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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?

#81

Post by majewsky »

Kenji wrote: post #41
imh wrote: post #21

This question is a beautiful example of typical incentives workers feel and how screwed up they are. On HN people talk often enough about how if you have a worker who gets their job done in 30 hours instead of the company's usual 40-60 hours, you should give them 30-100% more responsibility, but much more rarely "and 30-100% more pay." Butt-in-the-chair hours are super important culturally and it's been that way for…

You have no idea how much I hate the people who are paid for 8 hours of 'butt in the chair' but they only show up for 6 and of course it's their code that breaks first and of course they've already gone home when the bug report comes in and of course the code is so obscure that one would have to ask them or else spend 5 additional hours on it.

Sounds like you need unit tests. Or at least a rollback button, so the bug doesn't cause harm until you can dump the problem on that person's desk again next day.

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

#82

Post by mnm1 »

The only ethics in business are those enforced by the state. Is it unethical for the state to ask a salaried employee to work more hours? No, it isn't, so I see no difference here. The exact same principle applies equally in both cases. Hours are meaningless if he's salaried. I think it'd actually be unethical to himself if he told on himself to his employer. Our first ethical duty, after all, is to ourselves.

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

#83

Post by camiller »

posixplz wrote: post #52
hessproject wrote: post #38

There are two ethical lines the poster may have crossed. > I even insert a few bugs here and there to make it look like it’s been generated by a human. As a few others in the original post pointed out, this seems to be the biggest issue. He is intentionally misleading his employer as to the nature of the work he is doing. The automation itself isn't immediately unethical, but the intentional misdirection could be. Th…

Furthermore, because there is significant financial gain in the deception, the actions taken would almost certainly meet the legal requirement for fraud in a modern jurisdiction.

Assuming they are salaried not paid hourly, they seem to being doing the job asked at the agreed upon rate, not sure how it is fraud. That said, just because it might be legal doesn't mean it is ethical. Personally I'd tell the boss "I've gotten this task down to where I have some spare time, what else could I do" and try to get some more work to do.

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

#84

Post by kelnos »

justboxing wrote: post #56
jarym wrote: post #37

Seriously... Op could quit his job, then go tell his employer he'll maintain the system for a fixed monthly subscription. They'll have less headcount and op will be free to pursue other activities.

> and op will be free to pursue other activities. Nope. I think op has evaluated this angle and here's what he says in his post. > Although I get the feeling there’s a specific audience at Stackoverflow, mainly the type of people who I imagine can not appreciate living in a place where jobs aren’t aplenty. Most likely they can walk out of their silicon valley office and shout “I want a job” and get 3 offers to start…

Just because it's not easy to get another job, it doesn't mean it's not possible. He works 1-2 hours a week and has a ton of time on his hands! That's plenty of time to start looking for a new job (without quitting the current one), while still leaving plenty of time to spend with his son. Since he has specific requirements about the job (remote, work from home, etc.), it will almost certainly take longer than "usual" to find a new job, but that's fine... he has the time. After finding a new job, give notice, and give them the automation tool, and that's that.

The issue I find more important here is that this guy isn't growing professionally where he his now. If this do-nothing job would be guaranteed to be around for the rest of his life, maybe that'd be ok. But it won't be. Maybe the company fails. Maybe this division gets sacked. Maybe at some point they do decide to finally overhaul this system, and his job ends up no longer being required anyway. Maybe at some point he slips somehow, and they figure out how little he's working, get mad, and fire him.

After that, what then? Then he has no job, and no significant things on his resume for several years that will help him get a new one. I think this was a nice train to ride for a while, but it's time to start looking for a more sustainable one.

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

#86

Post by dsego »

kelnos wrote: post #48
imh wrote: post #21

This question is a beautiful example of typical incentives workers feel and how screwed up they are. On HN people talk often enough about how if you have a worker who gets their job done in 30 hours instead of the company's usual 40-60 hours, you should give them 30-100% more responsibility, but much more rarely "and 30-100% more pay." Butt-in-the-chair hours are super important culturally and it's been that way for…

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…

It's his tool, why give it away for free?

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

#87

Post by rljy »

Recently, I paid two guys $150 to cary 4 tonnes of gravel up some stairs into my garden and level it. I figured it was a days work for the two of them, and that the price as reasonable. But then, they ran the whole time, and did it in half the time I had estimated for the job. And emotionally, I felt really ripped off, because I was paying twice the going rate for workers in my country. But WHY SHOULD I FEEL RIPPED OFF???? It is wrong to feel ripped off in such a situation. Their doing it quickly saved me time and stress as well.

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

#88

Post by rndmize »

ohyes wrote: post #46

I think the real question is whether this person is salaried or hourly. If they're hourly, then yeah, billing 40 hours a week when you only did 2 is fraud. If salaried, I think it's okay. Here's why: Individuals in the company will be good or bad, ethical or unethical. The company itself will (likely) be largely amoral and driven solely by a profit motive. So when this person announces that he's automated himself out…

> That is what it is, but if the company is allowed to be driven by profit motive, he should be too. It is within the best interests of his profit motive to continue with the automated work. For some reason when the person is an employee, it's no longer okay to be a sociopathic profit-motivated machine, we're actively disgusted by this type of behavior.

This hits it on the head for me. If the company came across as open to improvement and would see the value of paying this person more to look at other processes and see what could be automated, then I'd consider that as an option, but it doesn't sound like that's the case.

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

#89

Post by kelnos »

crispyambulance wrote: post #49
Eyas wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The employer can choose to fire them, not because they are in trouble, but because they are no longer needed. I'm surprised you don't think that is likely. I would bet most companies are interested in reducing "waste" by not hiring people no longer needed. The way the OP talks about the company, it seems like they have no need for actual developers.

Sure, the validators that were checking his work could easily be canned. Mr VBA-Wizard, however, might be put to work doing other "magic" in the organization.

The OP already addressed this: "This isn’t like a company with tons of IT work - they have a legacy system where they keep all their customer data since forever, and they just need someone to maintain it." The OP believes that there won't be other work for him if his current job becomes unnecessary.

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

#90

Post by logfromblammo »

kelnos wrote: post #48
imh wrote: post #21

This question is a beautiful example of typical incentives workers feel and how screwed up they are. On HN people talk often enough about how if you have a worker who gets their job done in 30 hours instead of the company's usual 40-60 hours, you should give them 30-100% more responsibility, but much more rarely "and 30-100% more pay." Butt-in-the-chair hours are super important culturally and it's been that way for…

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…

No, the company didn't make the right decision. They hired a programmer to do the work of a data-entry person.

If they hired that programmer to do the work of a programmer, the automation software would be work-for-hire, and would belong to the company. Since they hired the programmer to do different work, in the absence of an explicit agreement saying otherwise, the automation software belongs to OP, to use (and license) as they please.

If the company owned the software, they could keep OP for occasional maintenance work, even as the other analysts pack up their desk clutter. Since they don't, if they let OP go, OP can just license the software directly to all their analysts without further fear of being fired.

They can all play golf or racquetball or bowling or whatever during the 4.5 days of free time each week that OP can sell to them.

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