Programmer Automates Data Entry Job, Ponders Whether to Tell Employer

Megalith

Megalith

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“Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I’ve automated my job?” This is the dilemma of a StackExchange member who ended up writing a program to do all his work (SQL scripts) for him, going as far as inserting fake bugs to make everything look like it was generated by a human. He notes that he receives a full wage for doing only one or two hours of work but doesn’t feel that he is cheating the company, as they are satisfied with his performance and getting “exactly” what they want.

“I’ve basically figured out all the traps to the point where I’ve actually written a program which for the past 6 months has been just doing the whole thing for me,” they wrote in the post. “So what used to take the last guy like a month, now takes maybe 10 minutes to clean the spreadsheet and run it through the program.” The user went on to say they spend an hour or two on their job each week, even though they’re getting paid for full-time work. On one hand, they wrote, “it’s not like I’m cheating the company.” On the other, “it doesn’t feel like I’m doing the right thing.”
 
Wasn't there a similar story quiet awhile back about a guy doing the same thing, and ultimately goofing off at work.
And then when it came time to actually fix something, it had went on for so long he had forgotten how to fix his program?
 
I'm in the Electronic Design Automation dept. at work (physical design and flow development/QA).
It's my job to automate things, and I do, unlike most colleagues who still do a lot of things manually.

The only reward for hard work, is more work ;)
That and maybe a token $50 gift card.
 
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spintroniX said:
Right thing to do is ask for more responsibility. Also makes it easier to get a raise
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That's not necessarily the right thing to do at all. Why is everybody in a hurry to work themselves into their grave? Maybe he's fine with the level of responsibility he has now. Maybe he's fine with how much he's paid right now. I would love to have a way to work smarter, not harder; get paid the same and spend less time actually working, all while doing the job expected of me.
 
Work smarter not harder.

Company is getting exactly what they paid for, it doesn't matter if it takes him 30 days, or 10 minutes. I've been doing IT stuff for 20+ years, I can fix stuff in a few minutes that might take others a few hours, should I only get paid a fraction of the value of the work? Nope

Funny enough - these days a company might find out this guys secret and totally fuck him over if given the chance, get their hand on his program/script/code and then fire him.
 
I was given a task to figure out the expiration date for all SSL certificates for a large organization. They then wanted all this info in a spreadsheet so they could do something with it (Hell if I know what). For this they gave me 1 month to complete this task. HUNDREDS of domains.

4 hours later with a shell script I was able to output all the sites to a file. 2 hours after that I was able to output the file to a .CSV which I could then import into excel and clean up. 2 hours later and I was done. I spent the next 2 weeks figuring out what to do next. 3rd week I said "I'm done early with this, tell me what you think". End of the 3rd week they were amazed at my efficiency and gave me another task , which was slated to take another month to do and they said "Can you do it in 3 weeks too?"

"I'll try" was my response.
 
"Boss I automated my job."
"So you're saying I don't need you here anymore."
"Not for that role." (thinking he'll get a promotion)
"Great, cuz we just decided we're downsizing your department, enjoy funemployment."

Ethics are why the smartest employees are rarely the rich ones. If you stumble on a gold mine don't think you need to share, milk that mfer for all it's worth.
 
What programmer hasn't automated something before and milked it for all it was worth? The best company I ever worked for was results oriented. You had a list of items to do. You did those items, you got to go home, and you still got paid the same amount, because you were salaried.

The vast majority of companies though, doing more work only gets more work piled on. Oh, you completed these three projects? Here's another couple to work on. Oh, and you still get paid less than John, even though he did 1/8th the amount of work that you did, and btw, he's being promoted, because he looks like he's a hard worker, and you're being let go, because you missed a deadline on the last project, but had time to play a game of solitaire.

In the end, yes, you should let your boss know if you're going to be twiddling your thumbs all day, but your company won't even think twice on burning you out while showing you no extra reward.
 
