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Welcome to the world of automation. This is also how many underdogs manage to grab a slice from the "big players". You'd be surprised how many large companies t
by moe 18y ago
Welcome to the world of automation. This is also how many underdogs manage to grab a slice from the "big players". You'd be surprised how many large companies that could easily afford to optimize their processes just don't do it.
You find dedicated people (or even departments) doing nothing but strictly repetitive tasks. Things like filing invoices, keeping a stock of parts according to a set of rules or even, like you said, aggregating always the same information and mailing it in always the same format to the execs.
In every company that I have worked so far there were quite a few people who could have literally been replaced by the proverbial shell-script.
Doing so (when appropiate) always gives you an edge because you'll be faster and less prone to errors in that area than the meatbag-driven competitor - plus you free up ressources for more interesting tasks.
- pasbesoin 18y agoI've seen this / experienced this myself. It may sound cynical, but it is so, so true. Addendum: On the other hand, many of the people in those roles were quite nice and willing to help, if you treated them like a human being. If you made your case well, layers of bureaucracy could sometimes "jump" right out of the way. Not always, but sometimes. Often, there was another layer of interaction unofficially built in. Something to be aware of, when you automate. There may be more going on than you realize, some of it offering real business value, perhaps even making the overall workflow practical where it would otherwise flounder and die. Nothing, I guess, that hasn't been said before. I hate to see people labeled "redundant". Often enough, they've been the ones effectively working around a broken formal process, as best they could given the constraints applied.