Exactly - intern labor is cheap, flexible, and there's a "wax-on wax-off" mentality where they may learn by proxy but are also in a safe environment where they

Exactly - intern labor is cheap, flexible, and there's a "wax-on wax-off" mentality where they may learn by proxy but are also in a safe environment where they won't hurt themselves or the company. A script and the associated automation could become the expectation or could lead to a key-man-dependency-risk. It may be lucrative for the friend to take the script and turn it into a product. but then they'll need to market, sell, document, optimize, and do a million other tasks. There has always been a dead zone between "automated script that makes me work a bit more efficiently" and "product that can make everyone with this job work a bit more efficiently". Fortunately, new technology is narrowing this gap.