Programmer Automates Data Entry Job, Ponders Whether to Tell Employer

But he doesn't own the business. He is a low level employee. He is being paid to do a task.

I think you said the exact right thing here... "He is being paid to do a task"
Is the task being done? If so, he has fulfilled his obligation.

Whether this is ethical or not depends on a lot of things, such as:

-Has the employee been asked to report how much time he is spending on said task? If so, did he lie about the time it takes him?
-Does the employer have policies that restrict usage on the computers, which the employee is now violating because of the extra free time?
-Is the employee being paid on an hourly wage, or a per job / salary or outside contractor even?

What will make it ethical is the details and whether he is being paid an hourly wage for his work with expectations to keep busy by requesting more work if the load is insufficient, or if he is being paid purely on performance, or for completing said work.
If this is a freelance guy, or a guy who is an outside contractor, he has every right to minimize his time spent doing the job provided it is done correctly. Even if he is hourly or salaried company employee, if there are provisions in place that say downtime is acceptable to be doing other things than work related, I think this guy is not being unethical.

I managed a 24/7 technical helpdesk staff in a production environment, and we 100% allowed employees to do college homework, watch videos or pass the time however they wished as long as the phone was answered and the system was inspected at the right intervals and issues were resolved properly. We had a 24/7 requirement on the project, but for our night staff, sometimes they literally was 0 calls and simply monitoring a dashboard for any red values to show up which might not happen the whole night. So yes we allowed the employees leeway on what they could do. If one of my employee were to write certain scripts that helped maintain uptime / recover automatically or otherwise improve the overall performance of the department, (something I frequently did myself also) I would have been quite happy about it.

So yeah, devil is in the details, guy might be acting 100% ethical, or he might be doing something wrong, depending on the expectations of his contract and other things I mentioned above.
 
2. Report that he's figured out how to automate his job, likely get laid off because the company doesn't need him any more, and his manager will probably get a bonus if not a promotion for taking credit for his work, and saving the company a bunch of money. He loses out completely, people who already have more money than he does benefit even more.
Hey, you just described the standard American business model. That's the way it's always been done. Then they tell you, 'It's just business, it's not personal', as they have security show you the door.
Just don't use the spare time to load up some porn and rub one out in your office/cubicle. .
Unless you produce porn for a living, anybody watching porn and whacking off while on the job deserves to get canned. Everyone knows it's unhygienic to whack off in your cubicle, you might have to eat there. Go to the next person's empty cubicle and do it.
 
Last edited:
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.



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.
It would be more accurate to have your scenerio be they offer delivery rather than you going to get them every day. Thus you can go fuck the bosses secretary and your job still gets done...

No in this case he should remove the bug insertions and then ask his boss if he can increase the amount he does. Then his new job is to monitor his script make sure it doesn't fuck up.
 
OK, first off, dude needs to bug up his script a little, and put in some kind of timer based interaction/prompt. That way, if he doesn't put a password or do a task or something every so often, it will grind to a halt. And occasionally bug out, meaning no one is perfect and he's the guy to fix the script. The LAST thing one wants to do is make it perfect and bulletproof, because 9/10 management types will shout with glee and lay that dude off, or just dogpile him with more work for same pay. And you sure as hell don't want an automated task to work perfectly while you are out of the office, that leads back to the first point... discovery.

He can't "sell" it to the company, because as others have said, if he wrote it while on their payroll they likely own it. But that doesn't mean said script couldn't be "improved" to work less optimally. I would also keep a "Plan B" version of the script that either doesn't work at all or barely works, but maybe the code looks similar enough to pass a sniff test. Anything ever happened to him and the good script gets swapped with Plan B, and hilarity ensues.

I also like one post that said by week 3 they were bored so they said "Hey I'm done early" but did you notice what happened? The next project got cut down to 3 weeks. Then you know it will be 2, then 1, then "WHERE ARE MY REPORTS I REQUESTED THEM 60 SECONDS AGO DURRRRRRRR". It will happen.

The car dealership/mechanic example I saw floated doesn't apply here. Those guys do jobs by the book, and if the book says 4 hours to do XYZ, you will get charged for those 4 hours even if they finish in 30 minutes. But if it takes them longer, do you think they will stick to the 4 hours or charge the actual time spent? Could go either way, but my experience with auto shops is you're going to get screwed every possible way, and then some.
 
Where I work, we have operators who take care of heavy equipment.

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.

When I was a technician, my supervisor would give us shit for sitting around. I told him us sitting around is the best thing that could happen to the company. If we aren't sitting around it means you not only are paying me the same amount of money, it also means your tools aren't making money either.
 
And he's still doing his task. Honestly it's about this simple. He can:

1. Keep doing what he's doing, get paid, the company gets their work done, he has plenty of free time. Both sides benefit.

2. Report that he's figured out how to automate his job, likely get laid off because the company doesn't need him any more, and his manager will probably get a bonus if not a promotion for taking credit for his work, and saving the company a bunch of money. He loses out completely, people who already have more money than he does benefit even more.

Can someone elaborate more on how #2 is the "right" thing to do? Right for who?

Right and good for you don't always go hand in hand. If you are driving down the road and hit and kill a child playing in the street, you could just drive away. There is chance that you will never be found. Morally the right thing to do is to turn yourself in, however if you do that you will go to jail. If you are a doctor and fuck up a surgery and kill somebody but nobody knows that it was because of something you did incorrectly you could tell that you did something wrong and risk losing your job or getting fined or you could do nothing. If you are a 10 year old playing baseball and break a window the right thing to do is to own up to it and pay for it to be fixed, however then you are having to work off the damage.

