10 ms·

Redditor: Am I a scumbag for automating my manual work and making more money?

86 points by artursapek 15y ago

paulhauggis 15y ago
The guy isn't very smart doing 10X the normal amount of transactions. He should limit it to 25% more than everyone, so it at least seems believable.
- jwwest 15y ago
  Or even better, have a randomized upper and lower limit.
- pavelkaroukin 15y ago
  His purpose - get as much money as possible here. And get it now, 'cos tomorrow it might not work, since someone can come up with same idea or bonus rules will change or something else.
  - paulhauggis 15y ago
    His naive approach will lead to either him or his entire department getting replaced by a computer.
    - robryan 15y ago
      And with any luck he will then earn a heap more from the company to maintain and improve his program.
    - redthrowaway 15y ago
      Which is a good thing. There's no point in having a bunch of people do manually what can be done automatically with greater efficiency and at less cost. Keynesian economics does not apply to individual organizations.
      - getsat 15y ago
        The point is that it's not a good thing for him for that scenario to unfold.
ezl 15y ago
No, that doesn't make him a scumbag. I don't understand why people post these things though. Are they really looking for validation?
- artursapek 15y ago
  I think it makes for an interesting discussion.
- bgilroy26 15y ago
  In addition to Artur's point, I would affirm that yes, that is definitely the reason. Every day without fail, there is a post in /r/relationship_advice that goes something like "My fiancee just sold my cat and wired all of my money to her secret boyfriend in Albertville. Am I right to be mad?".
  - cluda01 15y ago
    Just stick to programming and other interesting sub-reddits. Avoid politics etc
    - bgilroy26 15y ago
      I love Reddit, (I did have to leave for health reasons), I hope I don't sound bitter!
- rmc 15y ago
  Maybe they do actually suspect they are a scumbag. It's a very damaging and pervasive mindset.
sp332 15y ago
Ever heard of a combine harvester? Go for it :)
georgieporgie 15y ago
Like others are saying, he should (gradually) reduce the output of his automation system to something more believable/less noticeable. Instead of going after the meager bonus, he should put his time into doing some kind of side work. Of course, that would be highly unethical and possibly grounds for firing, but I think his employer might angrily react with the latter if they found out what he was doing already. Incidentally, back when I worked in Arizona, I was told that a previous employee of the company had been running a side business during working hours. His coworkers ratted him out, and it went up to management. It was decided that it was okay, so long as his assigned tasks were being completed. Of course, one wonders why he was ratted out if he was completing his tasks... :-)
- matwood 15y ago
  It was decided that it was okay, so long as his assigned tasks were being completed. Of course, one wonders why he was ratted out if he was completing his tasks... :-) Jealousy. You never need to put a cover on a bucket full of crabs because anytime one crab tries to climb out the others will pull it back in. Sadly, people (even friends) often act in this same manner when someone they know is excelling in some way.
  - SquareWheel 15y ago
    I've never heard the crab expression, is that really true? Are crabs just vindictive little creatures?
    - oz 15y ago
      I've always wondered if it's true, because it's a very common expression here in Jamaica. We call it "crab inna barrel" (crabs in a barrel). Another term for it is "bad mind" - to be jealous of or try to impede another's success.
      - SquareWheel 15y ago
        I did some searching and found a few references to "crab mentality", looks like it's a common term in Filipino culture. Still haven't found any evidence on if this is a real phenomena or not though. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-the-crab-mentality.htm http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-the-crab-mentality.htm
LaaT 15y ago
I am surprised nobody here suggests that he should build a product out of this. Aren't we all in business of unemploying people?
patio11 15y ago
You don't have to Flowers for Algernon your own productivity just because other folks working in the same firm, in the same industry, in the same country, whatever haven't caught on that computers are eating the world yet. There's nothing unethical about earning the lion's share of the bonus pool assuming the human-assisted script is, indeed, an acceptable substitute for elbow grease. (There are plausible reasons why it might not be but that isn't the way I'd bet.) There's a common mindset on Reddit that I struggle to find a name for but I know it when I see it: "You're not a scumbag, but the gravy train will have to end eventually. Your company will likely catch on and make changes to the data entry process." The size of the pie is fixed, the allocations of the pie are controlled by other people, and a mouse who successfully steals a few crumbs from the pie is a) stealing and b) must guard his stolen crumbs against the predations of other mice. That is a mindset I do not associate with rich people. I'd expect them to think something closer to "Now would be an excellent time to contact the decisionmaker at my client and propose restructuring their business process for a 20% discount to the total cost of everything right now."
