5 ms·

"For a while I felt guilty, like I was ripping the law-firm off, but eventually I convinced myself that as long as everyone is happy there's no harm done. I'm d

by neom 5y ago

"For a while I felt guilty, like I was ripping the law-firm off, but eventually I convinced myself that as long as everyone is happy there's no harm done. I'm doing exactly what they hired me to do, all of the work is done in a timely manner, and I get to enjoy my life. Win win for everyone involved. " Not a win for the COO/GM/CFO/FP&A/whatever who is tasked with finding efficiencies in the business and doing optimization. By staying silent he is denying the business the ability to optimize it's cogs, and therefore effectively stealing for the business.

jxidjhdhdhdhfhf 5y ago
Shouldn't whoever is tasked with finding such inefficiencies realize that a simple script could be written to replace the process of manually transferring files to and from cloud storage?
- neom 5y ago
  That is not how teams work. I recommend this book to learn more on how teams work: https://www.amazon.com/Wisdom-Teams-Creating-High-Performance-Organization/dp/1633691063 https://www.amazon.com/Wisdom-Teams-Creating-High-Performanc...
  - tamiral 5y ago
    I have this book and haven't read it yet... but will start it! thanks for the reminder.
    - neom 5y ago
      Extremely boring, but I recommend persisting to the end.
  - jxidjhdhdhdhfhf 5y ago
    People are unable to realize a script can be written because that's "not how teams work"? I'm very confused at what you're trying to say.
    - neom 5y ago
      Imperfect analogies so please read between the lines....: Take a finance team, you have a group of specialists who don't really know what each other do, FP&A vs BM&A or Investor relations. However, they don't need to know what each other do because they can trust the person next to them to say, hey.. payroll is now automated, I have extra time now, what should I work on to improve things, is it fair to take advantage of that in a team simply because one person isn't an expert? If you know someones job is to do something, say.. buy servers, but you know they don't know anything about servers, only how to finance them, should you exploit that for your self gain? If there is a person who's job it is to optimize, but the system is obfuscated, is that fair to the team? OP said it's win win, that is intellectually dishonest, it is not win win. that's my real point.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
i_haz_rabies 5y ago
https://marshallbrain.com/manna1 https://marshallbrain.com/manna1 - read this and then see if you still care at all about business efficiency
antihero 5y ago
And what exactly does he owe them? The company exists to enrich the owners by extracting wealth from his work.
arbitrage 5y ago
Oh no, won't someone think of the businesses?
- neom 5y ago
  Depends on if you care about other people I suppose. The West subscribes to capitalism as the modality to move society forward, so yes, till that changes, do think of the business imo.
  - antihero 5y ago
    The business does not care about you. The business is fundamentally a sociopathic entity. Only a fool would care about that, unless you have a personal connection to the shareholders.
  - skinnymuch 5y ago
    You’re conflating different things. The business doesn’t really care about the person. The west as a whole subscribing to capitalism does not then lead to the things you are saying “if you care about other people”. There is no logic there.
    - neom 5y ago
      There is a stock market, people invest in business. People use those investments to put their kids through schools. Profits are distributed to employees in coops, those funds are used to buy things from other people, etc etc etc etc etc, this moves society forward per the capitalistic philosophy. One individual not being forthcoming with the truth in a system like that, creates inefficiencies in the system, and has ripple effects across the whole system. Butterfly effect. Business is just an implementation of a philosophy, it doesn't care about you, but the idea of business is to care for all, that is the theory and why we use the system. Sadly, it's gotten extremely fucked up over the last 100 years, and we end up with people on reddit doing stuff like this. Capitalism is broken, absolutely, but the redditer is still being intellectually dishonest about the win-win situation.
  - Sohcahtoa82 5y ago
laputan_machine 5y ago
Is that not a failure of whoever is tasked with finding efficiencies? Seems like the employee should be given their job :).
typon 5y ago
And when a company makes surplus profit from its employees' labour and doesn't compensate them for it accordingly, is that also considered theft?
- neom 5y ago
  No. That is in fact not how the law works at all.
  - wonderwonder 5y ago
    "By staying silent he is denying the business the ability to optimize it's cogs, and therefore effectively stealing for the business." That's not how the law works either. If employee A, B and C all have different processes to do the same task and employee A is faster than the other 2, employee A is not stealing and neither are the other 2.
    - neom 5y ago
      I don't know what jurisdiction you're referring to, here in Canada what he did would likely be illegal, and the other instance would not. I don't know of a locality where what typon said is illegal. It's not difficult to get creative when pursuing theft of company time, and here I doubt you'd even need to get that creative. I'm an EIR at a law firm so I will ask and report back.
      - antihero 5y ago
        It's illegal to fulfil your job obligations creatively?
        neom 5y ago
        It can be, yes.
        willcipriano 5y ago
wonderwonder 5y ago
Are you really saying that the poster should tell them about his script, which they will then take and use, removing the need for OP? So OP who as far as anyone at the firm is concerned is doing a terrific job should sacrifice his position and take a financial hit so that the COO/GM can get a nice bonus? That makes no sense at all.
- neom 5y ago
  Actually he should have discussed it with others in the company as he went, given that chance has passed... Sans your hyperbole, that is indeed what I am saying. OP most certainly should discuss how he is executing his job with his employer, if they say it's fine, cool... but that should be their choice, business does not happen in a vacuum, it's a team of people working together. He's taking it upon himself to decide what work needs to be done for the business, that's unfair to the rest of the team.
  - wonderwonder 5y ago
    how is he taking it on himself to decide what work needs to be done? He was hired to perform a set of tasks, and has written a script to accomplish them. You could argue he has taken it upon himself to decide how the required work is done and then one could say "so what?". If the business is happy with his output then everyone is a winner. To think its an employees job to suicide their employment is not the actions a rational actor takes. If that is the case, OP would be incentivized to destroy his script and return the prior method of manually processing files which he specified was not keeping pace with business needs. Society has reached a strange place when bottom of the food chain employees are expected to suffer financial hardship for the good of the company execs.
    - neom 5y ago
      Employees are resources to the business, as the work changes, the resources change, it's not his job to decide how he should be resourced in the business. It's literally why HR is called HR.