Right now what he is doing is time sheet fraud. Charging his employer for 40 hours a week when he only actually works 1. It would be one thing if setting in an office, but he works from home and doing home things during times that he reports he is working. We fired somebody for doing just this. They were putting down 50 hours a week (claiming 7am - 5pm Monday - Friday with no lunch) when in fact they left every day for 3 hours to go to the store, visit their parent in the hospital, go home for awhile..., and then would sit in the lunch room for 2 hours talking to other people during their lunch breaks. There are laws against timesheet fraud in some states. Some states consider it a felony charge. So it is one of those things that you have to be careful about.

I think you said the exact right thing here... "He is being paid to do a task"
Is the task being done? If so, he has fulfilled his obligation.

Whether this is ethical or not depends on a lot of things, such as:

-Has the employee been asked to report how much time he is spending on said task? If so, did he lie about the time it takes him?
-Does the employer have policies that restrict usage on the computers, which the employee is now violating because of the extra free time?
-Is the employee being paid on an hourly wage, or a per job / salary or outside contractor even?

What will make it ethical is the details and whether he is being paid an hourly wage for his work with expectations to keep busy by requesting more work if the load is insufficient, or if he is being paid purely on performance, or for completing said work.
If this is a freelance guy, or a guy who is an outside contractor, he has every right to minimize his time spent doing the job provided it is done correctly. Even if he is hourly or salaried company employee, if there are provisions in place that say downtime is acceptable to be doing other things than work related, I think this guy is not being unethical.

I managed a 24/7 technical helpdesk staff in a production environment, and we 100% allowed employees to do college homework, watch videos or pass the time however they wished as long as the phone was answered and the system was inspected at the right intervals and issues were resolved properly. We had a 24/7 requirement on the project, but for our night staff, sometimes they literally was 0 calls and simply monitoring a dashboard for any red values to show up which might not happen the whole night. So yes we allowed the employees leeway on what they could do. If one of my employee were to write certain scripts that helped maintain uptime / recover automatically or otherwise improve the overall performance of the department, (something I frequently did myself also) I would have been quite happy about it.

So yeah, devil is in the details, guy might be acting 100% ethical, or he might be doing something wrong, depending on the expectations of his contract and other things I mentioned above.

The issue is that he works from home, and while he is completing a task he is not "working" the hours that he is claiming. When you are on the clock and take your son to the park or to the zoo or go swimming at a lake, that isn't misuse of a company computer that is you lying that you are working.

I understand you for the downtime. I manage a central office at a telephone company. People have down time, but if my employees didn't show up for 6 months, clocked in from home every day and then reported 40 hours a week on their timesheet I would be firing their asses. Pretty sure you would do the same if somebody put their phone on DND every day, didn't take a single call and used the company internet to play games.
 
Right and good for you don't always go hand in hand. If you are driving down the road and hit and kill a child playing in the street, you could just drive away. There is chance that you will never be found. Morally the right thing to do is to turn yourself in, however if you do that you will go to jail. If you are a doctor and fuck up a surgery and kill somebody but nobody knows that it was because of something you did incorrectly you could tell that you did something wrong and risk losing your job or getting fined or you could do nothing. If you are a 10 year old playing baseball and break a window the right thing to do is to own up to it and pay for it to be fixed, however then you are having to work off the damage.

Right now what he is doing is time sheet fraud. Charging his employer for 40 hours a week when he only actually works 1. It would be one thing if setting in an office, but he works from home and doing home things during times that he reports he is working. We fired somebody for doing just this. They were putting down 50 hours a week (claiming 7am - 5pm Monday - Friday with no lunch) when in fact they left every day for 3 hours to go to the store, visit their parent in the hospital, go home for awhile..., and then would sit in the lunch room for 2 hours talking to other people during their lunch breaks. There are laws against timesheet fraud in some states. Some states consider it a felony charge. So it is one of those things that you have to be careful about.



The issue is that he works from home, and while he is completing a task he is not "working" the hours that he is claiming. When you are on the clock and take your son to the park or to the zoo or go swimming at a lake, that isn't misuse of a company computer that is you lying that you are working.

I understand you for the downtime. I manage a central office at a telephone company. People have down time, but if my employees didn't show up for 6 months, clocked in from home every day and then reported 40 hours a week on their timesheet I would be firing their asses. Pretty sure you would do the same if somebody put their phone on DND every day, didn't take a single call and used the company internet to play games.
Going a wee bit too deep with this stuff...
 
Right and good for you don't always go hand in hand. If you are driving down the road and hit and kill a child playing in the street, you could just drive away. There is chance that you will never be found. Morally the right thing to do is to turn yourself in, however if you do that you will go to jail. If you are a doctor and fuck up a surgery and kill somebody but nobody knows that it was because of something you did incorrectly you could tell that you did something wrong and risk losing your job or getting fined or you could do nothing. If you are a 10 year old playing baseball and break a window the right thing to do is to own up to it and pay for it to be fixed, however then you are having to work off the damage.

Right now what he is doing is time sheet fraud. Charging his employer for 40 hours a week when he only actually works 1. It would be one thing if setting in an office, but he works from home and doing home things during times that he reports he is working. We fired somebody for doing just this. They were putting down 50 hours a week (claiming 7am - 5pm Monday - Friday with no lunch) when in fact they left every day for 3 hours to go to the store, visit their parent in the hospital, go home for awhile..., and then would sit in the lunch room for 2 hours talking to other people during their lunch breaks. There are laws against timesheet fraud in some states. Some states consider it a felony charge. So it is one of those things that you have to be careful about.



