[HN Gopher] Ask HN: I automated part of someone else's job in my...
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Ask HN: I automated part of someone else's job in my free time -
how to proceed?
Hello HN I've been working at this company for some time in an
administrative role. As part of my job, we - and many others - work
with data which gets aggregated and refined by a centralized team
of specialists. This process is only partially automated and
therefore still quite heavy-handed. As I understand it, significant
time is spent on the manual part of it all. Out of curiosity I
started building this small project in my free time just to see if
I could automate it myself, since most of the data required is
available open source. There are still many rough edges but what I
have now is already superior to what we have at work. Now I'm
wondering about where to go from here - so far I haven't told
anyone. Strictly speaking, this is not part of my job and I am
"poaching" in someone else's area of expertise. I like my job and
don't want to make enemies. On the other hand, I would love to see
my solution put to use and maybe even enhance and/or expand it
jointly with IT. However, this is code I wrote in my free time and
I am rather unwilling to give it away without any benefit. Any
ideas?
Author : JGugtw
Score : 78 points
Date : 2022-08-20 14:49 UTC (8 hours ago)
| ss48 wrote:
| Only one word of caution. Your manager might ask why you were
| spending as much time as you were coming up with this solution
| instead of asking for more work. Most likely the answer is
| reasonable, but best to have an answer prepared before talking
| about it.
| jll29 wrote:
| Sadly some bosses would rather you spend more of your time to
| get your "day job" done more quickly.
| thr0wawayf00 wrote:
| Why not go to the person whose job you're trying to supplant and
| show them your POC? Approach from the angle of "this can free you
| up to do other things" and not "I'm trying to figure out how to
| replace people".
|
| As far as ownership of this project goes, you need to think
| carefully before making any sort of claim. Depending on the
| language of your employment agreement, the IP of this project
| likely belongs to the company because it's based on their
| systems. "I did it on my own time" probably isn't going to hold
| up in a lawsuit either. And companies tend to have a lot more
| money to spend on lawyers than individual contributors,
| especially in cases where significant aspects of their
| operational model is threatened.
| twblalock wrote:
| > Why not go to the person whose job you're trying to supplant
| and show them your POC? Approach from the angle of "this can
| free you up to do other things" and not "I'm trying to figure
| out how to replace people".
|
| No no no. Go to your manager first. Otherwise that other person
| might tell your manager, who will be very displeased about
| being blindsided.
|
| If you know your manager would react badly, even if they heard
| about this directly from you, then you already know what to do:
| keep this to yourself.
| dghughes wrote:
| It also clearly shows this is a very bad idea. Whether the
| code works or not.
|
| Nobody wants to lose their job especially these days.
|
| Yes OP will make an enemy even at the suggestion this code
| exists. Plus OP will be labeled by employees in the company
| as someone to not trust.
| scombridae wrote:
| _this can free you up to do other things_
|
| You've apparently never had a social interaction.
| politician wrote:
| Let's get real: you've built a toy prototype. The real business
| use case is more complicated as you've discovered because there
| is team and budget and process allocated to the current solution.
| Your solution is maybe 1/10th of the current solution: no team,
| no budget, no process, and a nice demo.
|
| Acknowledging that, you have a bunch of really bad options and
| few good options.
|
| The absolute safest thing you can do is to keep it to yourself,
| and to use it when you can to make your own job easier. If you're
| able to find time to use the tool to load your own data because
| the team that owns this process is overloaded, then they'll
| appreciate the relief, so long as your tool doesn't break or
| violate their standing policies.
|
| The best advice in this thread is going to your manager and
| asking for time to develop and demo an automation solution. No
| one wants to hear that you've already built it because that
| raises thorny political and management questions. The best you
| can hope for is a sanctioned meeting where you can demo the
| capability to your manager and the manager of the other team.
|
| If you're fortunate enough to get authorization to proceed, make
| sure to tell everyone that your solution only handles the common
| simple cases and that the tricky special cases still need manual
| review- an 80% solution. The achieves two goals: allowing you to
| get away with having bugs, and allowing the other team to believe
| that they are more specialized and, hence, more valuable now with
| your solution than before.
| CSDude wrote:
| Try to get an idea on why nobody else before it was not done, why
| you could do it, try to open up a conversation as if you did not
| implement anything. Every business is different.
| iExploder wrote:
| Quit, start your own company, come to your former boss with an
| offer for a service he can't refuse. Possibly approach other
| companies who could benefit from this...
| intelVISA wrote:
| Just make sure you can prove you developed it at home, not on
| ex-company time/hardware et cetera.
