When I was a student I took a work-from-home job manually generating HTML pages for an online furnishing shop. They somehow had a successful web presence but all sales were done by phone (early 2000s).
They wanted to pay me by the hour, but I negotiated paying by the page instead.
Of course, I automated the job. And surprisingly, at least to naïve me, they were annoyed that I automated it. Even though they got the same result for the same money, and we had explicitly agreed to do it by output, not by time.
I learned something that day, though I'm not sure what.
I think the real question is whether this person is salaried or hourly.
If they're hourly, then yeah, billing 40 hours a week when you only did 2 is fraud. If salaried, I think it's okay.
Here's why: Individuals in the company will be good or bad, ethical or unethical. The company itself will (likely) be largely amoral and driven solely by a profit motive.
So when this person announces that he's automated himself out of a job, it sounds like it won't be a matter of 'great work, here's a cut of all the money you saved us and some more interesting work.' It'll likely be a matter of 'thanks, here's your contractually required severance.'
That is what it is, but if the company is allowed to be driven by profit motive, he should be too. It is within the best interests of his profit motive to continue with the automated work. For some reason when the person is an employee, it's no longer okay to be a sociopathic profit-motivated machine, we're actively disgusted by this type of behavior.
It seems like there should be a fairness principle in this situation when making a decision about things such as this that treats the employer and the employee as equals in a contractual obligation.
If he was a company providing a service this wouldn't even be a subject for discussion. It would be a non-issue. Also he's been pretty much instructed by the company not to rock the boat. It seems pretty clear they really don't care as long as the work gets done.
I've known plenty of sysadmins that have significantly automated most of their work and mainly just monitor and maintain, good for them. Nobody ever criticised them for this, in fact it's good practice. Finally he's not really being paid for hours worked. If it took him every hour of that time the first few months,but then he got better at it and later it took 30 hours instead of 40 nobody would care. In fact I'm sure the company fully expects something like that to happen, again they just don't care.
He should stop introducing errors though.
There are two ethical lines the poster may have crossed.
> I even insert a few bugs here and there to make it look like it’s been generated by a human.
As a few others in the original post pointed out, this seems to be the biggest issue. He is intentionally misleading his employer as to the nature of the work he is doing. The automation itself isn't immediately unethical, but the intentional misdirection could be.
The second issue depends on whether he is paid for his time or to fulfill his job duties. In the case he is being paid to fulfill his job duties, he is doing the job he was hired to do adequately, he is meeting the deadlines expected of him by his employer, at the price he negotiated when he was hired. However, if he is being paid for time, it seems clearly unethical to bill the company for 38 more hours than he worked.
I graduated in the recession without any real skills or an applicable / usable degree (lib arts in a language I could barely speak).
The first job I got after college was for data entry where I was expected to go to an email inbox which received some automated messages with some strings in them and to copy these strings and paste them into an Excel spreadsheet.
I was expected to do this for ~6 hours a day every day. Sitting there, copying and pasting strings from some email. Then this spreadsheet would be forwarded to my boss who would forward it to some other people (I don't remember who these people were, probably for auditing of some kind).
After a couple of weeks of this I really started to hate it. I had taken a class on spreadsheets when I was a kid and knew that there was a way to automate it all, so I did a couple of Google searches and figured out a way to copy all of these numbers automatically. It was done using some VB script IIRC and some spreadsheet formulas.
I stupidly told my boss. So now he had me doing other stupid and mind-numbing work for those 6 hours I would have been copying and pasting strings from the emails (like manually burning hundreds of CDs one after the other with Windows XP and a CD-burner which only worked half of the time).
I quit a week or two later, but learned a valuable lesson. Don't tell your boss. Side note: this is how I became interested in pursuing programming as a profession.
It would be great if there was a means for people to sell technology like this to their employers, for those rare cases where someone goes above and beyond the expected solution. In reality employers don't care because they own your output regardless so why do they need you?
This may be going against the grain, but I think the real question the OP needs to ask is whether he really cares whether what he's doing is ethical or not.
Evaluating decisions like this really comes down to understanding your values and owning them.
Values are the measuring sticks by which people quantify success in life. Whether or not we realize it, we constantly measure our actions against our values, and how we 'measure up' determines our self-worth.
In this specific example, there are two conflicting values: integrity and family. They are in direct conflict, which is putting the OP in a stressful situation -- acting in the most honest way here will lead to a worse life for the OP's family. Creating the best life for his family requires that he must lie.
So, the OP needs to ask himself: Do I value integrity? Do I value my family? If I value both, which do I value more?
