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At my last job, something I tried to push unsuccessfully was a company-wide automation initiative. Imagine a company-wide incentive structure for automation wh

At my last job, something I tried to push unsuccessfully was a company-wide automation initiative. Imagine a company-wide incentive structure for automation whereby if you automate 90-100% of your job, you receive massive bonuses. If you completely automate your job, the bonus could be the entirety of your annual salary as a single payout. Or perhaps a combination of bonus and equity. So now you're out of a job. But if you can automate other jobs in the organisation, you also get bonuses. Eventually the majority of the company becomes automated, hopefully generating the same or greater revenue and value for customers, with less overhead costs. Which is great for any stakeholders who can continue to receive revenues, but terrible for employees. So it would be good to include some kind of equity and/or revenue sharing model. The sell could then be "hey, let's all work together to automate this company, we'll get bonuses for doing so, and when the whole thing is automated we can continue to receive income while sitting on the beach".

CarVac 12y ago
The problem there is the perceived unfairness that occurs when someone else in the company, sharing your approximate job, puts you out of work via automation. How do you compensate those who lose their jobs as a result? What if they were also trying, but just happened to not be first to succeed? It's a really cool idea though. (As a manufacturing engineer in a fairly old-fashioned company, I am currently trying to automate as much as possible; no idea yet about individual bonuses since I'm <1 year on the job)
- treelovinhippie 12y ago
  Yeah it would need a lot of thought around the incentive structures. The original thought was that if you fully automate your own job you get your salary as a bonus. But if you fully automate someone else's job, you both split their salary 50/50 as a bonus. Now both of you are free to work on automating other jobs in the org. So you'd end up with various teams working together to automate jobs in the org. As a byproduct, it would also free up a lot of human capital in an organisation to focus on pure R&D and intrapreneurship.
  - jellicle 12y ago
    Why would a good capitalist pay years of salary, percentages of the company, or whatever else you're talking about offering, when they can simply outsource the automation job for $5,000 to China? And then fire you. And then hire you back on a $5,000 1099 contract to automate other people's jobs? You seem to be trying to come up with some sort of "fair" system, as if that were how compensation works now or ever will work.
gtirloni 12y ago
It's hard to change the status quo, specially when there are paychecks directly involved. At a company I worked for, after they realized that things couldn't go on anymore without massive automation, their first approach was to introduce it into the infrastructure lifecycle and require all new infrastructure to be heavily automated. That allowed the legacy stuff to die slowly without much disturbance. Another different idea entirely would be spin off a subsidiary with those ideals and slowly migrate the work there. Perhaps too much work, but if the situation is desperate enough..
- treelovinhippie 12y ago
  It's definitely a scary proposal for management to accept. The company I pitched this to was a 15 year-old web dev / digital agency with ~15 employees and <$2m in revenues. So a pretty tiny and poorly performing company. Management liked the idea because almost all of their revenues were going into wages. But there must be a particular type of company, at a particular scale, with a particular ethos out there that would be up for giving an automation initiative a shot. If it worked, it would make for an impressive news story which could spark others to follow suit. Imagine an economy where everyone's job was to automate their job...
craigyk 12y ago
This is essentially a stand-in for workers "owning the means of production". Congrats, you are now a marxist (dirty commie according to some).
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  That's why I hate political labels. What do you mean by saying "he's a marxist"? Does subscribing to one of Karl's ideas require automatically subscribing to every other? I know you meant this as a joke, but I want to emphasize a general point - one of the things that totally dumb down conversations about economy is people grouping ideas under labels like "communist" or "libertarian" or whatever and evaluating them in batches.
  - chongli 12y ago
    All of Marx's other ideas naturally follow from the one: who should own the means of production?
    - TeMPOraL 12y ago
      Well, you can start with the same question and reach different conclusions. Does this mean that you're still wrong? And does the fact that Marx was wrong about one thing means he was wrong about everything else? It's too easy to group some idea with some others and then dismiss the whole thing by noting that one the other ones are wrong.
      - chongli 12y ago
        What, specifically, was Marx wrong about?
        TeMPOraL 12y ago
        Something, apparently, since every time I get called a Marxist the other party means to say I'm an idiot.
  - 12y ago
TeMPOraL 12y ago
This sounds like a cool idea - if and only if everyone coordinates to it together fairly, which seems extremely hard to achieve. I can see tons of caveats, e.g. - If you automate away your non-tech co-worker (someone who can't contribute much to the automation of jobs other than his own), will he get the bonus? If so, how do you assure people doing the automating won't feel treated unfairly as the non-tech guy just got bonuses for doing nothing? - If someone automates you away, will you get anything? Will you be angry? - If you keep automating away your co-workers, who's gonna be left to help you automate yourself away? (assume for a moment that you have the most difficult to automate job in the company) I mean... this could work if you'd manage to set up incentives so that everyone in the company works together and not against each other. But I'm not sure how to do this, especially in a way which doesn't leave anybody feeling he's being treated unfairly.
- treelovinhippie 12y ago
  Definitely depending on the type of organisation, you'd need to tweak the incentive structure. And yeah the ideal scenario would be the entire organisation working together to automate all of their processes, and for everyone to share in those benefits. The basic, not fully thought out idea, was that if you automated your own job you got the full bonus. If you automate another person's job, you both split the bonus 50/50. I think with most jobs, automation would definitely involve programming and tech skills. But there would be a lot of non-tech tasks as well, such as thoroughly understanding their workflow and processes and identifying more efficient practices. "Automation" can also be a combination of computer and human outsourcing too. In the small web dev company I was working for (launching internal startups), the "creative process" of designing website mockups was incredibly time consuming. I suggested we collect all of the customer requirements and collateral, and automatically outsource the mockups via API to something like MobileWorks/Freelancer/Elance/99Designs/DesignCrowd etc
- redeemer 12y ago
  > If you automate away your non-tech co-worker ... will he get the bonus? Yes, and you get nothing. It's fair; just don't automate away other people's jobs, automate away your own. > If someone automates you away, will you get anything? Yes, 100% of the bonus. It's not a choice, you must leave. I still think that's fair. > If you keep automating away your co-workers, who's gonna be left to help you automate yourself away? You don't automate away your co-workers unless you like doing free work. Problem solved. If you have the most difficult to automate away job, you entered into it knowingly. The market will ensure that those jobs will be higher paid by supply and demand. This model doesn't require cooperation to work, just a relatively clear set of job responsibilities and a clear definition of what it means for you to be automated away. I actually really love this idea, from an employer's perspective.
udfalkso 12y ago
I'm curious, what kind of company? What industry?
- treelovinhippie 12y ago
  Really small web dev company. Almost 15 years in business. 15 employees. <$2m annual revenue. Something like 90% of the revenues went to wages, and their processes were ridiculously slow. They had 3 actual devs, 3 designers, 2 SEO people and the rest were managers or admin staff. So many manual processes that could clearly be automated.