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| This is the option to go with if the thing they've built is a
| big enough deal to change business dynamics. No way of telling
| from the post, but something tells me OP isn't from that
| category. That sounds like a ballsy approach though.
| kotenshu wrote:
| To reiterate what others have already said about letting your
| manger decide how / whether to implement this, I have seen an
| employee be shown the door immediately over something as simple
| as optimising an excel spreadsheet. Tread carefully, dont present
| yourself as a hero.. Automation is a sombre subject and should be
| treated as such.
| sillystuff wrote:
| Be careful. There is a possibility the person who's job you are
| automating will not appreciate it.
|
| Someone I used to work with had what I would consider a tedious
| portion of her job automated away by an officially sanctioned
| project involving multiple people in multiple groups. She thought
| everyone was trying to get rid of her.
|
| I can't tell you how to communicate your intentions so they are
| not taken the wrong way, just that there is a reasonable
| likelihood that they will be.
|
| Sibling comments address other pitfalls.
| oofnik wrote:
| I think there is a genuine divide between people who view
| repititive tasks as an insufferable hell vs. those who either
| don't mind or even might enjoy the work.
|
| Most software engineers, for obvious reasons, fall into the
| category of the former. They will always be a minority of the
| general working population.
|
| The toiling majority generally does not take kindly to having
| been made redundant. Proceed with caution.
| jll29 wrote:
| > I automated part of someone else's job in my free time - how to
| proceed?
|
| Fist, a misconception, there is no such thing as "free" time
| (opportunity cost: whatever you do means you're not doing
| something else in that same time that might benefit you more).
|
| You likely used an hour in which you were not expected to work as
| work time (as others pointed out, check your employment
| contract's IP clause and the IP laws of your country).
|
| Write a memo that _proposes_ what you have already built and
| share it with your manager. If you receive positive feedback, ask
| would it be valuable if you went ahead and tried your luck, given
| that you had the idea (and stress that it won't impact your day
| job!). If you get permission, show the resulting demo, but only
| after a substantial piece of work of your main job has been
| completed. Don't give the impression you dropped everything just
| because you had an idea. Add the line to your CV/resume that you
| "Proactively conceived and implemented a system that automated a
| mechanical human process in another department on top of daily
| duties.", and it may or may not help you get a little bonus
| and/or promotion at the end of the year - ensure there are other
| good things you have done in the same year, in particular close
| to your daily duties).
| Test0129 wrote:
| > (as others pointed out, check your employment contract's IP
| clause and the IP laws of your country).
|
| This is the most critical part. Using the US for example, this
| software whether OP reveals or not belongs to the company (even
| in California). The reason is it uses the same data, the same
| processes, and likely even the same language. Therefore, it is
| "in the line company business" and most judges would rule in
| favor of the company despite it possibly being written on OPs
| own hardware.
|
| Best advice is to just delete it, or come up with a thoughtful
| way of bringing it up as this comment suggests. As it stands
| now it's likely that OP is in hot water legally otherwise. good
| middle ground is to take what you've written and draft it into
| a proposal, never mention the code you've written, and get paid
| to rewrite it better. Worst case you tell them, and then the
| company gets their IP lawyers involved and things get
| dramatically worse.
| bennysomething wrote:
| I'd stop overthinking this, some of the answers you are getting
| here are ridiculous.
|
| Show it to your manager.
|
| Your job is to add value, that's it. You can add value by
| automating this process. You did it outside of normal working
| hours, so what? I'd guess most people here work extra hours.
| Simon_O_Rourke wrote:
| Somewhat related to your predicament, a good friend of mine was
| working data entry in Verizon in the early 2010s, and automated
| his entire job with VBA.
|
| Never told anyone on his team, least of all his manager. Spent a
| year or so doing no more than 10 minutes work per day. Learned
| Python and after a year revealed all and left for a better job.
| Apparently there was chaos afterwards.
|
| So, either tell your direct manager and be up front about it, or
| say nothing and use the free time to do something useful.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| I don't understand why you would reveal that you automated your
| job after all that time. If the contract states that you get
| paid in hours rather than tasks per time period, you might end
| up losing a lawsuit.
|
| Just leave and say nothing. Don't give your code to someone
| else, don't give it to the company, just go. Even without the
| potential lawsuit, on the odd chance that your future employer
| ever calls up your previous employer to verify your
| credentials, the company won't describe you as a lying hack.
| kodah wrote:
| > on the odd chance that your future employer ever calls up
| your previous employer to verify your credentials, the
| company won't describe you as a lying hack.
|
| This is a common perception but I don't think actually
| happens that much. A company be sued for what they say about
| you, so most will just provide your start and end date,
| employee type, and the type of termination.
| resoluteteeth wrote:
| > I don't understand why you would reveal that you automated
| your job after all that time. If the contract states that you
| get paid in hours rather than tasks per time period, you
| might end up losing a lawsuit.
|
| > Just leave and say nothing. Don't give your code to someone
| else, don't give it to the company, just go. Even without the
| potential lawsuit, on the odd chance that your future
| employer ever calls up your previous employer to verify your
| credentials, the company won't describe you as a lying hack.
|
| This. It makes zero sense to tell them "I automated my job
| and was doing 10 minutes of work a day for a year." There is
| only risk and no benefit for you, you're pointlessly
| antagonizing people, and you might be harming your former
| coworkers or causing other problems by doing this.
|
| Maybe if you really like the company and it wouldn't cause
| problems there could be a situation where you could pass on
| the software in case it was useful, sure, but not in an
| extremely unprofessional way where you're smugly rubbing
| their face in the fact that they were paying you to sit
| around and not do anything for a year.
| duxup wrote:
| I'm inclined to agree. If I'm a data entry drone and the
| company can't / doesn't want to automate the job then they
| made their bed.
