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from the auto-programmatic-asphyxiation dept.
The Coders Programming Themselves Out of a Job
In 2016, an anonymous confession appeared on Reddit: "From around six years ago up until now, I have done nothing at work." As far as office confessions go, that might seem pretty tepid. But this coder, posting as FiletOFish1066, said he worked for a well-known tech company, and he really meant nothing. He wrote that within eight months of arriving on the quality assurance job, he had fully automated his entire workload. "I am not joking. For 40 hours each week, I go to work, play League of Legends in my office, browse Reddit, and do whatever I feel like. In the past six years, I have maybe done 50 hours of real work." When his bosses realized that he'd worked less in half a decade than most Silicon Valley programmers do in a week, they fired him. The tale quickly went viral in tech corners of the web, ultimately prompting its protagonist to delete not just the post, but his entire account.
About a year later, someone calling himself or herself Etherable posted a query to Workplace on Stack Exchange, one of the web's most important forums for programmers: "Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I've automated my job?" The conflicted coder described accepting a programming gig that had turned out to be "glorified data entry"—and, six months ago, writing scripts that put the entire job on autopilot. After that, "what used to take the last guy like a month, now takes maybe 10 minutes." The job was full-time, with benefits, and allowed Etherable to work from home. The program produced near-perfect results; for all management knew, their employee simply did flawless work.
The post proved unusually divisive, and comments flooded in. (It's now been viewed nearly half a million times.) Reactions split between those who felt Etherable was cheating, or at least deceiving, the employer, and those who thought the coder had simply found a clever way to perform the job at hand. Etherable never responded to the ensuing discussion. Perhaps spooked by the attention—media outlets around the world picked up the story—the user vanished, leaving that sole contribution to an increasingly crucial conversation about who gets to automate work, and on what terms.
Call it self-automation, or auto-automation. At a moment when the specter of mass automation haunts workers, rogue programmers demonstrate how the threat can become a godsend when taken into coders' hands, with or without their employers' knowledge. Since both FiletOFish1066 and Etherable posted anonymously and promptly disappeared, neither were able to be reached for comment. But their stories show that workplace automation can come in many forms and be led by people other than executives.
Career suicide: The most important job for programmers.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 03 2018, @05:54AM (5 children)
At an ex employer who shall remain nameless to protect the fucking stupid, I paid for & installed an automation software suite to help me do my job.
(I was the PFY to my IT BOFH, but even the BOFH was only one rung on the corporate ladder than me the newbie.)
Boss never noticed that I was running the software, merely that I was even more productive & gave me official Atta Boy's in recognition of my hard work.
Fast forward to when they decided to fire me.
I explained that my station had software that was *mine* & needed to be uninstalled.
I offered to stand aside & just point to the program that needed to be removed, or to do it myself if they let me.
They decided to just frog march me from the building.
I got home, called $SoftwareCompany, explained that ExEmployer was illegally running *my* copy of $Software, & asked what we could do about it.
$SoCo revoked my old auth code, issued me a new one, & promised me that the old copy would no longer work as expected.
I later learned from an ExCoworker/friend that ^THAT^ was a severe understatement.
Try the computer suddenly flashing a bright red warning screen, the words "SOFTWARE PIRATE!", & blaring through the speakers "Help! Help! I've been stolen!"
The tasks that I had automated to help me do a better job were now no longer being automated.
In fact they were no longer being done at all.
ExEmployer not only had not removed the then illegal software, they hadn't bothered to give those tasks to anyone else.
"It was fekkin' chaos! It was almost as if you had PLANNED it!"
I explained that it wasn't any sort of logic bomb, merely me calling $SoCo & letting them know WTF had happened. "$SoCo did it because $ExEmployer didn't pay for a commercial version of their software suite."
Moral of the story: Go ahead & automate your duties, just make sure you can UNautomate them if you ever get fired.
I don't suggest a logic bomb, instead do it via a legal channel that will bite ExEmployer on the arse hard enough to require a biohazard team to clean up the bloodbath.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 03 2018, @07:22AM
Unfortunately many employers are that stupid.
They have no clue how to manage IT but think they do.
Your company is a prime example of that.
So is mine by the way: I work for a federal contractor to a govt agency. The agency apparently doesn't know what white collar work is and doesn't know I.T. from S.H.I.T.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 03 2018, @11:42AM (1 child)
I was hired as a contractor at a three-letter company almost 20 years ago. The job was to replace a hard-working employee who, in recognization of her years of said hard work, was being promoted and moved to a position overseas (her native country, it was implied). I supposedly had two weeks to learn her job before she left the country.
The first day, she explained to me the core of her job: monitoring that a batch job moved a series of customer support update files to appropriate systems all over the world, each night. If any failed, they needed to be moved manually in the morning. This was explained to me in a rather circuitous fashion, making it seems far harder and vastly more difficult than it really was. The second day, she oversaw me doing the manual moving of those files which had failed (usually due to target system being down at transfer attempt), a task that took in total about 15 minutes.
She then said she'd meet with me again the next day to discuss her other duties, so I sat that day in the cubicle and did nothing. I never saw her again. Through a series of "miscommunications" and taking accumulated sick leave, she dodged my attempts to meet with her, and even left the country a week early. I thought that was odd, but did what I knew of her job, which took from 0-15 minutes each morning. When I learned she'd left, I met finally with her (now former) boss, and asked for someone to explain what the hell else I was supposed to be taking over from her, since she'd only explained the file moving verification and manual backup process.
There wasn't anything else. She'd automated her job years ago, and been making it look like she spent hours each day managing this file movement system. I'm not sure how long she'd been doing it, but at least for several years, she'd spent her time doing office politics to get the job overseas she'd wanted, rather than moving files.
Of course, I was let go a couple of days after my speaking up, as they didn't need a contractor to do 15 minutes of work a day. I never heard if she suffered any consequences or not, but from the tone of things that were said I don't think so.
Oh, I didn't tell them that I'd already written a script to do the supposedly manual part, but hadn't been using it yet. They didn't ask, after all, and they didn't seem too talkative as they were rushing me out the building.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Wednesday October 03 2018, @09:39PM
I bet during that time she got really good at doing office politics vs. file distribution. Which skill you personally value more is left as an exercise to the reader.
(Score: 2) by termigator on Wednesday October 03 2018, @03:40PM
Surprised you did not get into hot water for installing unapproved software on a company asset. At a lot of places, such an action can lead to immediate termination.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 03 2018, @04:18PM
If it was on your machine then don't bother. Eventually corporate machines get replaced or rebuilt. At that point you are long gone and they will have no idea what went wrong.
Revenge is best served frozen.