I don't believe this story is true. This employee is claiming to be 1000% more efficient and 110% more accurate than every other employee on his entire floor, and yet not a single supervisor has approached him to find out what he is doing differently. Color me unconvinced.
Redditor: Am I a scumbag for automating my manual work and making more money?
71–80 of 115 posts
Re: Redditor: Am I a scumbag for automating my manual work and making more money?
#72I found myself in a similar situation to the redditor, but with out the bonuses. Part of my duty description was inputting MAC addresses of "authorized computers" into an extremely dodgy database system which allowed them to pick up an IP address via DHCP.
When I first started in the position and had this explained to me I pointed out that anyone could just plug a machine into the network and use trial and error to find an IP address to manually enter and get them onto the network. IE: the process wasn't securing anything.
My point was pushed aside because "this is just the way we do things".
The 1st time I had to input 20+ new PCs into the system I whipped up an autoit script (I had to insert via a terrible GUI interface as the DBAs wouldn't grant me direct access to the database) which grabbed the data required from the xls the supplier gave us and automagically inserted the info. My scripting didn't get noticed until one day when I input 200 machines in the space of an hour, the task had taken the previous person in the role a whole day or more.
I was rewarded with a higher workload and grudges from all my co-workers, who had all previously done the task before moving up the totem pole and dumping this ridiculous job onto the next new sucker.
The highlight was when I gave notice and during my exit planning meeting my supervisor said that one of the old staff would train my replacement on how to do this task, rather than me show someone the system I hacked up which was an order of magnitude more efficient.
Re: Redditor: Am I a scumbag for automating my manual work and making more money?
#73You 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…
I didn't take away anything like that from that sentence. I felt that he was saying "the pie is not fixed, and when your company realises that they can get the same results with a much smaller pie, most of your co-workers will be fired, possibly yourself along with them, and replaced with the script you wrote. Prepare to find another pie."
Re: Redditor: Am I a scumbag for automating my manual work and making more money?
#74You 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…
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.
Re: Redditor: Am I a scumbag for automating my manual work and making more money?
#75Big companies are built to fail. The variety of departments and personal empires built by managers of those departments create an environment where innovation (or even the ability to ask "is there a better way?") gets crushed because "that's not the way we do things." Departmental managers don't optimize for company success. They optimize for personal success. A bigger staff and bigger budget is a promotion. Saving money means a smaller budget means a de facto demotion.
Smart people move on and the big companies are left to wonder why it's so hard to find good talent.
Re: Redditor: Am I a scumbag for automating my manual work and making more money?
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
they should be furious with themselves because one of their employees had a great idea that could lower their costs?
no, management should be furious with themselves because they have created an environment where innovation is not shared due to a dumb bonus structure, leading staff to optimize for personal instead of organizational outcomes.
exactly. in my experience, management hardly ever holds themselves accountable for their decisions. That might be an east coast thing though. :)
Re: Redditor: Am I a scumbag for automating my manual work and making more money?
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
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.
Re: Redditor: Am I a scumbag for automating my manual work and making more money?
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
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.
Don't these anecdotes just reenforce patio11's point though about the difference in mindsets?
These two anecdotes describes places/bosses that seem completely toxic. It's trite to say "in the end you don't want to work at a place like this, they did the well-meaning guy a favor" but it seems to be true - some environments/teams/people cannot be saved.
This mindset is self-defeating in the end, and I don't see why it deserves to be reenforced.
Re: Redditor: Am I a scumbag for automating my manual work and making more money?
#79Was I a scumbag for automating manual work and eliminating a ton of jobs when I was only a new grad? In fact, was my entire team? That's a question I struggle to answer more, though we all already know what the reality of the situation is. Did reality excuse me?
Re: Redditor: Am I a scumbag for automating my manual work and making more money?
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
The mindset you speak of, using words like "client" and "contact the decision maker", is associated with people who are used to having a great deal more power and influence than somebody hired to be a data entry grunt. The mindset may be useful for climbing out of the data entry grunt "class", but probably not for "fixing" his existing employer's practices. Someone on that level in a company of any substantial size i…
Part of leveling up from peon to not-quite-sure-but-definitely-not-peon was learning how to talk the part. (Funny sidenote: About ten years to the day ago, I put in a proposal at a particular megacorp to script up something rather than spending $15,000 having the seasonal data entry clerks give themselves carpal tunnel syndrome doing it manually. It was not accepted, and my hands hurt like the dickens for most of the…
I started wearing a suit and giving screwed-up smiles for answers like the Jim Halpert character on The Office (American version). Everyone at the office thought I was the best thing since sliced bread.
* * *
It didn't hurt that I accomplished more work than everyone else while socializing more (meaning I went to the office parties/brunches and laughed at the appropriate times).