If there are others in your same position at the same company, taking on more responsibility without pay bump is selling yourself short.
 
This is a tough one because as others have said already, many companies out there will just take advantage of you and swamp you with more and more work, or fire you, and definitely not ever give you a merit based pay increase.
 
silent-circuit said:
Fuck 'em. Take the money, find 8 more jobs doing the same thing. Live the dream.
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Doing things to make your life easier shouldn't be a crime. But a company isn't going to give two flying shits that you've made your life easier... I would do my best to keep quiet about the whole thing. Someone's going to get jealous that Person A is doing something other than work. Even after s/he's finished doing the work that's given to them. It's going to cycle out of control fairly quickly if the wrong type of person knows about it. Hell, don't even get me started on the boss. "You've freed up 6 hours of your time? Here's some more work." Want to get that raise? Pfft no. You ain't getting that raise. The company cares about it's bottom line (as it should). If someone can be given more work so the company can make more money - place your bets that it will do it. Or even better, the company will see that the job can be automated without bugs and fire him. They'll choose to have someone else do it for pennies.

I would try to find more work to do. FreeLancer type work. A) It makes it look like your busy (You're not playing a video game or something to avoid people asking questions) B) You can get more money.



Yes. I've been in his shoes before so I speak from experience from the outcomes.
 
Where I work, we have operators who take care of heavy equipment.

Most of the operation of the heavy equipment is automated. They just need to check on things, keep it up to date on maintenance and keep it clean, and fix things when they go wrong.

I pay our guys full time salary. They are on call 24/7. Most weeks, when things are running well and all they have to do is check the oil and take out the trash, they maybe put in about 15 hours of actual time at work.

I don't mind it at all. In fact, the more weeks that are like that, the better, because it means things are running well. I know it's not quite the same as money, but I consider the extra time off a well deserved bonus for the operators for keeping things that way.

But when shit breaks, I expect them to do what needs to be done to make it work again, and to take the time to do it right the first time.
 
He needs to copyright his scripts/code asap then just shut up about the whole thing. There's nothing wrong with being more efficient at your job than the previous guy or the next guy. He's getting paid a salary to do a job. As long as the job is getting done and done correctly, who cares how he does it? The last thing he wants to have happen though is have his bosses find out what he's been doing without having some sort of protection on his ability to walk away with his code/scripts and have the company be able to continue to use them after he's gone. Because that will happen eventually if he doesn't cover his ass(ets).
 
I've seen enough douche bag bosses / managers who would probably get mad simply because they don't see someone busting their ass doing it the manual way. They would challenge the accuracy of such automation and try to point out its flaws in a meeting. Or a manager would just get jealous because someone mastered their job in a quicker time frame than they did.

Also, members within ones group would feel like the script writer is putting their job security at risk, or is making them look bad. Therefore they can suck it and work harder and not smarter their whole lives.

I've scripted many repetitive tasks at my job, but not to the point where it could take over everything I do. I have shared my scripts among my peers, but so far, none of them are giving back. Nobody is fixing or making improvements to my scripts. However nobody can say that I keep everything to myself, or withhold knowledge from others. So to prove a point, everyone's a leech.

Some are rewarded with more work once you show how much more proficiently you are at it over everybody else.

If a bean counting manager see's the guy getting everything done within his first hour on the job, he will say the next 7 hours of pay are being wasted.

Also, don't set a new expectation with management. Managers will criticize you because you took the usual amount of time to get something done, but get mad that you didn't get it done in an hour this time. They'll say that you took too long or were late to complete the assignment. Don't let non-technical bean counters think that a year long project should be completed in 1 day. They'll never go back and won't give you a reasonable time frame to complete a project in the future.
 
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What he needs to do is offer this to the company and other similar companies for a monthly fee then enjoy his life. If he tells the company you can save $40k a year by paying me only 10k a year and not needing to hire a person to do this job they will jump at it (numbers are made up lol).