CarVac 12y ago

The problem there is the perceived unfairness that occurs when someone else in the company, sharing your approximate job, puts you out of work via automation. How do you compensate those who lose their jobs as a result? What if they were also trying, but just happened to not be first to succeed? It's a really cool idea though. (As a manufacturing engineer in a fairly old-fashioned company, I am currently trying to automate as much as possible; no idea yet about individual bonuses since I'm <1 year on the job)

treelovinhippie 12y ago
Yeah it would need a lot of thought around the incentive structures. The original thought was that if you fully automate your own job you get your salary as a bonus. But if you fully automate someone else's job, you both split their salary 50/50 as a bonus. Now both of you are free to work on automating other jobs in the org. So you'd end up with various teams working together to automate jobs in the org. As a byproduct, it would also free up a lot of human capital in an organisation to focus on pure R&D and intrapreneurship.
- jellicle 12y ago
  Why would a good capitalist pay years of salary, percentages of the company, or whatever else you're talking about offering, when they can simply outsource the automation job for $5,000 to China? And then fire you. And then hire you back on a $5,000 1099 contract to automate other people's jobs? You seem to be trying to come up with some sort of "fair" system, as if that were how compensation works now or ever will work.

gtirloni 12y ago

It's hard to change the status quo, specially when there are paychecks directly involved. At a company I worked for, after they realized that things couldn't go on anymore without massive automation, their first approach was to introduce it into the infrastructure lifecycle and require all new infrastructure to be heavily automated. That allowed the legacy stuff to die slowly without much disturbance. Another different idea entirely would be spin off a subsidiary with those ideals and slowly migrate the work there. Perhaps too much work, but if the situation is desperate enough..

treelovinhippie 12y ago
It's definitely a scary proposal for management to accept. The company I pitched this to was a 15 year-old web dev / digital agency with ~15 employees and <$2m in revenues. So a pretty tiny and poorly performing company. Management liked the idea because almost all of their revenues were going into wages. But there must be a particular type of company, at a particular scale, with a particular ethos out there that would be up for giving an automation initiative a shot. If it worked, it would make for an impressive news story which could spark others to follow suit. Imagine an economy where everyone's job was to automate their job...

craigyk 12y ago

This is essentially a stand-in for workers "owning the means of production". Congrats, you are now a marxist (dirty commie according to some).