The issue is that he works from home, and while he is completing a task he is not "working" the hours that he is claiming. When you are on the clock and take your son to the park or to the zoo or go swimming at a lake, that isn't misuse of a company computer that is you lying that you are working.

I understand you for the downtime. I manage a central office at a telephone company. People have down time, but if my employees didn't show up for 6 months, clocked in from home every day and then reported 40 hours a week on their timesheet I would be firing their asses. Pretty sure you would do the same if somebody put their phone on DND every day, didn't take a single call and used the company internet to play games.
First off, comparing this to a hit and run is rich. In that scenario, the driver is causing active harm, plus if the hit was less than lethal, reporting it could save the child's life. You may as well compare what he's doing to murder.

Second, whether this is timesheet fraud or not likely depends on his contract. If he's salaried and gets paid on work goals he's supposed to meet, he may not be doing anything fraudulent by the letter of the law. Sure, they may EXPECT his work to take full time, but if it only takes him 10 minutes, he hasn't broken the law. They're paying for expected results and they're getting them. He hasn't HARMED anyone and is fulfilling his expectations, though agreed, in a deceptive way.

For sake of argument, let's assume it's that situation. Why is it "right" to report that and lose his job for helping the company greatly? Is it still right if the employer routinely doesn't pay for overtime, assigns more work than be completed in a 40 hour workweek, but the salary doesn't reflect that?

The point here is if you're dealing with honest people, then being honest with them is of course the right thing. If you're dealing with dishonest people whose whole purpose exploit others, what's "right" becomes much more of a grey area. It's the reason cops don't tell hostage takers that they're really just trying to distract them while they move units in to take them out, and have no intention of meeting any of their demands. After all, wouldn't that would be the honest and "right" thing to do?

EDIT:
Assume that this guy IS obeying the letter of the law, but obviously not the spirit. Obviously if he's doing something illegal, that's grounds for doing the legal course, but I'm talking about in the absence of that where he's found away around it.
 
Last edited:
Hihihi hohohoh hehehe
THAT involves a lot of luck.
First, you need a very well run company.
Second you need a non-jerk boss.
Third you need non jerk co-workers to take on other projects.
Fourth the reward structure for you boss is not based on cutting man-hours or some such.

You either have been very lucky or you are very young.
Well, employing exactly this strategy, I've seen six promotions in 14 years, three in the last five. And please don't play the "young" card. I have two kids and I'm finishing my second degree; this isn't the mindless progress of youth.
 
Ok, he "grows a conscious" and tells he found a way to automate all of that, first thing the employer does is look at the code, determine how viable it is, then fires the guy from his job (or hires as a tech consult for the code), and more importantly every other person that company pays to do the same thing loses their job because they have automation. Now how about that for a moral dilemma!
 
Well, employing exactly this strategy, I've seen six promotions in 14 years, three in the last five. And please don't play the "young" card. I have two kids and I'm finishing my second degree; this isn't the mindless progress of youth.
Very lucky indeed.
 
I think the best thing to do would be to set up a similar arrangement with another company. Then, with two full time jobs on the go, let one company know what you are doing and try to get it officially sanctioned by management. If it backfires, no big deal because you still have a full time job at the other place.
 
Why feel bad? A CEO wouldn't hesitate for a second if he could automate 1000 jobs, fire 1000 people, and add their salaries to his paycheck.
Exactly. How many people have been told, essentially, 'We regret to inform you, that your position has been made redundant. Please clean out your desk, this week's paycheck will be mailed to you. Thank you for your service. I'll be happy to write a letter of recommendation for you, and we wish you the best of luck on your next job. We're sure you'll land on your feet, somewhere else'. Companies insist on employee loyalty, yet, will fire you in an instant if it means more money for the boss. And I think this is the most important thing we can remember; with very, very rare exception, virtually all managers really tend to believe that they're doing you a favor by hiring you; and that you 'owe' them for that. At no time do they feel that they are lucky to have someone of your talents to have come to work for them. Even worse, they think that paying you is also doing you a personal favor. If you get fired, many have no qualms about not paying you your last paycheck. I"ve never been fired; yet, every company except one, tried to permanently hold back my last paycheck, and I gave every single one of them plenty of notice that I was leaving. I didn't even ask for it upon leaving; just expected it to be available at the usual 4 days past the end of the week worked. And got the run around, with all the nonsense about it being still in: Payroll dept, human resources, locked in somebody's desk, not being printed due to some 'glitch', etc.. Each then told me that it would be mailed to me, and it usually took over a month for me to receive it. Twice I had to contact the dept of labor to intervene on my behalf just to get paid what I was owed, including accrued vacation time. Both of them turned out to have done this to numerous employees in the past, and the rep at the labor board knew exactly who the personnel manager was they had to talk to.
Corporations are all about making money, often, by taking advantage of employees every chance they can get. If you see them doing it to even one person at your place of work, I guarantee they'll be more than willing to screw you, too. It's all about the money, and who's going to get it.
 
Lol we all have that problem to some degree. I do about an hour or so a work a day......1-2 hours a week is pretty epic though, that sounds nice....
 
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.



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.

Sorry it's not stealing, many companies happy to lay you off for actually doing work, or otherwise. They close jobs all the time and make people lose their jobs,
.Happened to me.... So if you found a way to make your job easier, go ahead and do it.
 