- irunbackwards 15y ago
  ... was that an HN profanity filter or an awesome colloquialism? (Flowers for Algernon)
  - stdbrouw 15y ago
    It's a book.
    - qohen 15y ago
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flowers_for_Algernon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flowers_for_Algernon
  - patio11 15y ago
    It's a literary allusion, though to the wrong short story. (See sibling comment.) The right short story depicts a dystopian America where the Handicapper General, a government official, attempts to achieve equality by bringing everyone down to the same level, for example by attaching lead weights to graceful ballerinas so that people who are not graceful ballerinas are not made to feel bad when watching them perform.
feverishaaron 15y ago
If I were a member of management, and I found out that he was doing this, I would be furious. Not because he gamed the system and received the bonuses, but because he didn't share his innovation with the rest of the team and improve everyones' efficiency. If he had done that, I would recognize his talent and initiative and promote him, allowing him to do more rewarding, higher-level work.
- staunch 15y ago
  He probably rightly senses that his boss wouldn't feel the way you hope you would. In fact I don't think most people would offer him a rational incentive at all. If he saves the company $1 million a year are you actually going to cut him a $200k+ bonus? I'd be very doubtful of anyone who says they would. Most people would give him $20k if they're especially generous and a pat on the head.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - ohashi 15y ago
    Or he could simply be replacing himself with no reward. Oh, you've automated it? Thanks. Bye.
    - billybob 15y ago
      That's possible, but only if they're stupid. They'd be losing someone who can knows their business and could automate their next manual process. I'd suggest he say this: "hey boss, I think I can automate this process, increasing accuracy and productivity. Would you give me salary X if I can do it?" If the boss says "awesome, yes!", then he's got a better job. If the boss says no or is lukewarm, he could keep doing what he's doing, but actually study programming in the time he's goofing off and start a job search. Either way, he's on a path to getting to program, not having to hide it, and getting properly compensated. The more difficult question is: what if they lay off his coworkers because of his innovation? How should he feel then?
SpaceDragon 15y ago
No, but you won't earn the Royal Victorian Order either.
cullen 15y ago
Am I a lazy for making a machine wash my dishes while I browse HN? I agree with Laat, sounds like he should make it into a business/product.
qq66 15y ago
Link to my comment on reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/tenoq/reddit_my_friends_call_me_a_scumbag_because_i/c4m2ps2 http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/tenoq/reddit_my_f...
- dctoedt 15y ago
  qq66's comment on reddit is a worthwhile read.
  - lukifer 15y ago
    TL;DR: If you have the initiative and skills to do this, you can be doing a lot more than hoarding a bonus pool.
- christiangenco 15y ago
  Hah, I remember reading your comment and thinking "wow, this guy sounds like he has initiative. I wonder why he's on reddit instead of HN..."
iamben 15y ago
I have a friend that did this in a summer job about 12 or 13 years ago. Got some temp work doing data entry, did it for 2 days before realising it could be done better. He wrote something in VB and did 15x more than everyone else over the course of a day. They (obviously) thought something was wrong so examined what he'd done. When he explained about the program, they told him if he left the temp firm he was employed through and knocked on their door in the morning, they'd give him a job and pay him £2 more an hour. This he (naively) did, and with him came his software. They fired 10 of the other temps the day he 'started' and kept his piece of software when he went back to university after the summer. In this case, the scumbag was most definitely the employer. When he told me the story I wept into my pint glass at what could have been.
- paulhauggis 15y ago
  Why is the employer wrong here? If they were hiring 10 temp workers to do the job of a simple program, they really didn't need them in the first place.
  - andys627 15y ago
    Employer's wrong because they let the intern make a crappy deal for his software... hmm
  - SomeCallMeTim 15y ago