|
| I also suspect the person who did this is doing a fair amount
| of spot checking to avoid being caught, more than the company
| might do.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > Just leave and say nothing
|
| Or stay and say nothing? Why prematurely kill the golden
| goose?
| antisthenes wrote:
| Data entry jobs have a pretty hard cap on how much you can
| get paid. Besides no one wants to see a person's resume say
| "data entry" for 10 years.
|
| That would be shooting your own prospects in the foot.
| jddil wrote:
| No idea if this is you but the number of times I've seen an over
| eager employee (usually more junior but not always) think they've
| stumbled upon a great solution to a problem but really they were
| just missing some details is very high ... we are a very
| overconfident bunch.
|
| > As I understand it, significant time is spent on the manual
| part of it all.
|
| Get more details about the problem space before doing anything
| else.
| peterkelly wrote:
| Most of the IT industry is about automating tasks that would
| otherwise have to be done manually. Many of us here, myself
| included, are employed to do precisely this kind of thing on a
| full-time basis.
|
| If you've come up with a way to make your employer's business
| processes more efficient, that's a good thing. You should share
| your work with the relevant people, talk about it with your
| manager and the people who are doing the work manually, and see
| where things go from there.
|
| What will the reaction be? I don't know. In a healthy company
| with sensible people, they'll appreciate your initiative, and if
| they feel it's something that will help them they may adopt it
| (if they agree with your assessment of its value and usefulness).
| If the company you work for has a toxic culture where everyone
| only cares about their own short-term interests, it could
| backfire in some of the ways other commenters have suggested. I
| don't know how to deal with the latter case other than to just
| plow ahead anyway.
|
| Think about this as one instance in a long term pattern of work
| philosophy, not as a once-off thing. If, throughout your career,
| you consistently look out for ways to improve things for the
| organisation you work for, including but not limited to
| automating manual tasks (and importantly, if you do so in a
| relevant and actually helpful way), you'll develop a reputation
| as someone is valuable and may be worth promoting or hiring to
| better positions where you can participate in or oversee IT
| projects.
|
| In this specific instance being discussed here, the outcome might
| or might not be a good one, but as a general approach to your
| career I think yours is a good approach to take and will serve
| you well. But do communicate as much as possible with colleagues
| as soon as you have a proof of concept, since you need to
| validate it from an organisational as well as a technical
| perspective.
| nerbert wrote:
| > If you've come up with a way to make your employer's business
| processes more efficient, that's a good thing.
|
| Reading your comment, common sense woud agree with you. But it
| feels like you're reversing things. IF (and only if) OP's
| company promotes a healthy culture, that initiative IS actually
| positive (because OP doesn't have to worry too much about the
| outcome, they know they'll be rewarded and well received by
| other employees). If the culture is toxis / incompetent, there
| is very little benefit to that: OP would face the backlash of
| other employees, wouldn't be rewarded by their bosses, and
| other employees might face negative consequences for OP's
| initiatives.
|
| There ARE definitely cases and culture where optimization isn't
| a desirable trait.
| baron816 wrote:
| This sounds almost exactly what happened to me and got me
| inspired to move into tech. I was working at an economic data
| company that had a bunch of grunts uploading publicly available
| data into our databases so our users could use it with our
| software. I figured out how to automate and simplify the some of
| the steps of the update process and shared it around with
| coworkers. I didn't get rewarded for it at all, then quit to do a
| coding bootcamp.
|
| My advice: if the coding part is what you enjoy, pursue that. Go
| become a software engineer.
| dirtybirdnj wrote:
| No good deed goes unpunished.
|
| Even if your idea is good, logical and beneficial someone in
| management will take it as a slight that you had a good idea they
| didn't. Maybe you will have receptive management who are decent
| human beings, but in my experience you will be lynched for daring
| to step outside your lane.
|
| Proceed with extreme caution. Your good feeling vibes about the
| effort you put in will NEVER be received the way you want.
| Management will see this as a slight and a threat.
| qaid wrote:
| I had a similar situation at my previous company. After rewriting
| a web app for another team, I started E2E testing and questioned
| the entire app's existence and whether the business process could
| be automated.
|
| After verifying in the server logs that the users never really
| validated data (always clicking "submit" after a second or two),
| I discussed this idea with our business analyst and got the go-
| ahead, and spent another couple of weeks to automate everything.
|
| Long story short, it was a mess. There was actually one piece of
| the puzzle that they owned that I couldn't automate away
| (essentially clicking a button). So when presenting it all to
| them (via email), the team lied and told us it "wasn't working"
| and CC'd our managers and one level up the chain as well. This
| manual business process stayed with them. They kept the web app
| tho.
|
| My advice is to make sure this kind of thing is known to
| management, and to make sure you can prove to them that this
| entire process can be automated without problems. Or let it go if
| you don't think you can handle the backlash.
| howon92 wrote:
| If I were you, I'd find the other similar companies to your
| workplace and show them your solution. I'd try it with 100
| companies and see if any of them find it useful.
| registeredcorn wrote:
| I see some good suggestions in here. Here's something else to
| consider:
|
| Imagine the person who's job you've automated decides to quit.
|
| "Hey boss, instead of taking the time and money to replace so-
| and-so, how about you just increase my pay by (percentage) of
| what the salary would be? I have a solution to this staffing
| issue you might be interested in."
