Way back in the day I was a lone IT guy in a distributor/wholesaler, and part of that was creating line of business apps to do some real heavy lifting, extendin

Way back in the day I was a lone IT guy in a distributor/wholesaler, and part of that was creating line of business apps to do some real heavy lifting, extending existing ones, and creating utilities to tie other apps together. In a tiny company of maybe 40 people, where even an underpaid IT guy was still an extravagance (but was adding huge value). Periodically I'd ask to shadow someone for a day or two. At some points, even asking if I could do their task and have them watch me to confirm I was doing it correctly. What you would learn from this was amazing. All sorts of inefficiencies that people would quietly accept, because it was still way better than the previous state. Then a week or two later I'd roll out the update, and get huge thank yous from accounting, or sales, or the warehouse because I completely trivialized some previous common task. What used to take 45 seconds now takes 2 because all the work is done for them 99.9% of the time and they just need to confirm it's correct (or correct the odd edge case). The computer became this increasingly magical tool they loved more and more.