    £2/hour more than a temp data-entry position isn't market compensation for an entry-level programming gig. Converting to US wages, temp workers often make $8-$12/hour -- the temp AGENCY may be making $20-$25 for that, but the worker only pulls in up to $24k/year. If they'd doubled his salary to ~$48k/year (assuming he previously was earning ~$12/hour) then that starts to be a decent wage for an entry-level programmer. Consider this the bare minimum ethical offer, paying the developer based on minimal market value (instead of taking advantage of his naivete). But if it was saving them from having to pay 10 temp workers (at $20/hour each, say) and they only paid him for the summer months to perfect the script and (presumably) train a replacement, then they were basically treating him as a consultant, which (reasonably) would have doubled his hourly rate again. Paying him for 3 months at $48/hour should have cost them about $30k, but he ended up saving the company ~$350k/year (assuming they still needed to retain a $50k/year "expert" data-entry/programmer type to use and maintain the script). Since they could see his script was valuable, the least they could have done would have been to pay him a reasonable consulting rate for a few month. On the other hand, if they'd at least gone with a fair entry-level programmer salary I wouldn't be complaining -- paying someone half of what they're worth seems to be too common to name a company a scumbag over. But yes, the company is well into scumbag territory for taking advantage of someone by paying them 1/4 of the fair market value of their time.
stretchwithme 15y ago
Automating work is not evil. It is the reason we are not all subsistence farmers.
jmtame 15y ago
This trend is not going away, it's only going to increase. The ones with technical knowledge will continue to disproportionately receive money over those who don't. I think this person would really enjoy reading Race Against the Machine, written by two MIT researchers and economists. I have a guest post going up tomorrow on VentureBeat about this, but it's interesting to see people call him a scumbag because he has a technological edge on them. This is a pretty good example of people working against the machine instead of with it. Those people will probably soon be out of jobs, but there's nothing to stop them from learning a scripting language that would make them more productive in their work. They now know there's a script that can cause them to increase their productivity. The bonus pool is still up for grabs if they spent a few weekends trying to learn Ruby or Python.
ktizo 15y ago
Automating manual systems then requires less employees. Less employees often requires less management. If I had done this, I would not in a million years talk to my immediate management about this. I have already been fired once from contract work for merely suggesting that a similar thing was possible.
- VBprogrammer 15y ago
  Do you regret suggesting it? I mean, sure, there would have been some immediate pain involved in finding a new job but surely that was balanced out by not working in a inefficient toxic working environment.
  - ktizo 15y ago
    I was working from home, mostly drunk in a hammock while wearing a dressing gown. I had to leave the hammock and put on some respectable clothes and everything.
rpwilcox 15y ago
This is why I'm skeptical about "Results Only Work Environments". (Not that the person in the article has one, but..) It seems to me that a Results Oriented Work Environment doesn't (or might not) really reward the super performers (just gives them more work to do), while still punishing the poorer performing members of the team. You: "Boss, can I go home after I finish my daily quota of 200 reports?" Them: "Well, we're a results only work environment" You: "Ok, it's 10:30AM and my script just finished 200 reports. Seeya!" Them: "Wait just a minute..." Meanwhile, in an alternative reality.... You: "Boss, it's 6PM, I'm still working on my daily quota of 200 reports, but my productivity is starting to suffer and I'm going slowly" (maybe not because you're a slow data entry person, but you were pairing with Bob, helping him with his work at the cost of your own) Them: "Well, we're a results only work environment" You: (Sad Yao) It's possible that I'm wrong here, and would love to hear of other people's experience working under these conditions.
orbitingpluto 15y ago
I was a programmer and sysadmin at a company that had lots of people doing data entry. One of the typists found out that the client did not check the data at all. (It was all just packaged and resold.) She just hit OK for every single OCR scan that she was supposed to correct/verify. She was doing ten times as much as anyone else and doubling her salary with her bonus. When made aware, management went along with it. I think it bordered on fraud. On the flip side, I automated most of my sysadmin (and a lot of other co-workers) work and freed half of my work week. What did they want me to do? Data entry...
- rmc 15y ago