I just retired from a LONG career in the computer industry. I wrote my first program way back in 1965. 52 years ago. I have used many different programming languages and employed that skill on many different computers. I have also worked with quite an array of people during all that time. And, during that time, I eventually lost (or at least was able to hide) the fuck-it attitude. I'm not pointing any fingers to any one specific post here; but, if you really are honest in trying to "make it" in this wonderful industry, then you have to be able to lose (or hide) your fuck-it (them) attitude. I have had the worst of bosses and the absolute best during that time. I was fortunate to latch onto a company right in my home town (situated in the geographical center of the USA). The bosses maintained that they were working for US - the programmers. We got to actually review the bosses at review time! I worked at that place for over 20 years. Our programming staff came from all over the world. Because that company had over 68 percent of the worlds business in ATM and POS software. The best part? Every programmer there was the absolute BEST at what they did. We all learned from one another. You got to up your ante, so to speak, on your skills. Our customers were the largest banks in the world and from all corners of the world. We also did stuff for MasterCard, Visa, AMEX, and all the other CC companies. There were quite a few programmers that became absolute jewels. In October of 2001 (911), I and 250 others lost our jobs "due to the economy". It was the best thing to happen to me. I started contracting - and tripled my take home pay. So , from that time to January of this year, that's what I had done. I had developed a reputation as one of the best in the banking business. Almost every time I took a contract, I worked in a different city. The awesome thing, is that I would at least know 1 to 3 people at each place for having worked with them previously. I have worked from Ocean to Ocean and border to border, and in a few foreign countries.

I am now in my 70's and just two weeks ago, I turned down a very generous offer from VISA to "Please" come and work for them. So? That's the thing that you should develop - a skill that is top notch, and the ability to work with all types of people. That is what corporate USA is looking for. At least for me it was!
 
he should request to work from home, then do whatever the fuck he wants all day.
 
Just shows how fucked up the whole thing is. We all know you wouldn't be rewarded for this so we all say fuck them and don't say anything. Truly fucking awful world we live in.

Fuck them and take everything you can get. I hope he refines his stuff and does zero actual work.
 
How do you forget how to program? You might forget how you've written a program that you did years ago, but you look at the code and it comes back in a few minutes depending on the size of the code.

I said that before I joined the army lol. Was very good in C++ in college and also the best in my class with Cisco ios and fixing issues when I joined, then I spent years running dual conductor and setting up field phones and radios, by the time that wasn't my whole life I had forgotten just about everything I knew, and the Army is also funny in that I spent 7.5 months training on hardware and systems that once I was in the wild I was never allowed to touch again, to this day, because why pay a Soldier $45k to do what he's trained for when you can pay a civie contractor who doesn't follow orders that well $120k to do the same thing?

Coding is most definitely a perishable skill set, one of these days I'll get back into it but life has a way of fucking with the best laid plans lol
 
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.

This.

I automate as much of my job as possible... and I don't tell anyone about it. I get paid a salary to do a certain set of tasks. I complete all the tasks so they are getting what they are paying for. If I'm smart and figure out a way to do things more efficiently why shouldn't I reap the reward of more time for myself? Many many years ago I told the boss one time about something I came up with and all I got in return was, "Wow, that's pretty impressive, now you have time to do X too!". Only time I'll make that mistake...
 
Last edited:
First off, comparing this to a hit and run is rich. In that scenario, the driver is causing active harm, plus if the hit was less than lethal, reporting it could save the child's life. You may as well compare what he's doing to murder.

Second, whether this is timesheet fraud or not likely depends on his contract. If he's salaried and gets paid on work goals he's supposed to meet, he may not be doing anything fraudulent by the letter of the law. Sure, they may EXPECT his work to take full time, but if it only takes him 10 minutes, he hasn't broken the law. They're paying for expected results and they're getting them. He hasn't HARMED anyone and is fulfilling his expectations, though agreed, in a deceptive way.

For sake of argument, let's assume it's that situation. Why is it "right" to report that and lose his job for helping the company greatly? Is it still right if the employer routinely doesn't pay for overtime, assigns more work than be completed in a 40 hour workweek, but the salary doesn't reflect that?

The point here is if you're dealing with honest people, then being honest with them is of course the right thing. If you're dealing with dishonest people whose whole purpose exploit others, what's "right" becomes much more of a grey area. It's the reason cops don't tell hostage takers that they're really just trying to distract them while they move units in to take them out, and have no intention of meeting any of their demands. After all, wouldn't that would be the honest and "right" thing to do?

EDIT:
Assume that this guy IS obeying the letter of the law, but obviously not the spirit. Obviously if he's doing something illegal, that's grounds for doing the legal course, but I'm talking about in the absence of that where he's found away around it.

My point was just that doing the right thing is not always going to be the best choice for you. What would determine if it is timesheet fraud is does he have to report hours worked every week. Even if salary if he has to repot how many hours he worked and puts down 40 or anything more than the actual time he worked on it then that is fraud. No, he isn't hurting anyone but he is still defrauding the company. Taking this to the extreme again to make a point. If I hunt down a man, wait till he is alone and then shoot him in the head that is murder. Doesn't matter if the person is a wanted murderer, or just some random person. Murder is murder. The same applies to if I am driving 95 in a 45 mph area. Doesn't matter if there is anyone around or if the road is in the middle of nowhere and it is just me, I am still speeding regardless even if nobody is around.

Don't get me wrong, I am not for a person getting fired and his position he put himself into does suck. I also even stated before that his supervisor is partly responsible also for not watching him a little better. However given that he works from home that is a lot harder of a thing to do and in that case you are relying on trust of your employees. My only argument is that this isn't as much of a fuck every employer lets find a way to fuck them over as much as we can because they are assholes and so score one for the worker type thing that everyone tries to make it. This person could be breaking the law, he could be setting himself up for jail time and fines because of what he is doing.