Personally, I don't think there's really a right or wrong answer to these questions. There's no intrinsic value in the universe -- but assigning value is part of the human condition and we feel fulfilled when we lead a life of purpose (however arbitrary). When faced with difficult decisions like this, it's important to be aware of what your values are. The 'right' decision for you will be apparent.
I did not expect to see so much contention about this. A company is paying him to do a job, and he is doing that job. Is the problem that he isn't miserable? This baffles me.
What's wrong with us workers? Do you think the Apple executes have some secret message board where they ask questions like: "Is it unethical for us to sell iPhones for $800 when they only cost $20 to produce?" Capitalism is what it is, you play the game and shouldn't feel bad the (few!) times you win.
This ethical question seems bizarre in a world where large blocks of the economy rely on effective misrepresentation or information asymmetry (advertising, etc.) and wealth itself is concentrated in the hands of a few. Those are stereotypical and cliché statements to make but I don't think that makes them less relevant.
As far as I am concerned, this person can provide for his family, and has given the company the results they want. I don't see how it's a problem.
The "late-stage" power imbalance in favor of companies does provide interesting ethical arguments in my opinion.
The way I see it, this is the employer's problem. In a good company, what benefits the company, also benefits the employee. In this case the employee and the company have different incentives, and the company does not care enough to solve the problem of incentives.
There are many, easy ways the employer could solve this problem so that both parties benefit. The employee does not have the same ability to pursue mutually beneficial solutions, and is acting like a normal profit-seeking business would.
What is considered ethical or unethical always depends on who you ask.
Ask most slave owners a few hundred years ago if it was ethical to whip slaves (or even own slaves, for that matter) and you'll get one answer, but quite a different answer from the slaves themselves.
You'll get different answers to this question whether you ask it of employers or employees, capitalists, socialists, or communists, people who feel exploited or the exploiters themselves, and so on.
I'm not sure how much one could make out of such a survey other than on controversial issues there are great differences of opinion.
Neither he nor the company would be better off if he were still doing it manually.
I don't know whether I think it's ethical or not overall, but it's at least a more optimal situation than if he had continued spending 8 hours a day updating spreadsheets by hand.
He's doing a better job than he was before, for the same price, and he gets more free time. Everyone's a winner. Admittedly, he is a winner by quite a bit more than they are, but he would have been perfectly within his rights to continue doing the work manually. Then they'd be paying the same price as they are paying now but getting work with more mistakes in it. Why would they want that?
It's horrifying to see people questioning the morality of their perfectly legal and adequate method to collecting a paycheck. Their employer has 0% loyalty to them. Their employer would stab them in the throat for 50 cents. And here is the employee asking if his sweet arrangement is ethical.
That's how hard Americans have been brainwashed into the idea of corporations and business as "Good" -- that a man is asking whether spending 38 extra hours a week with his son is built on an "unethical" foundation.
Is it unethical to keep a chair warm when my boss didn't give me new tasks to do?
For other areas of life (immigration), I need to get more years of continuous relevant work experience.
I come to an office every day, but my boss just doesn't have enough to keep me busy. My job title is "Project Engineer", which is vague enough to cover everything from DLL debugging to Node.JS programming to network monitoring to evaluating Advanced Planning systems. The latest task is to do some online course in machine learning, even though he didn't specify how the company will need it.
On bad days, I feel useless. But I reconcile the situation to myself by saying it's basically a "basic income" (the salary is not high; the minimum that people on my visa can have). I could think about changing after I have the years of work experience, but years just come with patience, not with productivity. I feel like my situation isn't "fair" because my friends are so much more stressed, but I need the years, not the results.
I also do a lot of side projects and post them online (e.g. learning Chinese - http://pingtype.github.io ), but my contract and visa specifically state that I can't have any other paid work. So all my projects must be free and open source.
If the author of the automation scripts wants to comfort his conscience, I suggest reading more about Basic Income theories.
You get to spend more time with your son. In a country with a terrible maternity and paternity leave policy, it's morally right to do whatever possible to spend more time with one's children. You are doing a great service to the country, as your child will turn out to be a more mentally healthy adult. Just for that reason (besides that you are providing value to your employer), keep going!
Once, long ago, I did two weeks' worth of work for a multi-person team in about a day, thanks to a little sed/awk magic. The work would have gotten done a lot faster if I didn't have to deal with the completely shitty X-over-dialup remote access setup they forced me to use. The project manager was actually upset with me because now we couldn't bill the client for 80x5 hours worth of work or whatever it was. Needless to say, I quit that job the following week. It's one thing to have a little downtime now and then to recharge oneself. It's quite worse to be bored because there's nothing fun/interesting/useful to do.