TeMPOraL 12y ago
That's why I hate political labels. What do you mean by saying "he's a marxist"? Does subscribing to one of Karl's ideas require automatically subscribing to every other? I know you meant this as a joke, but I want to emphasize a general point - one of the things that totally dumb down conversations about economy is people grouping ideas under labels like "communist" or "libertarian" or whatever and evaluating them in batches.
- chongli 12y ago
  All of Marx's other ideas naturally follow from the one: who should own the means of production?
  - TeMPOraL 12y ago
    Well, you can start with the same question and reach different conclusions. Does this mean that you're still wrong? And does the fact that Marx was wrong about one thing means he was wrong about everything else? It's too easy to group some idea with some others and then dismiss the whole thing by noting that one the other ones are wrong.
    - chongli 12y ago
      What, specifically, was Marx wrong about?
      - TeMPOraL 12y ago
        Something, apparently, since every time I get called a Marxist the other party means to say I'm an idiot.
- 12y ago

TeMPOraL 12y ago

This sounds like a cool idea - if and only if everyone coordinates to it together fairly, which seems extremely hard to achieve. I can see tons of caveats, e.g. - If you automate away your non-tech co-worker (someone who can't contribute much to the automation of jobs other than his own), will he get the bonus? If so, how do you assure people doing the automating won't feel treated unfairly as the non-tech guy just got bonuses for doing nothing? - If someone automates you away, will you get anything? Will you be angry? - If you keep automating away your co-workers, who's gonna be left to help you automate yourself away? (assume for a moment that you have the most difficult to automate job in the company) I mean... this could work if you'd manage to set up incentives so that everyone in the company works together and not against each other. But I'm not sure how to do this, especially in a way which doesn't leave anybody feeling he's being treated unfairly.

treelovinhippie 12y ago
Definitely depending on the type of organisation, you'd need to tweak the incentive structure. And yeah the ideal scenario would be the entire organisation working together to automate all of their processes, and for everyone to share in those benefits. The basic, not fully thought out idea, was that if you automated your own job you got the full bonus. If you automate another person's job, you both split the bonus 50/50. I think with most jobs, automation would definitely involve programming and tech skills. But there would be a lot of non-tech tasks as well, such as thoroughly understanding their workflow and processes and identifying more efficient practices. "Automation" can also be a combination of computer and human outsourcing too. In the small web dev company I was working for (launching internal startups), the "creative process" of designing website mockups was incredibly time consuming. I suggested we collect all of the customer requirements and collateral, and automatically outsource the mockups via API to something like MobileWorks/Freelancer/Elance/99Designs/DesignCrowd etc
redeemer 12y ago
> If you automate away your non-tech co-worker ... will he get the bonus? Yes, and you get nothing. It's fair; just don't automate away other people's jobs, automate away your own. > If someone automates you away, will you get anything? Yes, 100% of the bonus. It's not a choice, you must leave. I still think that's fair. > If you keep automating away your co-workers, who's gonna be left to help you automate yourself away? You don't automate away your co-workers unless you like doing free work. Problem solved. If you have the most difficult to automate away job, you entered into it knowingly. The market will ensure that those jobs will be higher paid by supply and demand. This model doesn't require cooperation to work, just a relatively clear set of job responsibilities and a clear definition of what it means for you to be automated away. I actually really love this idea, from an employer's perspective.

udfalkso 12y ago

I'm curious, what kind of company? What industry?

treelovinhippie 12y ago
Really small web dev company. Almost 15 years in business. 15 employees. <$2m annual revenue. Something like 90% of the revenues went to wages, and their processes were ridiculously slow. They had 3 actual devs, 3 designers, 2 SEO people and the rest were managers or admin staff. So many manual processes that could clearly be automated.