Also lets be honest, this guy is doing a low level job. If he was to show that he could replace this position with automation that might help him actually get a programming job there. Or at the very least would look good on a resume for a real programming position when he gets his next job if they let him go. It would be one thing if he was actually a programmer, but for those that actually read the article, he has been at this place for 18 months, applied thinking he was getting a programmer position but after starting realized it was a data entry job. Got bored and after a few months started working on this code to the point that the last 6 months he hasn't actually done any real work. Due to his guilt he is now asking if what he is doing is right. He coded the script to create errors on purpose to give more of an appearance that a person is doing the work. Which means that whatever data he has been working on is now purposely incorrect because he has been trying to deceive them. As soon as he started to ask "is it wrong for me to do this" the answer is yes. if you ask a question then have to try your hardest to spin the events to make you out to be good, then normally what you are doing is wrong. If you are in a relationship with somebody and then have to ask is it cheating if you start going and hanging out with somebody that has feeling for you, you don't tell your partner that you are spending time with this person and you hide all your communication with them (which consist of text and calls at all hours of the day) as you don't want your partner to get the wrong idea. As soon as you start feel that you might be cheating and have to ask the question, you are in a situation you shouldn't be in. The same here. As much as it sucks for the guy, the fact that he is where he is right now means that he isn't in a good position. No matter how good or bad it will play out for him.

However yes there are many unknowns in all of this.

Sorry it's not stealing, many companies happy to lay you off for actually doing work, or otherwise. They close jobs all the time and make people lose their jobs,
.Happened to me.... So if you found a way to make your job easier, go ahead and do it.

Sadly what your employer does to you and what you can do to your employer doesn't always line up. Your employer can cut your hours, but you can't give yourself a raise. And yes people do get fucked over by their employer. that doesn't mean stealing money from the safe at a bank you work at is fair because they cut somebody's hours. Also doesn't mean that if your state has laws against time sheet fraud that you can ignore them.

he should request to work from home, then do whatever the fuck he wants all day.

He does work from home and that is what he does. He uses the time to do thing with his young son. It is in the article.
 
My point was just that doing the right thing is not always going to be the best choice for you. What would determine if it is timesheet fraud is does he have to report hours worked every week. Even if salary if he has to repot how many hours he worked and puts down 40 or anything more than the actual time he worked on it then that is fraud. No, he isn't hurting anyone but he is still defrauding the company. Taking this to the extreme again to make a point. If I hunt down a man, wait till he is alone and then shoot him in the head that is murder. Doesn't matter if the person is a wanted murderer, or just some random person. Murder is murder. The same applies to if I am driving 95 in a 45 mph area. Doesn't matter if there is anyone around or if the road is in the middle of nowhere and it is just me, I am still speeding regardless even if nobody is around.

Don't get me wrong, I am not for a person getting fired and his position he put himself into does suck. I also even stated before that his supervisor is partly responsible also for not watching him a little better. However given that he works from home that is a lot harder of a thing to do and in that case you are relying on trust of your employees. My only argument is that this isn't as much of a fuck every employer lets find a way to fuck them over as much as we can because they are assholes and so score one for the worker type thing that everyone tries to make it. This person could be breaking the law, he could be setting himself up for jail time and fines because of what he is doing.

Also lets be honest, this guy is doing a low level job. If he was to show that he could replace this position with automation that might help him actually get a programming job there. Or at the very least would look good on a resume for a real programming position when he gets his next job if they let him go. It would be one thing if he was actually a programmer, but for those that actually read the article, he has been at this place for 18 months, applied thinking he was getting a programmer position but after starting realized it was a data entry job. Got bored and after a few months started working on this code to the point that the last 6 months he hasn't actually done any real work. Due to his guilt he is now asking if what he is doing is right. He coded the script to create errors on purpose to give more of an appearance that a person is doing the work. Which means that whatever data he has been working on is now purposely incorrect because he has been trying to deceive them. As soon as he started to ask "is it wrong for me to do this" the answer is yes. if you ask a question then have to try your hardest to spin the events to make you out to be good, then normally what you are doing is wrong. If you are in a relationship with somebody and then have to ask is it cheating if you start going and hanging out with somebody that has feeling for you, you don't tell your partner that you are spending time with this person and you hide all your communication with them (which consist of text and calls at all hours of the day) as you don't want your partner to get the wrong idea. As soon as you start feel that you might be cheating and have to ask the question, you are in a situation you shouldn't be in. The same here. As much as it sucks for the guy, the fact that he is where he is right now means that he isn't in a good position. No matter how good or bad it will play out for him.

However yes there are many unknowns in all of this.



Sadly what your employer does to you and what you can do to your employer doesn't always line up. Your employer can cut your hours, but you can't give yourself a raise. And yes people do get fucked over by their employer. that doesn't mean stealing money from the safe at a bank you work at is fair because they cut somebody's hours. Also doesn't mean that if your state has laws against time sheet fraud that you can ignore them.



He does work from home and that is what he does. He uses the time to do thing with his young son. It is in the article.

He's still a programmer though, and he's salaried, so he's also exempt. Most times the employer won't even bother with a time sheet. As far as if they do require a time sheet, and if he fudges it, I can't answer if it's illegal, as I really don't know the law too well (outside of personal experiences, but this isn't one). Certainly it would be unethical, and I don't think anyone here would really deny that purposely creating bugs is a good thing.

I've also been in a similar situation as far as being hired as a programmer, and being turned into a glorified data entry person. I was hired to expand a program to take in new feeds. There was a weekly full update which took roughly 30 hours to run and a daily partial update which took 2 hours to run. I rewrote the program so that it took roughly 50 minutes to do a full update, and a few minutes to do a partial update. I was singled out during one of the yearly company meetings and praised by a few people. I found out my manager had written the original version, and I never saw another programming project again at that company. And for the rest of my time at that company, working there became a nightmare. And I basically became a glorified data entry person.