We do this with fuel monitor stations for light towers and generator units in remote locations. Our customers can monitor the fuel level of all their units, usually in the dozens per customer (we retro fit their equip) from 1 web page. Now they don't need to pay an employee just to drive out there and check it, they can say hey these 4 units need fuel within the next 2 days send 1 guy out to fuel them all at once. We charge 20k for equip then 5k/year for monitoring and it saves them thousands
 
Yeah I agree with most here, don't tell them and just keep your head down and stay on their schedule. Telling/showing them the work is too easy and you can do it fast and efficiently is only for masochists and will burn you out in the end.

Work smarter not harder is the motto we all live by but that also applies when dealing with the suits who run the office. Give too much of yourself and they will eventually bleed you dry.
 
One approach would be to ask the boss if they would like some of the tasks automated and if that was accomplished, would there be other opportunities? Be sure to ask before they find out about your already existing automation scripts. React based on the answers provided and your read of the honesty of the answers. Have a resume prepared before asking, just in case. The secret will eventually get out anyway. Possibly when the job keeps getting done while you are out sick or on vacation.
 
I'm experiencing a similar dilemma at my current job.

The work I've done to automate some tasks, has made my department and another more efficient for several years now (and admittedly cozy for me).

I don't really have any peers that can contribute in a meaningful way.

The company has grown each year, as has workload. My salary has not.

Workload is finally catching up.

Now management wants us to increase production. I don't feel I'm wrong to put my foot down at this point, so I shot them down when they asked me to continue work on existing tools.

Waiting to see how it all unfolds.
 
I did this once years ago. Unfortunately I was young, naive and to eager to outperform my counterparts so I showed the company what I made . they rewarded me by cutting my position a week later and since I was in a "right to work" state, laid me off without a severance. I had been with the company for 5 years at that pont and had worked my way up from the call center to Business Analyst.
 
MooCow said:
I've seen enough douche bag bosses / managers who would probably get mad simply because they don't see someone busting their ass doing it the manual way. They would challenge the accuracy of such automation and try to point out its flaws in a meeting. Or a manager would just get jealous because someone mastered their job in a quicker time frame than they did.

Also, members within ones group would feel like the script writer is putting their job security at risk, or is making them look bad. Therefore they can suck it and work harder and not smarter their whole lives.

I've scripted many repetitive tasks at my job, but not to the point where it could take over everything I do. I have shared my scripts among my peers, but so far, none of them are giving back. Nobody is fixing or making improvements to my scripts. However nobody can say that I keep everything to myself, or withhold knowledge from others. So to prove a point, everyone's a leech.

Some are rewarded with more work once you show how much more proficiently you are at it over everybody else.

If a bean counting manager see's the guy getting everything done within his first hour on the job, he will say the next 7 hours of pay are being wasted.

Also, don't set a new expectation with management. Managers will criticize you because you took the usual amount of time to get something done, but get mad that you didn't get it done in an hour this time. They'll say that you took too long or were late to complete the assignment. Don't let non-technical bean counters think that a year long project should be completed in 1 day. They'll never go back and won't give you a reasonable time frame to complete a project in the future.
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As you've mentioned (and I too have personally experienced), being good at your job is not necessarily a good thing, and can sometimes endanger your job. It comes down to playing the game, and only he will know the rules. Is your boss petty, and will punish you if you succeed, or will he reward you for hard work? What if other people you work with have already automated the job, will they punish you?

The best piece of advice I've ever gotten when it comes down to work is from one of the Sr. Software Engineers at my first job out of college.

No one is indispensable, not the entry level employee, and not the CEO. Everyone has someone else they answer to. Any successful company will make sure all of their employees can be replaced. A company that relies upon an indispensable employee will not survive in the end, because if the employee decides to leave, or if the employee gets injured and unable to work, their business is doomed.
 
Ragenrok said:
What he needs to do is offer this to the company and other similar companies for a monthly fee then enjoy his life. If he tells the company you can save $40k a year by paying me only 10k a year and not needing to hire a person to do this job they will jump at it (numbers are made up lol).