by neom 5y ago

jxidjhdhdhdhfhf 5y ago

Shouldn't whoever is tasked with finding such inefficiencies realize that a simple script could be written to replace the process of manually transferring files to and from cloud storage?

neom 5y ago
That is not how teams work. I recommend this book to learn more on how teams work: https://www.amazon.com/Wisdom-Teams-Creating-High-Performance-Organization/dp/1633691063 https://www.amazon.com/Wisdom-Teams-Creating-High-Performanc...
- tamiral 5y ago
  I have this book and haven't read it yet... but will start it! thanks for the reminder.
  - neom 5y ago
    Extremely boring, but I recommend persisting to the end.
- jxidjhdhdhdhfhf 5y ago
  People are unable to realize a script can be written because that's "not how teams work"? I'm very confused at what you're trying to say.
  - neom 5y ago
    Imperfect analogies so please read between the lines....: Take a finance team, you have a group of specialists who don't really know what each other do, FP&A vs BM&A or Investor relations. However, they don't need to know what each other do because they can trust the person next to them to say, hey.. payroll is now automated, I have extra time now, what should I work on to improve things, is it fair to take advantage of that in a team simply because one person isn't an expert? If you know someones job is to do something, say.. buy servers, but you know they don't know anything about servers, only how to finance them, should you exploit that for your self gain? If there is a person who's job it is to optimize, but the system is obfuscated, is that fair to the team? OP said it's win win, that is intellectually dishonest, it is not win win. that's my real point.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]

i_haz_rabies 5y ago

https://marshallbrain.com/manna1 https://marshallbrain.com/manna1 - read this and then see if you still care at all about business efficiency

antihero 5y ago

And what exactly does he owe them? The company exists to enrich the owners by extracting wealth from his work.