One thing I learned though is not to include that on my resume. At almost every job, they said something that shrinking the run time of a job looks impressive, and how I did it. What I did really wasn't that impressive though. In my mind, I just did something that should have been done in the first place, and trying to avoid saying something negative about my boss became somewhat difficult.
 
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.
Exactly, a lot of companies would do that in a heartbeat so don't feel bad looking out for yourself.
 
He's still a programmer though, and he's salaried, so he's also exempt. Most times the employer won't even bother with a time sheet. As far as if they do require a time sheet, and if he fudges it, I can't answer if it's illegal, as I really don't know the law too well (outside of personal experiences, but this isn't one). Certainly it would be unethical, and I don't think anyone here would really deny that purposely creating bugs is a good thing.

I've also been in a similar situation as far as being hired as a programmer, and being turned into a glorified data entry person. I was hired to expand a program to take in new feeds. There was a weekly full update which took roughly 30 hours to run and a daily partial update which took 2 hours to run. I rewrote the program so that it took roughly 50 minutes to do a full update, and a few minutes to do a partial update. I was singled out during one of the yearly company meetings and praised by a few people. I found out my manager had written the original version, and I never saw another programming project again at that company. And for the rest of my time at that company, working there became a nightmare. And I basically became a glorified data entry person.

One thing I learned though is not to include that on my resume. At almost every job, they said something that shrinking the run time of a job looks impressive, and how I did it. What I did really wasn't that impressive though. In my mind, I just did something that should have been done in the first place, and trying to avoid saying something negative about my boss became somewhat difficult.

Where did you get he was a salary worker? The article and his post don't ever say that. The only mention is that he gets full time pay, it never states a number reported to be working or if hourly or salary. That said, you admit that this is unethical which is the entire point of the question. So far I am the only person that says that it is unethical here. Everyone else has the standpoint that is if 100% ethical because fuck all employers and what he is doing is what everyone should do. Which is all that I have been arguing. This isn't a 100% perfectly acceptable in all cases with zero chance of anything bad happening. IF they find out depending on various things there could be serious legal action as a result.

As for the legality, that all depends on the state. Massachusetts considers it larceny with a minimum of 1 year in prison and a $300 fine. You can call it time sheet fraud, embezzlement, or just plan theft. You could be asked to just pay the money back, you could be slapped with a fine, or you could get jail time, just get probation. All depends on the state and their laws and if the employer wants to press charges as that can be viewed in some states as a felony crime.
 
Due to his guilt he is now asking if what he is doing is right. He coded the script to create errors on purpose to give more of an appearance that a person is doing the work. Which means that whatever data he has been working on is now purposely incorrect because he has been trying to deceive them. As soon as he started to ask "is it wrong for me to do this" the answer is yes. if you ask a question then have to try your hardest to spin the events to make you out to be good, then normally what you are doing is wrong. If you are in a relationship with somebody and then have to ask is it cheating if you start going and hanging out with somebody that has feeling for you, you don't tell your partner that you are spending time with this person and you hide all your communication with them (which consist of text and calls at all hours of the day) as you don't want your partner to get the wrong idea. As soon as you start feel that you might be cheating and have to ask the question, you are in a situation you shouldn't be in. The same here. As much as it sucks for the guy, the fact that he is where he is right now means that he isn't in a good position. No matter how good or bad it will play out for him.

However yes there are many unknowns in all of this.
Look, you obviously have an argument if anything he's doing is illegal AND it affects others (for example, your speed limit scenario is pointless if the city is deserted so there's literally no one to hit), but for sake of argument, let's assume it's not and he's following the letter of the law. What would your attitude be towards someone who found a loophole on taxes (tax avoidance) that's 100%, but feels guilty about it because he's paying so much less than he thinks he should. In other words, paying only a fraction from what is normal FEELS wrong to him, even though it's completely within the bounds of the law. I see this as a very similar situation to that. Would you say that is right or wrong? Or hey, maybe neither?
 
Where did you get he was a salary worker? The article and his post don't ever say that. The only mention is that he gets full time pay, it never states a number reported to be working or if hourly or salary. That said, you admit that this is unethical which is the entire point of the question. So far I am the only person that says that it is unethical here. Everyone else has the standpoint that is if 100% ethical because fuck all employers and what he is doing is what everyone should do. Which is all that I have been arguing. This isn't a 100% perfectly acceptable in all cases with zero chance of anything bad happening. IF they find out depending on various things there could be serious legal action as a result.

As for the legality, that all depends on the state. Massachusetts considers it larceny with a minimum of 1 year in prison and a $300 fine. You can call it time sheet fraud, embezzlement, or just plan theft. You could be asked to just pay the money back, you could be slapped with a fine, or you could get jail time, just get probation. All depends on the state and their laws and if the employer wants to press charges as that can be viewed in some states as a felony crime.

He said he was getting a full time wage, not billing them for full time. Currently, I work hourly. I don't bill my company for 40 hours if I only put in 2 hours of work. If somebody is questioning whether it's unethical to tell their employer that they're not working full time because they've automated their job, it only makes sense that they're not hourly. Otherwise, the question would have been something along the lines of, "Hey, is it unethical for me to introduce bugs into a program I automated to pad my timesheet?" I mean, sure, it's possible he could be hourly, but that would mean he's leaving out key context in his question.