We do this with fuel monitor stations for light towers and generator units in remote locations. Our customers can monitor the fuel level of all their units, usually in the dozens per customer (we retro fit their equip) from 1 web page. Now they don't need to pay an employee just to drive out there and check it, they can say hey these 4 units need fuel within the next 2 days send 1 guy out to fuel them all at once. We charge 20k for equip then 5k/year for monitoring and it saves them thousands
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He can't, he wrote the code on the company's dime, they own the software/code, not him.
 
WhoBeDaPlaya said:
I'm in the Electronic Design Automation dept. at work (physical design and flow development/QA).
It's my job to automate things, and I do, unlike most colleagues who still do a lot of things manually.


The only reward for hard work, is more work ;)
That and maybe a token $50 gift card.
Click to expand...

This is how it goes where I work or you'll automate yourself out of a job. We actually have a guy trying to do this so he can claim the cost savings on his review
 
Time2Kill said:
He can't, he wrote the code on the company's dime, they own the software/code, not him.
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It's his, unless he signed documentation stating anything created during work hours is the company's IP. If no such agreement exists, it'd be hard for the company to win a court battle, as his job was simply data entry. They don't expect him to be making automation scripts.

I never signed such agreements at work, but I know some of our programmers/developers have. Anything they create on/off the job belongs to the company. They have to go to the company to get approval to own the IP of something they're creating that isn't work related and isn't done on the company's dime.
 
krotch said:
It's his, unless he signed documentation stating anything created during work hours is the company's IP. If no such agreement exists, it'd be hard for the company to win a court battle, as his job was simply data entry. They don't expect him to be making automation scripts.

I never signed such agreements at work, but I know some of our programmers/developers have. Anything they create on/off the job belongs to the company. They have to go to the company to get approval to own the IP of something they're creating that isn't work related and isn't done on the company's dime.
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I've never been at a company where programmers didn't have to sign an intellectual property agreement. I guess if you're a well known superstar you might get exempt, but for the rest of us... I've had hard times even getting an app into the store that had absolutely nothing to do with my job.
 
collegeboy69us said:
Work smarter not harder.

Company is getting exactly what they paid for, it doesn't matter if it takes him 30 days, or 10 minutes. I've been doing IT stuff for 20+ years, I can fix stuff in a few minutes that might take others a few hours, should I only get paid a fraction of the value of the work? Nope

Funny enough - these days a company might find out this guys secret and totally fuck him over if given the chance, get their hand on his program/script/code and then fire him.
Click to expand...
Think of it like this, that code or scripts took you a lifetime to be able to make them. That experience doesn't come cheap.
 
krotch said:
It's his, unless he signed documentation stating anything created during work hours is the company's IP. If no such agreement exists, it'd be hard for the company to win a court battle, as his job was simply data entry. They don't expect him to be making automation scripts.

I never signed such agreements at work, but I know some of our programmers/developers have. Anything they create on/off the job belongs to the company. They have to go to the company to get approval to own the IP of something they're creating that isn't work related and isn't done on the company's dime.
Click to expand...

As Nytegard says, these are pretty much standard at any company. The only room there may be for negotiation or difference is if you are an independent contractor, meaning that you are your own company, and this potentially give you rights to retain IP or share it, etc. etc.

That being said - if i'm not reading incorrectly, what's being discussed here is automation. Automation as far as IP development which could be saleable is an interesting topic. I like the SSL certificate round-up example, and it sounds like there was some SQL related things as well which were mentioned. The automation being performed in this case is perhaps unique to the environment, but not being performed using available tools for that automation. Think about it like a shell script which may automate all sorts of things on a computer. To be able to claim ownership and sell a 'script' which simply makes use of a scripting environment/tool/OS support - to do 'something' which its potentially intended to do...is difficult. The bar on the internet has been raised pretty high regarding this and you see examples and downloadables and open source projects all over the place. Could you write a close-source application which makes use of the same script functions or calls and then feeds it back into the application for monitoring or reporting purposes? sure. That would have a much better chance of being something you can sell.