  I think it bordered on fraud. I don't think there's any "bordering" there. Imagine a plumber who realises that they don't need to lay all the pipes cause the client isn't going to test that the pipes are connected and hence doesn't lay the pipes, but still charges the client. Fraud.
anthuswilliams 15y ago
I don't believe this story is true. This employee is claiming to be 1000% more efficient and 110% more accurate than every other employee on his entire floor, and yet not a single supervisor has approached him to find out what he is doing differently. Color me unconvinced.
Fuzzwah 15y ago
I found myself in a similar situation to the redditor, but with out the bonuses. Part of my duty description was inputting MAC addresses of "authorized computers" into an extremely dodgy database system which allowed them to pick up an IP address via DHCP. When I first started in the position and had this explained to me I pointed out that anyone could just plug a machine into the network and use trial and error to find an IP address to manually enter and get them onto the network. IE: the process wasn't securing anything. My point was pushed aside because "this is just the way we do things". The 1st time I had to input 20+ new PCs into the system I whipped up an autoit script (I had to insert via a terrible GUI interface as the DBAs wouldn't grant me direct access to the database) which grabbed the data required from the xls the supplier gave us and automagically inserted the info. My scripting didn't get noticed until one day when I input 200 machines in the space of an hour, the task had taken the previous person in the role a whole day or more. I was rewarded with a higher workload and grudges from all my co-workers, who had all previously done the task before moving up the totem pole and dumping this ridiculous job onto the next new sucker. The highlight was when I gave notice and during my exit planning meeting my supervisor said that one of the old staff would train my replacement on how to do this task, rather than me show someone the system I hacked up which was an order of magnitude more efficient.
nwenzel 15y ago
Big companies are built to fail. The variety of departments and personal empires built by managers of those departments create an environment where innovation (or even the ability to ask "is there a better way?") gets crushed because "that's not the way we do things." Departmental managers don't optimize for company success. They optimize for personal success. A bigger staff and bigger budget is a promotion. Saving money means a smaller budget means a de facto demotion. Smart people move on and the big companies are left to wonder why it's so hard to find good talent.
PakG1 15y ago
Was I a scumbag for automating manual work and eliminating a ton of jobs when I was only a new grad? In fact, was my entire team? That's a question I struggle to answer more, though we all already know what the reality of the situation is. Did reality excuse me?
gotrythis 15y ago
This is what I used to do for a living: 1) Go to offices and learn their goals and systems 2) Automate them with software 3) Get paid lots of money for selling them the software While one result of automation is lost jobs, the other is that businesses have more operating capital to grow, expand, hire more, etc. He's not a scumbag, but he's missing the opportunity. Why isn't this guy selling the software/process to the company he works for, and making far more money in the process than he gets from his bonuses?
- thespin 15y ago
  I would guess because he developed his solution while at work and his employment terms require all inventions are assigned to the company. Hence it's not his to license.
- rmc 15y ago
  Why isn't this guy selling the software/process to the company he works for, and making far more money in the process than he gets from his bonuses? Interalised self-hatred? (You'll see they are asking the internet if what they are doing is unethical.) Also they might be very shy and not used to thinking they can get the world.
finalword 15y ago
no, that's not the reason.
Turing_Machine 15y ago
This kind of thing has been going on for a while. In Sir Arthur Clarke's autobiography "Astounding Days", he talks about holding a boring civil service job doing some sort of financial auditing (he scored well on the math test, so they thought this was just the place for him). It turned out that what he was doing only had to be accurate to within a couple of percent, so he started using his slide rule to crank out his day's quota before noon, then taking the rest of the day off.
- kamaal 15y ago
  That is why its best to charge for your work and not time. In that case Sir Arthur Clarke could have made twice the money in a day.
rsanchez1 15y ago
As if HN wasn't enough like Reddit yet... Whether or not they think he is a scumbag is relevant. What will really matter is what his boss will think when he finds out that he has all this extra salary on the books for nothing. If he's concerned that his friends think he's a scumbag now, just wait until the pink slips start rolling out when there's a budget crunch.