The question was also if it unethical for him (I assume it was a him) to tell his employer he's automated his job. Padding hours is unethical, and even if it isn't illegal (i.e. exempt salaried), I could easily understand a termination. Also, purposely introducing bugs is certainly unethical, and I could see that being as cause for termination. For the most part, almost everyone agreed that he should get rid of that aspect. It comes down to, is it unethical to withhold information from your company where you don't stand to benefit, only your company does.
 
True, it cuts both ways, but probably more often than not, it takes them less time than the book states.
Its the opposite.

Book times for repairs are wildly optimistic. They figure out the book times by having a trained team who specializes in that model get timed, after doing several dry runs for practice, doing the repair on a "fresh" vehicle.

The problem is mechanics in the wild have to fix all sorts of cars and can't develop that level of specialized knowledge. That and cars in the wild have rust on the bolts which freezes them in place and can take incredible amounts of time to fix. A single stuck bolt can take over an hour extra of whacking, heating, and turning on to get out. God forbid you break the head off the bolt...then you're in real deep shit and it'll take even longer to fix.

And you won't get paid any extra either. I know a lot of mechanics who effectively end up making hardly above min. wage because of this and the field in general is notorious for screwing over their shop workers since there is a never ending stream of people who "love cars" and think they can earn a living doing what they love.
 
He said he was getting a full time wage, not billing them for full time. Currently, I work hourly. I don't bill my company for 40 hours if I only put in 2 hours of work. If somebody is questioning whether it's unethical to tell their employer that they're not working full time because they've automated their job, it only makes sense that they're not hourly. Otherwise, the question would have been something along the lines of, "Hey, is it unethical for me to introduce bugs into a program I automated to pad my timesheet?" I mean, sure, it's possible he could be hourly, but that would mean he's leaving out key context in his question.

The question was also if it unethical for him (I assume it was a him) to tell his employer he's automated his job. Padding hours is unethical, and even if it isn't illegal (i.e. exempt salaried), I could easily understand a termination. Also, purposely introducing bugs is certainly unethical, and I could see that being as cause for termination. For the most part, almost everyone agreed that he should get rid of that aspect. It comes down to, is it unethical to withhold information from your company where you don't stand to benefit, only your company does.

But you are making vast assumptions there. Like others you are twisting everything to make this question have to be 100% ethical no matter what and are not willing to accept that with the missing information it could be unethical. You also are splitting hairs on what it means to pad a time sheet. Is there really much of a difference between you working 2 hours and writing in 40 vs you work 2 hours and your employer pays you a set amount assuming you are working 30 - 40? There is many missing pieces to all of this. I am perfectly willing to accept that his contract could very clearly state that is working from home and works a position where his work load might be different every week meaning that he is allowed to pad his timesheet with some hours to ensure he gets a set pay every week due to being available to work even if he isn't working. Just like a person in a call center still gets paid if they aren't answering phones at that point because they are at least signed in to be able to take a call. However that their was probably an implied number of hours that they expected him to be working. However I am also able to understand that what he is doing does have strong possibility to be unethical if only a few pieces of information happen to be true in one direction vs another. The argument that "well that can't be what he means as then it would be 100% unethical" isn't a very good argument as that isn't looking at the question from all sides. When you guys do look at it from all sides you realize that it could be unethical depending on how the rest of the information gets filled in. But then quickly decide that you don't like that this could be unethical so deicide that it is impossible that is the case and those can't even be possible options here.
 
But you are making vast assumptions there. Like others you are twisting everything to make this question have to be 100% ethical no matter what and are not willing to accept that with the missing information it could be unethical. You also are splitting hairs on what it means to pad a time sheet. Is there really much of a difference between you working 2 hours and writing in 40 vs you work 2 hours and your employer pays you a set amount assuming you are working 30 - 40? There is many missing pieces to all of this. I am perfectly willing to accept that his contract could very clearly state that is working from home and works a position where his work load might be different every week meaning that he is allowed to pad his timesheet with some hours to ensure he gets a set pay every week due to being available to work even if he isn't working. Just like a person in a call center still gets paid if they aren't answering phones at that point because they are at least signed in to be able to take a call. However that their was probably an implied number of hours that they expected him to be working. However I am also able to understand that what he is doing does have strong possibility to be unethical if only a few pieces of information happen to be true in one direction vs another. The argument that "well that can't be what he means as then it would be 100% unethical" isn't a very good argument as that isn't looking at the question from all sides. When you guys do look at it from all sides you realize that it could be unethical depending on how the rest of the information gets filled in. But then quickly decide that you don't like that this could be unethical so deicide that it is impossible that is the case and those can't even be possible options here.
There are obviously lines where it ceases to be ethical. I think what we're trying to pose to you is if this is in fact, legal, elaborate on why it's unethical.

As for looking at it from all sides, that's probably the last thing you want to do, because then you need to consider also if his workplace is ethical, if capitalism is ethical, if being lazy is ethical, etc.
 
I used to feel differently about what is ethical. Now, ethical means it benefits me and I can get away with it without it impacting me in any negative way.

Take what you can get when you can get it.
 
But you are making vast assumptions there. Like others you are twisting everything to make this question have to be 100% ethical no matter what and are not willing to accept that with the missing information it could be unethical. You also are splitting hairs on what it means to pad a time sheet. Is there really much of a difference between you working 2 hours and writing in 40 vs you work 2 hours and your employer pays you a set amount assuming you are working 30 - 40? There is many missing pieces to all of this. I am perfectly willing to accept that his contract could very clearly state that is working from home and works a position where his work load might be different every week meaning that he is allowed to pad his timesheet with some hours to ensure he gets a set pay every week due to being available to work even if he isn't working. Just like a person in a call center still gets paid if they aren't answering phones at that point because they are at least signed in to be able to take a call. However that their was probably an implied number of hours that they expected him to be working. However I am also able to understand that what he is doing does have strong possibility to be unethical if only a few pieces of information happen to be true in one direction vs another. The argument that "well that can't be what he means as then it would be 100% unethical" isn't a very good argument as that isn't looking at the question from all sides. When you guys do look at it from all sides you realize that it could be unethical depending on how the rest of the information gets filled in. But then quickly decide that you don't like that this could be unethical so deicide that it is impossible that is the case and those can't even be possible options here.