| treeman79 wrote:
| Very Early in my career by bosses job was 90% running reports for
| others. A solid 7 hours of work each day. She spent 2 weeks
| teaching me how to build the reports then went on vacation.
|
| When she got back the reports were a 5 minute job.
|
| She proceed to use her now mostly empty day to have teach her to
| program. Then started taking on more responsibility in the
| company.
|
| I got a 25% raise.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| Don't show it to anyone. There's a lot of likely outcomes, most
| of which aren't good.
| fatherzine wrote:
| Discreetly donate your project to the person you are automating
| out of a job, and never talk about it again. Let them figure out
| how to handle the situation.
| UmYeahNo wrote:
| You've discovered the strategy of: Come up with a way to get
| people laid off so you can monetize a portion of their salaries
| for yourself.
|
| The cynical me says they weren't smart enough to automate away
| their own work (so they could be assigned more, different work),
| so eff 'em, right? That is, until someone else automates away
| your job.
|
| The business me says, you found and fixed an inefficiency, so
| capitalize on it. While you're at it why not add in extra shadow
| surveillance "features", and you've got yourself a unicorn. Get
| that VC money!
|
| The "boss" me says, uhh... you did this work on "your own time"
| (as if there is such a thing) _but_ with proprietary knowledge of
| my systems, "open source data" notwithstanding. So, yeahhh that
| work belongs to me, and I'll monetize it for myself thank you
| very much. That work product is not yours. Get the eff back to
| work already.
|
| The "Overemployed" me says, hey, with this automation, maybe I
| can "work" two jobs simultaneously and pull double salary for no
| net increase in work. Get that easy money! At least until my
| employers discover the ruse and they both fire me!
| mattnewton wrote:
| > The cynical me says they weren't smart enough to automate
| away their own work (so they could be assigned more, different
| work), so eff 'em, right? That is, until someone else automates
| away your job.
|
| Sort of besides the point but I wish someone _would_ automate
| my job so I can find even more interesting things to work on;
| I'm trying and I haven't figured out how to yet. Yes, this is
| obviously only a position someone can feel if they are blessed
| with either lots of ability or economic security, but could we
| change that?
|
| I know the problem is the resulting economic hit and not the
| having of a job or not, and I wish we had more of a safety net
| and support for people shuffling to better economic activities
| rather than being stuck in a local maxima with potentially
| disastrous switching costs. Things like UBI, public option
| healthcare, free state sponsored college degrees, and
| government sponsored vocational training have a decent record,
| and I wonder how we can scale them up past things like the GI
| bill.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > but I wish someone _would_ automate my job so I can find
| even more interesting things to work on
|
| What makes you think you would work on "more interesting
| things" as opposed to "nothing". That is, why would your
| employer keep you on as opposed to firing you.
| solarkraft wrote:
| In theory, they _could_ work on nothing, with over all
| productivity staying the same.
|
| In theory, looking at a complete society's productivity,
| unemployment is a great thing, because it means little work
| is needed to sustain a specific level of wealth.
|
| The problem is only one of distribution.
| mattnewton wrote:
| They might fire me yes and I would find another job (or try
| my hand at consulting or making my own business).
|
| But, to me, that would've been preferable to doing busy
| make-work, or worse lobbying to keep the inefficiencies
| that provide me the busywork I use to justify a salary.
| Once something becomes automate-able, I think it should be.
| I have never seen software people at the big co FAANG
| companies I've worked at get let go because their core job
| was automated, only reassigned out of dead end roles that
| never would have gotten them promoted. I understand this
| position is only possible to hold alongside all those
| privileges.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > They might fire me yes and I would find another job (or
| try my hand at consulting or making my own business).
|
| > But, to me, that would've been preferable to doing busy
| make-work
|
| Good news. You can totally stop doing busy make-work and
| find another job, start consulting or start a business
| right now! You don't have to wait to be fired.
|
| Yes, if you work at a large software shop, they may
| reassign you. Or maybe not. Apparently even FAANG is
| trimming workforce.
| mattnewton wrote:
| This misses the point that things become busywork because
| there are better alternatives. There is a difference
| between weaving a pattern by hand now vs hand weaving
| before the invention of the loom. My work isn't busywork
| _yet_ because I don't know of a way to automate it.
|
| As an aside about large software shops reassigning, I've
| found at large software shops a big part of the role is
| making up meaningful work for yourself that helps the
| firm, and that's a large part of what is actually
| rewarded (as opposed to fixing bugs or maintenance). I
| think a lot of people fall into the career trap of
| needing their immediate manager to narrowly define what
| is useful exactly. Usually when you are made redundant
| nobody reassigns you directly they just kinda ask you to
| figure it out and give you a couple weeks to a month to
| talk to teams with headcount and pick one with a problem
| area you think you can make progress on.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| But why do you not see or feel that if you're capable of
| doing more interesting work than your current role that
| you don't need wait for automation to make you redundant
| to switch roles.
| mattnewton wrote:
| Because my work isn't fully automate-able yet; if I
| became aware of a method to do so I would do it.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| I genuinely believe we can make a world where no one is
| required to work for survival. We could intentionally
| automate as much as possible while also ensuring that
| automation is collectively owned. Then we could all collect
| dividends on our system with ample time off for "what we
| will" as the activists fighting for the 8 hour work day used
| to say.