86 points by artursapek 15y ago

The guy isn't very smart doing 10X the normal amount of transactions. He should limit it to 25% more than everyone, so it at least seems believable.

jwwest 15y ago
Or even better, have a randomized upper and lower limit.
pavelkaroukin 15y ago
His purpose - get as much money as possible here. And get it now, 'cos tomorrow it might not work, since someone can come up with same idea or bonus rules will change or something else.
- paulhauggis 15y ago
  His naive approach will lead to either him or his entire department getting replaced by a computer.
  - robryan 15y ago
    And with any luck he will then earn a heap more from the company to maintain and improve his program.
  - redthrowaway 15y ago
    Which is a good thing. There's no point in having a bunch of people do manually what can be done automatically with greater efficiency and at less cost. Keynesian economics does not apply to individual organizations.
    - getsat 15y ago
      The point is that it's not a good thing for him for that scenario to unfold.

ezl 15y ago

No, that doesn't make him a scumbag. I don't understand why people post these things though. Are they really looking for validation?

artursapek 15y ago
I think it makes for an interesting discussion.
bgilroy26 15y ago
In addition to Artur's point, I would affirm that yes, that is definitely the reason. Every day without fail, there is a post in /r/relationship_advice that goes something like "My fiancee just sold my cat and wired all of my money to her secret boyfriend in Albertville. Am I right to be mad?".
- cluda01 15y ago
  Just stick to programming and other interesting sub-reddits. Avoid politics etc
  - bgilroy26 15y ago
    I love Reddit, (I did have to leave for health reasons), I hope I don't sound bitter!
rmc 15y ago
Maybe they do actually suspect they are a scumbag. It's a very damaging and pervasive mindset.

sp332 15y ago

Ever heard of a combine harvester? Go for it :)

georgieporgie 15y ago

Like others are saying, he should (gradually) reduce the output of his automation system to something more believable/less noticeable. Instead of going after the meager bonus, he should put his time into doing some kind of side work. Of course, that would be highly unethical and possibly grounds for firing, but I think his employer might angrily react with the latter if they found out what he was doing already. Incidentally, back when I worked in Arizona, I was told that a previous employee of the company had been running a side business during working hours. His coworkers ratted him out, and it went up to management. It was decided that it was okay, so long as his assigned tasks were being completed. Of course, one wonders why he was ratted out if he was completing his tasks... :-)

matwood 15y ago
It was decided that it was okay, so long as his assigned tasks were being completed. Of course, one wonders why he was ratted out if he was completing his tasks... :-) Jealousy. You never need to put a cover on a bucket full of crabs because anytime one crab tries to climb out the others will pull it back in. Sadly, people (even friends) often act in this same manner when someone they know is excelling in some way.
- SquareWheel 15y ago
  I've never heard the crab expression, is that really true? Are crabs just vindictive little creatures?
  - oz 15y ago
    I've always wondered if it's true, because it's a very common expression here in Jamaica. We call it "crab inna barrel" (crabs in a barrel). Another term for it is "bad mind" - to be jealous of or try to impede another's success.
    - SquareWheel 15y ago
      I did some searching and found a few references to "crab mentality", looks like it's a common term in Filipino culture. Still haven't found any evidence on if this is a real phenomena or not though. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-the-crab-mentality.htm http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-the-crab-mentality.htm

LaaT 15y ago

I am surprised nobody here suggests that he should build a product out of this. Aren't we all in business of unemploying people?

patio11 15y ago

You don't have to Flowers for Algernon your own productivity just because other folks working in the same firm, in the same industry, in the same country, whatever haven't caught on that computers are eating the world yet. There's nothing unethical about earning the lion's share of the bonus pool assuming the human-assisted script is, indeed, an acceptable substitute for elbow grease. (There are plausible reasons why it might not be but that isn't the way I'd bet.) There's a common mindset on Reddit that I struggle to find a name for but I know it when I see it: "You're not a scumbag, but the gravy train will have to end eventually. Your company will likely catch on and make changes to the data entry process." The size of the pie is fixed, the allocations of the pie are controlled by other people, and a mouse who successfully steals a few crumbs from the pie is a) stealing and b) must guard his stolen crumbs against the predations of other mice. That is a mindset I do not associate with rich people. I'd expect them to think something closer to "Now would be an excellent time to contact the decisionmaker at my client and propose restructuring their business process for a 20% discount to the total cost of everything right now."

