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Great story of how automating one's own job led to more meaningful productivity, rather than being made redundant. > a DevOps style team where we managed ourse

Great story of how automating one's own job led to more meaningful productivity, rather than being made redundant. > a DevOps style team where we managed ourselves and were told to just attach ourselves to whatever projects we want and just add value somehow Sounds wonderful - and surprising too, since businesses typically seem afraid to trust their own teams this way. What's striking is the autonomy given to the team, after the boring stuff got automated. This kind of higher-level decision making is exactly what cannot be automated (at least for now) - to diagnose areas that need improvement, and to plan and self-organize to implement it. --- In my work, I've also been putting much effort into automating parts of my job, i.e., build/deployment and remote management of applications. Far from making myself redundant, I'm trusted by the company with more (and higher) responsibilities, and more autonomy to manage my own work and its direction. Also, with the increase in efficiency and productivity, we're able to hire more people.

turc1656 7y ago
Glad to hear things are working well for you as well. Any halfway intelligent manager wouldn't be stupid enough to just toss you or anyone like you. They see value/skills that can be put to use elsewhere. Anyone with a growth mindset would use that human capital productively. I think only in a very stagnant, established business with no growth opportunities would they let someone go after automating a lot of things. Because they wouldn't be able to put you to use so the only way to capitalize on your improvement would be to gain your compensation back. Yeah, the level of autonomy I was given is pretty rare. I think it was because of two main factors. First, I had several bosses over a short period of time (lots of "structural changes" at that company during that time and it was a bit hectic) and the current boss then was in London and had other issues to deal with. Second, I don't think they knew precisely what to do with me in general but since I had built up a substantial amount of good faith/reputation in such a short amount of time and surprised everyone, I think they just decided to just let me figure out what I wanted to do since I wasn't shy about telling them what I was interested in. It was a good situation but at a company that was very messy and all over the place. A lot of things were constant fires and battles (both internally and externally). Thankfully, I had good managers when I was there who had a lot of good sense. Otherwise, someone else probably would have just clamped down on me and dictated everything they wanted me to do with this new found time.

turc1656 7y ago

Glad to hear things are working well for you as well. Any halfway intelligent manager wouldn't be stupid enough to just toss you or anyone like you. They see value/skills that can be put to use elsewhere. Anyone with a growth mindset would use that human capital productively. I think only in a very stagnant, established business with no growth opportunities would they let someone go after automating a lot of things. Because they wouldn't be able to put you to use so the only way to capitalize on your improvement would be to gain your compensation back. Yeah, the level of autonomy I was given is pretty rare. I think it was because of two main factors. First, I had several bosses over a short period of time (lots of "structural changes" at that company during that time and it was a bit hectic) and the current boss then was in London and had other issues to deal with. Second, I don't think they knew precisely what to do with me in general but since I had built up a substantial amount of good faith/reputation in such a short amount of time and surprised everyone, I think they just decided to just let me figure out what I wanted to do since I wasn't shy about telling them what I was interested in. It was a good situation but at a company that was very messy and all over the place. A lot of things were constant fires and battles (both internally and externally). Thankfully, I had good managers when I was there who had a lot of good sense. Otherwise, someone else probably would have just clamped down on me and dictated everything they wanted me to do with this new found time.