> Their employer has 0% loyalty to them. Their employer would stab them in the throat for 50 cents. You don't know that. The fact that he's asking this questio

> Their employer has 0% loyalty to them. Their employer would stab them in the throat for 50 cents. You don't know that. The fact that he's asking this question means he thinks they have more than 0% loyalty. If you knew they had zero loyalty and would fire you upon disclosure of the automation you wouldn't concern yourself with ethics. I see what you are saying but it's still bad faith from my perspective. If you automate part of your job you should celebrate that and figure out somewhere else to add value. He's being paid a full time wage to provide technical expertise as a professional. To withhold that expertise they are paying for is unethical in my opinion. He's taking advantage of the company's lack of knowledge in the space and also taking advantage of "working" remotely. However, if I was him, I'd try to figure out if I could fire up an LLC and license the script back to the company for maybe $1-2k/mo and then go do the same thing for other similar businesses. He could potentially make more, come clean, and still get to his goal of spending more time with the family based on his mailbox money. So he could move to full time contractor (so he can write off his home office or whatever). "Write" the script. Inform the company that he automated it and would like to license it to them. Even that is somewhat unethical because the company should own the script, but at least he can move on and get rewarded for his initiative.