irunbackwards 15y ago
... was that an HN profanity filter or an awesome colloquialism? (Flowers for Algernon)
- stdbrouw 15y ago
  It's a book.
  - qohen 15y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flowers_for_Algernon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flowers_for_Algernon
- patio11 15y ago
  It's a literary allusion, though to the wrong short story. (See sibling comment.) The right short story depicts a dystopian America where the Handicapper General, a government official, attempts to achieve equality by bringing everyone down to the same level, for example by attaching lead weights to graceful ballerinas so that people who are not graceful ballerinas are not made to feel bad when watching them perform.

feverishaaron 15y ago

If I were a member of management, and I found out that he was doing this, I would be furious. Not because he gamed the system and received the bonuses, but because he didn't share his innovation with the rest of the team and improve everyones' efficiency. If he had done that, I would recognize his talent and initiative and promote him, allowing him to do more rewarding, higher-level work.

staunch 15y ago
He probably rightly senses that his boss wouldn't feel the way you hope you would. In fact I don't think most people would offer him a rational incentive at all. If he saves the company $1 million a year are you actually going to cut him a $200k+ bonus? I'd be very doubtful of anyone who says they would. Most people would give him $20k if they're especially generous and a pat on the head.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- ohashi 15y ago
  Or he could simply be replacing himself with no reward. Oh, you've automated it? Thanks. Bye.
  - billybob 15y ago
    That's possible, but only if they're stupid. They'd be losing someone who can knows their business and could automate their next manual process. I'd suggest he say this: "hey boss, I think I can automate this process, increasing accuracy and productivity. Would you give me salary X if I can do it?" If the boss says "awesome, yes!", then he's got a better job. If the boss says no or is lukewarm, he could keep doing what he's doing, but actually study programming in the time he's goofing off and start a job search. Either way, he's on a path to getting to program, not having to hide it, and getting properly compensated. The more difficult question is: what if they lay off his coworkers because of his innovation? How should he feel then?

SpaceDragon 15y ago

No, but you won't earn the Royal Victorian Order either.

cullen 15y ago

Am I a lazy for making a machine wash my dishes while I browse HN? I agree with Laat, sounds like he should make it into a business/product.

qq66 15y ago

Link to my comment on reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/tenoq/reddit_my_friends_call_me_a_scumbag_because_i/c4m2ps2 http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/tenoq/reddit_my_f...

dctoedt 15y ago
qq66's comment on reddit is a worthwhile read.
- lukifer 15y ago
  TL;DR: If you have the initiative and skills to do this, you can be doing a lot more than hoarding a bonus pool.
christiangenco 15y ago
Hah, I remember reading your comment and thinking "wow, this guy sounds like he has initiative. I wonder why he's on reddit instead of HN..."

iamben 15y ago

I have a friend that did this in a summer job about 12 or 13 years ago. Got some temp work doing data entry, did it for 2 days before realising it could be done better. He wrote something in VB and did 15x more than everyone else over the course of a day. They (obviously) thought something was wrong so examined what he'd done. When he explained about the program, they told him if he left the temp firm he was employed through and knocked on their door in the morning, they'd give him a job and pay him £2 more an hour. This he (naively) did, and with him came his software. They fired 10 of the other temps the day he 'started' and kept his piece of software when he went back to university after the summer. In this case, the scumbag was most definitely the employer. When he told me the story I wept into my pint glass at what could have been.