|
| I believe strongly that the current economic system is
| effective primarily at concentrating wealth at the top and
| using the general population as a pool of cheap desperate
| labor. I believe we can actually generate more wealth if we
| abandon intellectual property and develop technologies
| specifically to free people from toil in an open, community-
| oriented way. Of course this will be a fight because those
| who hold the reins of power today have no interest in
| diluting their power.
|
| "But automation is expensive" - well engineering development
| is expensive. Which is why I think we should spread the costs
| out as much as possible - make everything open source, so
| none of the work is repeated, and anyone in the world hungry
| to get in on the action can contribute, instead of secretive
| siloed orgs spending a hundred million on some secret sauce
| for one single application, without sharing the benefit of
| that work for all the adjacent applications. Instead smaller
| investments distributed throughout the world will lead to
| large scale innovation of the crowd, the way we saw 3D
| printer development explode AFTER the patents expired.
| Because 1000 people working on an idea get way more done that
| one well funded organization in many cases. This is exactly
| the kind of innovation that patents extinguish, and worldwide
| agreements ensure patents have widespread enforcement.
|
| We all need the same basic necessities, so there is so much
| overlap, that these systems built by the crowd could rapidly
| mature.
|
| Eventually we could envision a system that can function with
| just 10% workforce participation, as people basically
| volunteer for maintenance and development. Before then we
| need to educate as many people as possible on engineering,
| robotics, and computer science.
|
| But the end goal of a world where a highly automated "means
| of production" is held in community ownership is I think very
| important. Working in a world of privately held companies
| with closed source engineering leads to VERY different
| engineering requirements, and fails to realize benefits of
| community based engineering development. There are people all
| over the world that need what you are developing, and some of
| them have the time and energy to make it their own and
| contribute their own spin. But only if we make that
| community.
|
| I have tried to discuss these concepts on my youtube channel
| in this latest video, though it was unscripted and I'd like
| to produce a clearer scripted version in the future:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sx_2-xwWJUk
|
| EDIT: For additional motivation, I highly recommend this talk
| by Jenny Odell called "How To Do Nothing". I feel so strongly
| that we are wasting ourselves away at jobs that could be
| automated away, and this talk really captures some of what
| the alternatives could be for the human psyche:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izjlP9qtmBU
| capitalsigma wrote:
| How do we allocate resources without prices? How do we
| assign prices without profits and losses?
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| It's a good question. I don't really propose we eliminate
| markets. But I think we can insulate individuals from
| prices by letting small cooperatives worry about that
| where individual cooperative members can just follow co-
| op rules.
|
| For another example, see this real world practical
| example in India where a single facility gives out
| 50,000-100,000 free meals every day. There is a real
| economics to this, and it's something I want to study. I
| presume they have a multitude of funding sources
| including donations of money and product, probably some
| government support for the free meals they send to
| schools, and volunteer labor. But they have an
| organization which across India gives out over 1.2
| million free meals a day. It's well worth studying how
| they make that work, but they certainly do make it work.
|
| https://youtu.be/qdoJroKUwu0
|
| But imagine you are part of a co-op that owns an
| automated farm. How do y'all determine who gets what?
| Well that's up to the members to decide. But I think it's
| an eminently solvable problem. On a larger scale
| different co-ops might trade using money, or might have
| sharing agreements between co-ops. Again, it's up to the
| members.
|
| And then for things that are reusable, libraries are a
| great source of inspiration. I think there's a great
| number of possibilities for how to share wealth without
| the exchange of money, and in other cases money can be
| handled at the organizational level.
| vincnetas wrote:
| Don't forget to automate defence (yah that one, military),
| and how to prevent any interested party in controlling that
| automated defence system.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| I think Americans over estimate how much investment in
| defense is needed. Massive defense spending is needed
| when you're abusing the rest of the world. Less so if
| you're not.
| capitalsigma wrote:
| Ukraine seems to be happy with the military aid the US is
| supplying
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| I guess I should note that I never said anything about
| abolishing the existing state. But for us regular people
| I think there are better models for an economy. And we
| can form cooperatives and do things however we want. I
| just happen to believe it would be better for pretty much
| everyone to abandon things like patents and private
| wealth accumulation in favor of cooperative economic
| models.
| fatherzine wrote:
| "no one is required to work for survival"
|
| Sadly, this automates away the #1 source of meaning in
| one's life. "I made it this far, in spite of all the
| adversity" is what most decent adults lean into to motivate
| themselves out of their beds in the morning.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Family? Friendship? Education, community, creative
| pursuit, experimentation, travel?
|
| I really don't think that compulsory labor is the best
| way for people to find meaning. We're not going to sit
| around on the couch forever feeling so miserable that we
| can't go out and do anything. We'd be so free to explore
| what we want! Sure, people raised in a society that
| worships labor would feel unsure of their footing for a
| while, but I don't think that's a deep part of the human
| condition. People absolutely would still work. Imagine
| creating a theater production. All the work on planning,
| set design and construction, etc. None of that may pay a
| living but it's still meaningful work that most people
| can't spend time doing today. In a world without
| compulsory labor more meaningful work will be found.
