Coders Automating Their Own Job • Hacker News Board

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#441

Post by gerbilly » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 5:38 PM UTC

ardy42 wrote: post #268

nstart wrote: post #251

This article really highlights how odd our methods of valuing output are. Ultimately if someone is idling for 6 years because they've written a program to do their job for them, who cares? They are delivering the same output which hopefully the company deemed was valued at X amount BECAUSE it delivers Y amount of profit/returns. This article is actually touching on a deeper level of dysfunction in how we do things li…

> This article really highlights how odd our methods of valuing output are. Ultimately if someone is idling for 6 years because they've written a program to do their job for them, who cares? They are delivering the same output which hopefully the company deemed was valued at X amount BECAUSE it delivers Y amount of profit/returns. Their boss cares. This is capitalism, and capitalist ethics say you should be fired if…

>That means "your" automation is really your boss's capital, and you have no rights to be perpetually compensated for it.

That is the crux right there.

If you automate something and don't tell your boss then you have cheated the capital owning class out of their right to all capital.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#442

Post by majormajor » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 5:38 PM UTC

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.

> Lets face it if they admitted that we could make business decision well there wouldn't be much need for them.

Are you just making these decisions off the top of your head? Or are you talking to people, having research done, soliciting feedback, etc? In the latter case, congrats, now you're a manager! :p (If you're at a small company, you've probably still got enough time to do some hands-on work too...)

IME bad technical managers don't occur at any higher frequency than bad engineers; I haven't worked in other industries to know what it looks like there.

But you get a lot more immediate pain working for a bad manager than next to a bad engineer...

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#443

Post by beardbound » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 5:52 PM UTC

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.…

I work in logistics and our company runs regular tours of our service centers that anybody in engineering can go on and get any questions they want answered. It's pretty great. it takes the tasks off the screen so to speak and puts them in real context.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#444

Post by samirm » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 5:58 PM UTC

peteforde wrote: post #222

analog31 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if it's possible to turn things around for some people: Sitting around relaxing, and then doing their work in bursts of cleverness, may be a coping mechanism for someone who has a hard time staying continuously busy all day long. Or maybe there's a sliding scale between those extremes. I fall somewhere towards the side that you might guess, since I'm defending it here. ;-) I don't necessarily automate my job…

While not everyone on HN is a developer, it does tend to skew that way so I don't feel guilty pointing out how frustrating it is to measure the output of a top programmer. Often, a mature codebase shrinks as code quality improves. This drives the efficiency wonks absolutely bonkers.

>This drives the efficiency wonks absolutely bonkers.

what do you mean by that?

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#445

Post by omneity » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 6:16 PM UTC

Shameless plug, I wrote a tool that allows coders to leverage automation a lot more:

https://medium.com/p/meta-executable-processes-for-software-...

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#446

Post by gnode » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 6:19 PM UTC

someguydave wrote: post #256

nstart wrote: post #251

This article really highlights how odd our methods of valuing output are. Ultimately if someone is idling for 6 years because they've written a program to do their job for them, who cares? They are delivering the same output which hopefully the company deemed was valued at X amount BECAUSE it delivers Y amount of profit/returns. This article is actually touching on a deeper level of dysfunction in how we do things li…

This is related to Taleb's observation that employment is a kind of "slavery". What he means by this is that you effectively have sold your option to own those to outsized returns in exchange for a regular paycheck.

A better term for a classical comparison would be serfdom: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serfdom#Becoming_a_serf

Although, slavery existed within the feudal system as the lowest class of serf.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#447

Post by _zachs » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 6:23 PM UTC

There's a big difference between a Software Engineer and a Data Entry worker. While I (Software Engineer) can definitely automate certain parts of my job, I cannot automate taking an issue from the board, figuring out how to solve it, writing code to solve it, and getting it reviewed in a PR.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#448

Post by gnode » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 6:27 PM UTC

sonnyblarney wrote: post #242

Zarath wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"is there inherent nobility in work itself?" Nietzsche would hate this question: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master%E2%80%93slave_morality Working is the opposite of noble in the traditional sense of the word.

Maybe you mean 'Noble' and not 'noble'. Nobles wouldn't work because that was for serfs. But work has for a long time been considered noble, also, if you consider the kind of work we do not as not so much 'labour' i.e. creative endeavor, then it's even closer to both 'nobole' and 'Noble'.

I'm not sure what you're getting at with the capitalisation. If it's that "Noble" to mean "of high birth" may only be used as a noun, then that's untrue: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/noble

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#449

Post by ddingus » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 6:44 PM UTC

pferde wrote: post #337

ddingus wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once returned a wallet, cash, everything intact. Called the guy when I found it. He totally panicked. Was odd. When I handed it to him, that face! Worth it. Amazingly, he proceeded to try and give me the cash. Was an effort to decline. At the time, I really needed a warm fuzzy. The lost wallet was a great opportunity, and I got a good one. But, our conversation basically centered on, "who does that?" Indeed. The st…

I once found a lost cellphone, and after its owner called it, we arranged to meet and I returned the phone. The owner's reaction was very similar to what you describe. I refused any reward - it seems natural to me to just return it - but later that night (it was a Friday night and I was out for drinks with friends), we bumped into him in a winery, and he ended up buying me and my friends a huge jug of very good wine,…

There you go! I much prefer that kind of thing happen myself.

I think it all adds up. More of us just need to keep doing it.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#450

Post by Immortalin » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 7:17 PM UTC

ekzy wrote: post #385

Immortalin wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?"

Launch pains, system went down.