paulhauggis 15y ago
Why is the employer wrong here? If they were hiring 10 temp workers to do the job of a simple program, they really didn't need them in the first place.
- andys627 15y ago
  Employer's wrong because they let the intern make a crappy deal for his software... hmm
- SomeCallMeTim 15y ago
  £2/hour more than a temp data-entry position isn't market compensation for an entry-level programming gig. Converting to US wages, temp workers often make $8-$12/hour -- the temp AGENCY may be making $20-$25 for that, but the worker only pulls in up to $24k/year. If they'd doubled his salary to ~$48k/year (assuming he previously was earning ~$12/hour) then that starts to be a decent wage for an entry-level programmer. Consider this the bare minimum ethical offer, paying the developer based on minimal market value (instead of taking advantage of his naivete). But if it was saving them from having to pay 10 temp workers (at $20/hour each, say) and they only paid him for the summer months to perfect the script and (presumably) train a replacement, then they were basically treating him as a consultant, which (reasonably) would have doubled his hourly rate again. Paying him for 3 months at $48/hour should have cost them about $30k, but he ended up saving the company ~$350k/year (assuming they still needed to retain a $50k/year "expert" data-entry/programmer type to use and maintain the script). Since they could see his script was valuable, the least they could have done would have been to pay him a reasonable consulting rate for a few month. On the other hand, if they'd at least gone with a fair entry-level programmer salary I wouldn't be complaining -- paying someone half of what they're worth seems to be too common to name a company a scumbag over. But yes, the company is well into scumbag territory for taking advantage of someone by paying them 1/4 of the fair market value of their time.

stretchwithme 15y ago

Automating work is not evil. It is the reason we are not all subsistence farmers.

jmtame 15y ago

This trend is not going away, it's only going to increase. The ones with technical knowledge will continue to disproportionately receive money over those who don't. I think this person would really enjoy reading Race Against the Machine, written by two MIT researchers and economists. I have a guest post going up tomorrow on VentureBeat about this, but it's interesting to see people call him a scumbag because he has a technological edge on them. This is a pretty good example of people working against the machine instead of with it. Those people will probably soon be out of jobs, but there's nothing to stop them from learning a scripting language that would make them more productive in their work. They now know there's a script that can cause them to increase their productivity. The bonus pool is still up for grabs if they spent a few weekends trying to learn Ruby or Python.

ktizo 15y ago

Automating manual systems then requires less employees. Less employees often requires less management. If I had done this, I would not in a million years talk to my immediate management about this. I have already been fired once from contract work for merely suggesting that a similar thing was possible.

VBprogrammer 15y ago
Do you regret suggesting it? I mean, sure, there would have been some immediate pain involved in finding a new job but surely that was balanced out by not working in a inefficient toxic working environment.
- ktizo 15y ago
  I was working from home, mostly drunk in a hammock while wearing a dressing gown. I had to leave the hammock and put on some respectable clothes and everything.

rpwilcox 15y ago

This is why I'm skeptical about "Results Only Work Environments". (Not that the person in the article has one, but..) It seems to me that a Results Oriented Work Environment doesn't (or might not) really reward the super performers (just gives them more work to do), while still punishing the poorer performing members of the team. You: "Boss, can I go home after I finish my daily quota of 200 reports?" Them: "Well, we're a results only work environment" You: "Ok, it's 10:30AM and my script just finished 200 reports. Seeya!" Them: "Wait just a minute..." Meanwhile, in an alternative reality.... You: "Boss, it's 6PM, I'm still working on my daily quota of 200 reports, but my productivity is starting to suffer and I'm going slowly" (maybe not because you're a slow data entry person, but you were pairing with Bob, helping him with his work at the cost of your own) Them: "Well, we're a results only work environment" You: (Sad Yao) It's possible that I'm wrong here, and would love to hear of other people's experience working under these conditions.

orbitingpluto 15y ago

I was a programmer and sysadmin at a company that had lots of people doing data entry. One of the typists found out that the client did not check the data at all. (It was all just packaged and resold.) She just hit OK for every single OCR scan that she was supposed to correct/verify. She was doing ten times as much as anyone else and doubling her salary with her bonus. When made aware, management went along with it. I think it bordered on fraud. On the flip side, I automated most of my sysadmin (and a lot of other co-workers) work and freed half of my work week. What did they want me to do? Data entry...

rmc 15y ago
I think it bordered on fraud. I don't think there's any "bordering" there. Imagine a plumber who realises that they don't need to lay all the pipes cause the client isn't going to test that the pipes are connected and hence doesn't lay the pipes, but still charges the client. Fraud.

anthuswilliams 15y ago

I don't believe this story is true. This employee is claiming to be 1000% more efficient and 110% more accurate than every other employee on his entire floor, and yet not a single supervisor has approached him to find out what he is doing differently. Color me unconvinced.