| fatherzine wrote:
| All these are important, /because/ life is survival.
| Remove the /because/, and the secondary characteristics
| will fade away. One can just do whatevs, it doesn't make
| a difference anyways.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Is that true? People wealthy enough to ensure their
| lifetime survival don't seem miserable.
| fatherzine wrote:
| Ha! If only rich heirs wasting their lives on drugs &
| hookers weren't such a pervasive stereotype.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| It does seem hard to live in a work-centric world when
| you as an individual don't have to work. But I wonder a)
| how true this stereotype is and b) what it would be like
| it no one had to work. There would be more community
| oriented resources for finding meaning. Wealthy
| individuals in a work centric world don't have that.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| How do you know the stereotype is correct? And poor
| people wasting their lives on drugs is another pervasive
| stereotype.
| paulcole wrote:
| What do you mean by "decent"?
|
| In the US at least, we're going to get a point in the
| next few generations where it's going to get harder and
| harder for many to find meaning in life. Increased
| automation, increased climate change, decreased financial
| security for people who expected to be secure.
|
| It's going to be rough.
| fatherzine wrote:
| This is a great insight. Once "work is no longer required
| for survival", people are going to soon discover that
| "work is not longer sufficient for survival" either.
|
| "Decent" as in: we believe that character, including work
| ethic, can make or break a life.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Collective ownership of automation means everyone sees
| the benefits from automation. Decent means a life better
| than that for 90% of Americans today (but available to
| anyone worldwide). But "better" is subjective and I'm
| talking about good healthy food, a clean safe home, good
| clothes, transportation, and a wealth of free time to
| spend with others.
|
| And people can still work for more if they want. I just
| don't think that makes sense as a focus for everyone,
| because it devolves in to what we have today, which is a
| mess for most people.
|
| But ultimately what is decent is up to everyone. I just
| think open community innovation is a better way to manage
| progress than what we have today, and would benefit
| everyone more than what we have now.
|
| We aren't exactly meeting everyone's needs to the maximum
| we could today.
|
| EDIT: I just think open community innovation is more
| likely to produce what more people want and need. I think
| it will actually produce more innovation than the current
| system. Remember that the sole function of a patent is to
| prevent innovation on top of existing ideas by third
| parties.
| scombridae wrote:
| _Our species should always prefer more to less interesting
| work_
|
| Look around, your eminence. Most of our species prefer not
| working at all, and if we must, prefer expending the least
| mental effort.
| mattnewton wrote:
| Sure, I get it, it's naive and idealistic. However, as a
| counterpoint I have seen repeatedly that people actually go
| a bit nuts without interesting work or hardship. I think
| that's why puzzles, video games and dramatic television
| shows are so popular.
|
| The problem is that we want work that is accessible, and
| interesting. It should be right near the edge but firmly
| within our abilities to be satisfying and meaningful, and
| we have problems when it deviates from that significantly.
|
| It's possible that for wide swaths of people that edge
| won't keep up with the edge of what is not automate-able,
| but I think a) accepting that someone people will have to
| be supported out of work and b) others can have their
| personal ability edge pushed further with vocational
| training is both good for those individuals and good for
| society.
| scombridae wrote:
| _The problem is that we want work that is accessible, and
| interesting_
|
| In the words of Chris Farley, "sounds like a personal
| problem."
| egypturnash wrote:
| Cynical _me_ says maybe some of them _were_ smart enough to
| automate away their own work and are slacking off like crazy.
| Presenting your automation solution to the bosses is marking
| you as a class enemy because now they will be expected to do a
| lot more for the same pay.
| dasil003 wrote:
| This is fantastic description of incentives and why technology
| is neither good nor bad, but provides leverage that can be used
| in dystopian ways when different forms of power grow unchecked.
| [deleted]
| dgfitz wrote:
| The cynic in ME says: establish an LLC, find a front man/woman
| to sell it back to your current company, and rake.
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| Ignoring whether it's a good idea, this is not trivial these
| days - both parties need to really trust each other given the
| number of ways things can go wrong.
| dgfitz wrote:
| Agreed, but you can say that about 2 cars passing each
| other at a 4-way stop.
|
| Sometimes you just need to take a calculated risk and see
| where it goes.
| brippalcharrid wrote:
| Build a generalized SaaS product that doesn't rely on proprietary
| information, make it polished enough that there's a chance the
| organization will start using it, then arrange for decision-
| makers in your the org to find out about it without exposing
| yourself.
|
| Otherwise your boss might get some minimal level of credit for
| this, but you're not going to get anything out of it, and there
| is every chance of it backfiring spectacularly for you if that
| would provide an easy way for the organization to more
| efficiently absorb 100% of your work product (or if it would
| limit embarrassment for well-connected managers).
| Tarsul wrote:
| whomever you tell (I like the idea of telling your direct
| manager), consider the option of only telling the following: "Hey
| boss, I have an idea how to automate this task of my colleagues
| and I am quite sure I could do it. However, since I already have
| a job for 100% of my time, I could arrange to do it in my free
| time for a bonus etc. etc."