It's a matter of context. Yes, I'm making assumptions, but we all are. I interpret the person saying "I feel I'm being paid for more than I'm doing" (just paraphrasing here) to be salaried. From my perspective from the jobs I have had, salaried makes more sense. (I'm giving the poster the benefit of the doubt on this. From your stance on being unethical, you're dealing with a situation that's involved previous to the question being asked. Otherwise to me it's like "After I murdered 10 people, is it ethical to keep the money I looted off the bodies? I feel I should give it to charity instead.") I guess you could always create a flow chart of the whole thing, but as tetris42 stated, assuming things are perfectly legal, where does it become unethical?
 
Last edited:
Why feel bad? A CEO wouldn't hesitate for a second if he could automate 1000 jobs, fire 1000 people, and add their salaries to his paycheck.

Don't forget, the CEOs are in a competition, too: who has the hotter wife/husband, the bigger/fancier yacht, Hamptons vs Palm Beach vs Cannes/Nice/Monte Carlo, my Bentley to your antique Jag/Ferrari, Netjets vs private jet, nouveau riche country club vs old money club, Upper East Side vs Scarsdale vs Locust Valley/Old Westbury, and so on. :D

Anything below that level is "peon" status, and $40-$100k, a workable salary for most folks (depending on state) is just pennies on the table, when one CEO can brag to their rival that "I made $31.2 million last year, and you only made $31 million". That differential of $200k is only for bragging rights, and in the process, jobs are sacrificed for ego and cupidity.

Now here's the "Devil's advocate" bit: it's really difficult for anyone to resist that process, once placed in that position -- an increasing number of folks seem to have little understanding of the value of money; instead, regarding it as some sort of "quasi-magic" that, if you have enough "green", it can buy you anything you want, and woe betide anyone who gets between them and that magical green stuff ... just ask all those lottery winners who go bankrupt in 3 years or less. I'm not exactly fond of most CEOs as a group, but most of them do seem to understand that greenbacks aren't some kind of bottomless pit; it's why you don't see too many of them, on the whole, bankrupt. Their ethics and morals may be (easily) held up for questioning, but the point remains.
 
I worked for a company awhile back that pretty much just amounted to data entry. Much of what they did could be automated, but would still require some QA checks and possibly some manual edits. Still the automation would reduce the data entry portion considerably, it could have replaced hundreds of jobs. I brought this up with the company and asked if I could get paid overtime to create the program and then a bonus once it was done and transition to maintaining it. They basically told me no, but I could work on it for free after work and then hand it over to them. The only reason I came to them beforehand before just writing the program on my own was because they already screwed over two other people that had done much smaller projects. I basically told them to F off and then quit not long after. That place was a nightmare.

On the other hand, since then I have worked for a number of companies where I have automated tasks and the companies didn't care as long as the work was done. They basically said it didn't matter what I did with my time as long as I produced the results. Oddly enough it does still seem to matter that you show up to work at a certain time and work 8 hours, even if you don't have 8 hours of work to do...
 
I used to feel differently about what is ethical. Now, ethical means it benefits me and I can get away with it without it impacting me in any negative way.

Take what you can get when you can get it.
I think it's likely hard to argue what he is doing is ethical, but rather some of us are arguing against it being unethical. Not everything in life is a moral dilemma, a lot of things tend to be neutral.
 
It's a matter of context. Yes, I'm making assumptions, but we all are. I interpret the person saying "I feel I'm being paid for more than I'm doing" (just paraphrasing here) to be salaried. From my perspective from the jobs I have had, salaried makes more sense. (I'm giving the poster the benefit of the doubt on this. From your stance on being unethical, you're dealing with a situation that's involved previous to the question being asked. Otherwise to me it's like "After I murdered 10 people, is it ethical to keep the money I looted off the bodies? I feel I should give it to charity instead.") I guess you could always create a flow chart of the whole thing, but as tetris42 stated, assuming things are perfectly legal, where does it become unethical?

Even then you are assuming then that salary doesn't have to report hours worked. At my place of employment salaried people still have to work 40 hours. All being salaried means is that when you work over 40 hours they aren't paying you overtime. If you work under 40 hours a week they subtract hours from your paid time off. I know other places that are the same way, being salary doesn't mean that you no long account for hours worked, you just get paid a flat rate. Other places give you extra money for working over X number of hours past 40. While others don't care and just pay you a flat rate and don't care one way or another how many hours you work as long as you get X amount of work done a week.

So in order for this to be perfectly legal you have to have to fall into a very special category of being salary, while not having to account for hours, or be in a state where time sheet fraud isn't against the law and they don't consider it a felony theft case. If all of that is true and the hours worked part isn't unethical in anyone's eyes you then have to hope that whatever data he is screwing up on purpose isn't anything that important and isn't going to screw up other data down the road. As purposely corrupting data in a system is unethical especially if it was something important. Maybe he is screwing with how much people owe by adding a few dollars here or there. Maybe he is misspelling names or swapping addresses. Maybe he is "accidently" deleting customers from the database. We don't know to what degree adding errors to the data means as we don't know what he is pulling, what he is changing or what the data is being used for.
 
Back
Top