Fuzzwah 15y ago

I found myself in a similar situation to the redditor, but with out the bonuses. Part of my duty description was inputting MAC addresses of "authorized computers" into an extremely dodgy database system which allowed them to pick up an IP address via DHCP. When I first started in the position and had this explained to me I pointed out that anyone could just plug a machine into the network and use trial and error to find an IP address to manually enter and get them onto the network. IE: the process wasn't securing anything. My point was pushed aside because "this is just the way we do things". The 1st time I had to input 20+ new PCs into the system I whipped up an autoit script (I had to insert via a terrible GUI interface as the DBAs wouldn't grant me direct access to the database) which grabbed the data required from the xls the supplier gave us and automagically inserted the info. My scripting didn't get noticed until one day when I input 200 machines in the space of an hour, the task had taken the previous person in the role a whole day or more. I was rewarded with a higher workload and grudges from all my co-workers, who had all previously done the task before moving up the totem pole and dumping this ridiculous job onto the next new sucker. The highlight was when I gave notice and during my exit planning meeting my supervisor said that one of the old staff would train my replacement on how to do this task, rather than me show someone the system I hacked up which was an order of magnitude more efficient.

nwenzel 15y ago

Big companies are built to fail. The variety of departments and personal empires built by managers of those departments create an environment where innovation (or even the ability to ask "is there a better way?") gets crushed because "that's not the way we do things." Departmental managers don't optimize for company success. They optimize for personal success. A bigger staff and bigger budget is a promotion. Saving money means a smaller budget means a de facto demotion. Smart people move on and the big companies are left to wonder why it's so hard to find good talent.

PakG1 15y ago

Was I a scumbag for automating manual work and eliminating a ton of jobs when I was only a new grad? In fact, was my entire team? That's a question I struggle to answer more, though we all already know what the reality of the situation is. Did reality excuse me?

gotrythis 15y ago

This is what I used to do for a living: 1) Go to offices and learn their goals and systems 2) Automate them with software 3) Get paid lots of money for selling them the software While one result of automation is lost jobs, the other is that businesses have more operating capital to grow, expand, hire more, etc. He's not a scumbag, but he's missing the opportunity. Why isn't this guy selling the software/process to the company he works for, and making far more money in the process than he gets from his bonuses?

thespin 15y ago
I would guess because he developed his solution while at work and his employment terms require all inventions are assigned to the company. Hence it's not his to license.
rmc 15y ago
Why isn't this guy selling the software/process to the company he works for, and making far more money in the process than he gets from his bonuses? Interalised self-hatred? (You'll see they are asking the internet if what they are doing is unethical.) Also they might be very shy and not used to thinking they can get the world.

finalword 15y ago

no, that's not the reason.

Turing_Machine 15y ago

This kind of thing has been going on for a while. In Sir Arthur Clarke's autobiography "Astounding Days", he talks about holding a boring civil service job doing some sort of financial auditing (he scored well on the math test, so they thought this was just the place for him). It turned out that what he was doing only had to be accurate to within a couple of percent, so he started using his slide rule to crank out his day's quota before noon, then taking the rest of the day off.

kamaal 15y ago
That is why its best to charge for your work and not time. In that case Sir Arthur Clarke could have made twice the money in a day.

rsanchez1 15y ago

As if HN wasn't enough like Reddit yet... Whether or not they think he is a scumbag is relevant. What will really matter is what his boss will think when he finds out that he has all this extra salary on the books for nothing. If he's concerned that his friends think he's a scumbag now, just wait until the pink slips start rolling out when there's a budget crunch.