Another perspective on the who owns its it argument is, you could have an idea (perhaps on an automation system) which you get while on the job. You don't have to do a thing about it, on the job. In your personal time and with personal resources, you explore the idea and develop something completely independently which you can now potentially sell. Of course, now at your job this could become complicated because they'd have to buy it, from you(r company) - which could represent a conflict of interest of some kind. And so ultimately you've spent effort, made some money, but at your job...you're still hacking away at the same old pace. Doesn't mean you can't use other methods to accomplish the same goal though, so maybe it can still be win win.
 
I know that I am the odd man out, while part of me wants to say good for him for finding a way to get out of doing his job while still getting the work done, I do have to view this as stealing. He says he isn't cheating the company but in fact he is. Lets flip this around a tad. lets say that your job is to get the donuts for a company meeting every week so every Monday you are given $100 to go pickup all the donuts for the company, every week for years the total is $96.00 so you give back $4 every week. Then lets say that place decided that since you are guys are such a great customer they are going to give you a discount and now it is only $86 for the donuts. But instead of giving your employer back $14 you decide to keep the $10 every week and just give them $4. After all they don't know that the price changed and are thinking that they are spending $96 a week on donuts. So that is fine that you are keeping $10 a week right? What about a person that takes 3 hours for lunch every day but has somebody clock them in and out to make it only appear that they were gone one hour. In both of these cases you aren't going to jump to that is perfectly fine and should be considered acceptable by everyone. Now of course in this case management should be watching him better to know that he isn't doing anything, the same for anyone else that can get something finished and then sit around for days or weeks and do nothing. So this is partly on them also. But if they fired him when they found out and accused him of fraud I wouldn't be the least bit surprised.

krotch said:
It's his, unless he signed documentation stating anything created during work hours is the company's IP. If no such agreement exists, it'd be hard for the company to win a court battle, as his job was simply data entry. They don't expect him to be making automation scripts.

I never signed such agreements at work, but I know some of our programmers/developers have. Anything they create on/off the job belongs to the company. They have to go to the company to get approval to own the IP of something they're creating that isn't work related and isn't done on the company's dime.
Click to expand...

Even without that documentation I don't think it would be that hard for them to win, they paid for the software to be developed if you are doing it on their time. I would think you would actually need the reverse, a document that states anything you create on company times is yours for a programmer to win such a case. Although part of that might be the field you work in along with the state.
 
Efficiency is seldomly rewarded and often leads to more work and eventually burn out. That, while the those who make simple mundane task sound extravagant, get the overtime, good appraisals and bonuses. Worse yet, if they figured out u did automate the system, you're made redundant and replaced by a monkey for 1/2 pay. Fuck the man.
 
What do you think car mechanics do (at least those at stealerships)?

If the manual says X takes 4 hours, and they do it in 2.5, they'll still charge you for the full 4.
They're such decent folks that they'll even tack on "shop / supply charges" for ya ;)
 
WhoBeDaPlaya said:
What do you think car mechanics do (at least those at stealerships)?

If the manual says X takes 4 hours, and they do it in 2.5, they'll still charge you for the full 4.
They're such decent folks that they'll even tack on "shop / supply charges" for ya ;)
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I've found the opposite to be true. When I'd bring my 300zx in for something I couldn't do myself, they'd quote me at the book time of 2 or 3 hours, but it'd take them a day+. Still only got charged book time. :D
 
Extra-Titanian said:
I've found the opposite to be true. When I'd bring my 300zx in for something I couldn't do myself, they'd quote me at the book time of 2 or 3 hours, but it'd take them a day+. Still only got charged book time. :D
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True, it cuts both ways, but probably more often than not, it takes them less time than the book states.
 
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