisions.

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