|
| What I've learned with automating my own tasks (I am in an
| administrative role myself), is that there's usually not much of
| an advantage in telling it. Which is why nowadays I don't tell
| anyone and just use the added free time however I want. (well,
| part of the reason is that I don't like my team enough to share
| it with them, as harsh as it sounds. I liked sharing with my
| prior team because there I knew that everyone was doing their
| part...) The incentives usually are not set up well for
| automating your own (or your colleagues') tasks. Would probably
| be different if you were in a manager role, though.
| rodbod wrote:
| Decades ago I was temping at data entry and very quickly figured
| out how to streamline/script much of the process. It didn't occur
| to me that I should keep this eldritch knowledge to myself, so I
| showed (permanent, salaried) colleagues what I was doing. A week
| later I was out of a job. Pretty dumb, huh?
|
| I don't think this would happen to you, but you might lose some
| other folks their job. Something for you to consider.
| throwaway5959 wrote:
| Did they at least give you some kind of severance?
| analog31 wrote:
| Ask for permission to take a programming course, with the
| intention of automating some of the processes of the business.
| This gets you a credential and credit for the work, plus it's on
| the up and up.
| YTheLastCombo wrote:
| I'd suggest exploratory convos with the people who own this part
| of the process - like you're curious and want to learn more. Find
| out how many hours that part takes them on a weekly basis.
| Whatever your automation reduces that to is the value of it. Find
| out why they haven't automated it before now. What would the
| people doing this manually be utilized to do if they weren't busy
| with this? You may figure out that there are things your
| automation needs to account for that you weren't aware of. When
| you've gotten more information, you could approach your manager
| with a proposal about what you are willing to do in your spare
| time for an agreed upon bonus and / or promotion - as if you
| haven't done anything yet and of course, sell them on your
| ability to do this and why it should be you. You'd probably also
| want to understand if they'd lay off the people involved or just
| give them different work to do (don't expect them to be honest
| though). If they're interested and willing to pay you for it,
| great, go off and "finish it" and bring it back to them and
| implement it / integrate it. If they're not willing to pay you
| for it, it's not your problem to solve and you've learned a new
| skill - just maintain with them you've not built anything. The
| only way you should give this away for free is if you're
| confident it's going to put you on a better career track with
| that company (promotion, pay raise, etc). Great initiative - but
| it's worth money and they should compensate you for it - because
| they will compensate themselves by either cutting costs through
| reducing their headcount, or increasing the output of their
| operations to make more money.
| late2part wrote:
| Here's what I would do:
|
| "Hey Boss, could I get a $50k bonus and a promotion with 20%
| raise if I automated 30 hours of work per week that someone else
| does?"
|
| If Yes - get it in writing and say "Here it is!"
|
| If Not - do nothing.
| albert_e wrote:
| I might test waters saying ...do you think it is worth exploring
| if automation is possible in this area? Maybe that will allow
| them to focus on more human intelligence and analytics tasks?
|
| If they are receptive ... I am happy to look around for any
| possible solutions that might help you. Will let you know if I
| find anything that might interest you.
|
| If my boss / other team sound comfortable I might share snippets
| or demo a possible solution a week later.
|
| Otherwise if the response is not encouraging I will keep it to
| myself.
| iammjm wrote:
| Try to get it implemented. I doubt someone would miss this
| repeatable part of their job that much... usually there are more
| problems to solve than people to solve them, so freeing up this
| person's time will likely just have him pick something else, and
| not making him redundant.
| mouzogu wrote:
| ah the sweet naivete of a junior developer
|
| not every problem is your problem.
| alexashka wrote:
| Imagine having an obese friend and deciding you're going to
| research obesity, weight loss, etc. How do you expect him/her to
| react to your 'helpful' advice?
|
| With obesity, you'd only be hurting feelings. With work, you'd be
| threatening someone's ability to earn a living.
|
| The fact that you're asking this on the internet, instead of a
| chat with a friend, sibling, parent or mate, means your social
| situation is not what you'd like it to be. It'd be a very good
| idea to address that, as soon as possible.
| TomasD wrote:
| Get a hobby
| booleandilemma wrote:
| The next thing you should do is watch this scene from HBO's "The
| Wire" and think about what it means for you:
|
| https://youtu.be/xyg_v7Vxo4A
| scombridae wrote:
| You're an admin. No one's going to take a second look at your
| toe-stepping pet project.
| JaceLightning wrote:
| The company probably owns the code as it's related to your
| company, even if you did it in your free time.
| turtlebits wrote:
| A lot of engineers have the mentality that "I've built something
| the company needs" and is "better than what we have". None of
| that is valid until you discuss it and get feedback.
|
| IME, 4 out of 5 times it's complete wrong, feelings will get
| hurt. Engage your manager if you feel comfortable, but I would
| scale back the ambition/expectations and start from there.
| namank wrote:
| Find out if there is interest from a competitor. If yes, get an
| LOI and find another competitor. Once you have 3-5 LOIs and maybe
| even a deposit, quit and start a company.
| twblalock wrote:
| The first person who needs to know, and approve, is your manager.
| Don't blindside them. Managers do not like that, and your manager
| is definitely going to find out if anyone else does.
|
| After you tell your manager, you won't be in control of what
| happens next. Consider whether or not you should just keep this
| to yourself and treat this as a fun learning experience. Perhaps
| you can gauge their potential reaction by asking, hypothetically,
| whether or not they think working on automation might be a good
| idea.