arbitrage 5y ago

Oh no, won't someone think of the businesses?

neom 5y ago
Depends on if you care about other people I suppose. The West subscribes to capitalism as the modality to move society forward, so yes, till that changes, do think of the business imo.
- antihero 5y ago
  The business does not care about you. The business is fundamentally a sociopathic entity. Only a fool would care about that, unless you have a personal connection to the shareholders.
- skinnymuch 5y ago
  You’re conflating different things. The business doesn’t really care about the person. The west as a whole subscribing to capitalism does not then lead to the things you are saying “if you care about other people”. There is no logic there.
  - neom 5y ago
    There is a stock market, people invest in business. People use those investments to put their kids through schools. Profits are distributed to employees in coops, those funds are used to buy things from other people, etc etc etc etc etc, this moves society forward per the capitalistic philosophy. One individual not being forthcoming with the truth in a system like that, creates inefficiencies in the system, and has ripple effects across the whole system. Butterfly effect. Business is just an implementation of a philosophy, it doesn't care about you, but the idea of business is to care for all, that is the theory and why we use the system. Sadly, it's gotten extremely fucked up over the last 100 years, and we end up with people on reddit doing stuff like this. Capitalism is broken, absolutely, but the redditer is still being intellectually dishonest about the win-win situation.
- Sohcahtoa82 5y ago

laputan_machine 5y ago

Is that not a failure of whoever is tasked with finding efficiencies? Seems like the employee should be given their job :).

typon 5y ago

And when a company makes surplus profit from its employees' labour and doesn't compensate them for it accordingly, is that also considered theft?

neom 5y ago
No. That is in fact not how the law works at all.
- wonderwonder 5y ago
  "By staying silent he is denying the business the ability to optimize it's cogs, and therefore effectively stealing for the business." That's not how the law works either. If employee A, B and C all have different processes to do the same task and employee A is faster than the other 2, employee A is not stealing and neither are the other 2.
  - neom 5y ago
    I don't know what jurisdiction you're referring to, here in Canada what he did would likely be illegal, and the other instance would not. I don't know of a locality where what typon said is illegal. It's not difficult to get creative when pursuing theft of company time, and here I doubt you'd even need to get that creative. I'm an EIR at a law firm so I will ask and report back.
    - antihero 5y ago
      It's illegal to fulfil your job obligations creatively?
      - neom 5y ago
        It can be, yes.
        willcipriano 5y ago

wonderwonder 5y ago

Are you really saying that the poster should tell them about his script, which they will then take and use, removing the need for OP? So OP who as far as anyone at the firm is concerned is doing a terrific job should sacrifice his position and take a financial hit so that the COO/GM can get a nice bonus? That makes no sense at all.

neom 5y ago
Actually he should have discussed it with others in the company as he went, given that chance has passed... Sans your hyperbole, that is indeed what I am saying. OP most certainly should discuss how he is executing his job with his employer, if they say it's fine, cool... but that should be their choice, business does not happen in a vacuum, it's a team of people working together. He's taking it upon himself to decide what work needs to be done for the business, that's unfair to the rest of the team.
- wonderwonder 5y ago
  how is he taking it on himself to decide what work needs to be done? He was hired to perform a set of tasks, and has written a script to accomplish them. You could argue he has taken it upon himself to decide how the required work is done and then one could say "so what?". If the business is happy with his output then everyone is a winner. To think its an employees job to suicide their employment is not the actions a rational actor takes. If that is the case, OP would be incentivized to destroy his script and return the prior method of manually processing files which he specified was not keeping pace with business needs. Society has reached a strange place when bottom of the food chain employees are expected to suffer financial hardship for the good of the company execs.
  - neom 5y ago
    Employees are resources to the business, as the work changes, the resources change, it's not his job to decide how he should be resourced in the business. It's literally why HR is called HR.