|
| I've done something like this before, but with the knowledge of
| the other people on the team, because we didn't like the manual
| work we were doing and felt that it was taking time away from
| other things we needed to do. Hopefully that is the case for your
| colleagues, or this will not be well received.
| bityard wrote:
| So far, this is the only sensible answer I've read here. This
| is the kind of thing you bring to your manager and let them
| decide whether it's worth pursuing further.
|
| If you frame it as, "hey, I did this thing that I think might
| solve a problem and here's a demo," it might work out, or it
| might not. You could get a promotion out of it, or maybe not.
| If it's a good idea and the company doesn't want to do it, or
| doesn't recognize you for it, then you don't want to work there
| in the long term anyway.
|
| Some of the comments are basically advising not to rock the
| boat. Anyone in 2022 who thinks their current computer-related
| job will not become automated or obsolete at some point in the
| near or distant future is living in a dream world. Nobody is
| entitled to a job doing tedious work.
| meetingthrower wrote:
| Couching it as a "demo" is such a good suggestion! It implies
| you haven't wasted _too_ much time on it, demonstrates that
| you are trying to creatively problem solve for the good of
| the company, and brings your manager in the loop to help
| promote it or head off any political faux pas. Do THIS!
|
| (Quick edit: trying hard to leverage this to get any special
| credit or $$ or other goodness out of it is a non-starter.
| You did this with company data probably on company time with
| company tooling. It's for them - and that's ok! You are
| demonstrating that you are there for the good of the team on
| this one. Many points awarded.)
| hamburglar wrote:
| Your approach also depends on whether the person whose job you
| are automating has (or can take on) other duties they can do.
| If you can present this as "this frees up more of Fred's time
| to work on x, y, and z," this goes down a lot better.
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| As for the property, check your contract, your employer may own
| anything you do in your free time already. And also check with an
| attorney in your state, such contractual obligations may be
| invalid by local laws.
|
| As for yourself, you have an important decision to make. Are you
| a wolf or a sheep?
| saimiam wrote:
| what do "wolf" and "sheep" mean in this context? Genuine
| question.
| lgas wrote:
| Predator or prey.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| He's implying that a wolf would sacrifice his fellow workers
| job to advance for themselves, while a sheep would stay with
| his flock of fellow coworkers and not release the project.
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| Almost. I'm implying a wolf would feed on their fellow
| workers to advance themselves and the other wolves.
| 8note wrote:
| Don't wolves work in packs to succeed?
|
| Since when do wolves kill all their pck members so they can
| hunt alone?
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| It's the "lone wolf" alpha male type ideal, it's not a
| thing in wolves in real life.
| linuxftw wrote:
| There's lots of useless replies in here so far, and some half-
| baked ones. First, determine whether you have an intellectual
| property assignment for this idea. This could be determined by
| local laws, a contract you signed, and the manner in which the
| idea was created an implemented.
|
| Many companies and jurisdictions don't have an explicit
| intellectual property assignment. Let's assume that's the case.
| Let's also assume that you came up with the idea outside of
| working hours, and utilized your own software, equipment,
| internet connection, etc to build this thing.
|
| Next, consider whether or not this invention of yours is
| applicable to others in the same industry, or different
| industries that need to accomplish a similar task. If that's the
| case, then you might have something valuable.
|
| If you have something valuable, you might want to look into
| filing a patent. When you file the patent, and if it gets
| approved (can take years), you now have exclusive rights to the
| invention. Patents in software are more how the 'process' than
| the actual code itself. EG: "use computer software to take values
| from data source X, do something useful here, output results to
| Y."
|
| You should consult with a patent attorney if you think it's
| really valuable. You'll need to perform some research to
| determine if the invention is already patented.
|
| Now, once you've applied for the patent, and you believe that you
| don't have an intellectual property assignment favoring your
| employer for it, would be the time to offer to demonstrate the
| software. The software should not be present on company machines,
| etc. You probably want to work out the exact steps with your
| patent attorney on the protocol here.
|
| Even though it make take years to be awarded the patent, if the
| patent is found valid, then you'll have coverage from the time of
| filing, at least in the US. This means if the company steals your
| idea and implements it themselves, they've stolen your patent,
| and would be liable for damages. What I think the best outcome is
| you agree to license the product to the company for $X/yr.
|
| Now, all that's a heavy handed approach and might lead to
| litigation, so consider your best options carefully.
|
| If you decide the above is too much, or the invention is not that
| valuable, or you think it's not worth the trouble, I would bring
| it up to management that you have an idea to solve the problem,
| but don't mention you have the solution. Negotiate a bonus,
| promotion, or raise for the implementation. Unfortunately for
| you, they can just decide to make you work on it during the
| course of your normal day, and you'll get nothing.
| lurn_mor wrote:
| https://gizmodo.com/so-you-automated-your-coworkers-out-of-a...
| arcbyte wrote:
| Charge 80% of what the other company is charging and negotiate as
| a contractor to do the work instead, leaving your job as an
| enployee. Don't disclose that you've done it "already". All
| you've done is built a proof of concept. When you win the
| contract, rebuild it clean room style from memory and reap
| profits.
| sizzle wrote:
| Sell it as Saas solution
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