This case is a microcosm of a fundamental tension. Namely: how should we divide the pie between capital and labor, if baking the biggest pie requires devaluing labor? There are explicitly positive and normative components to that question. Positive analysis can’t resolve normative questions, and vice versa.
Personally, I’m not interested in questions such as whether the OP has been dishonest, or what the status-quo legal regime would prescribe. I am interested in the underlying economic reality. The OP has developed a technology with real and quantifiable value. He created wealth. So: who should keep it?
At the macro level, I think it’s pretty clear that the existing economic and legal regime would have these gains accrue to capital owners. After all, markets (when they function) do a good job of allocating resources according to value signals. But that's just a default allocation; that doesn't tell us "who should keep it".
I love questions like this, especially when the person replies to the reactions. I'm less interested in the answers as I am to the question, "Why did you post the question?" There are lots of people saying that they think it is unethical, and the OP has taken time to respond to these reactions with a rationalisation.
In other words, the OP feels guilty and is seeking permission to continue with the course they have already chosen. They feel they won't get it from their employer, so they feel the need to find the permission from random strangers on the internet.
I've done a lot of process improvement in my career and this is always the trickiest bit. People make decisions and build elaborate walls to protect them. Exposing the decision does nothing to remove the walls -- it only prompts the builder to design even more elaborate walls. It pays to be sensitive to this!
I worked in data entry at a large hospital in the late 90s. I automated my data entry of reports someone was printing from Excel and that I was entering it into another system.
My boss walked by one day and I was reading the Monstrous Compendium and she asked "what are you doing?" To which I responded, "uh reading the Monsterous Compendium"... then explained I automated my data entry by having the people upstairs because bring down floppies with spreadsheets on them instead of printing the reports "to save paper".
Curiously I didn't sign any paperwork when I started regarding intellectual property and I'd written the app on my computer at home... sooooo, I got a bonus and a promotion to the IT department!
They fired the rest of the data entry team :(
A company automating jobs and firing people is called progress. A person automating his job without being fired is sustainable progress.
If you can trust the company to act in an ethical manner rather than a purely profit-seeking manner, there should be no problem in telling them you have automated your own job out of existence.
They pat you on the back, license the software from you for 0.5x your former salary every year, move the folks that formerly did that same work to other projects, and put you on retainer to update the program if it ever needs it. Then they offer you different work, to see if you can work more magic.
That said, I would only trust one of the companies that I have ever worked with to do that. The rest would screw me over good and hard, giving one excuse or another.
By the Hillel principle ("If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, who am I? If not now, when?") you have to consider the impact on yourself as well as upon others. Will the company fire me? Will it keep me and fire my co-workers, since I can do all of their work for a week in a single day? Will it pay me more to do so? Do I have a duty to act in the company's best interest if that conflicts with my own? What if it is best for myself and the company, but ruinous for innocent bystanders?
Clearly, if this is a typical US company, the ethical course of action is to not inform the employer. This is an unfortunate loss for the economy as a whole, but it is the only appropriate response to the modal behavior of business management. Maybe also file a patent on the method of automation, if able.
It unethical to deliberately introduce errors. If you have broad discretion about how you do the job, it may not be unethical not to actively call your employer's attention to your automation, though (but for the deliberate introduction of errors) it should, with a reasonable employer, be beneficial to do so.
This reminds me of this joke https://www.buzzmaven.com/2014/01/old-engineer-hammer-2.html :
The Graybeard engineer retired and a few weeks later the Big Machine broke down, which was essential to the company’s revenue. The Manager couldn’t get the machine to work again so the company called in Graybeard as an independent consultant.
Graybeard agrees. He walks into the factory, takes a look at the Big Machine, grabs a sledge hammer, and whacks the machine once whereupon the machine starts right up. Graybeard leaves and the company is making money again. The next day Manager receives a bill from Graybeard for $5,000. Manager is furious at the price and refuses to pay. Graybeard assures him that it’s a fair price. Manager retorts that if it’s a fair price Graybeard won’t mind itemizing the bill. Graybeard agrees that this is a fair request and complies.
The new, itemized bill reads….
Hammer: $5
Knowing where to hit the machine with hammer: $4995
I think the problem is actually deeper than whether or not it's ethical, but rather the structure in which we place people gives them more incentive to hide their improvements rather than expose it and help the company flourish. Why should OP ever reveal it to his boss? Ethics? What do those matter on the bottom line for them? He could be fired or disciplined. His experience might be positive, but judging from the comments and how people are reacting to it, I wouldn't be very sure of that.
In this case, I think a positive of some sort to give the employee a reason to reveal this automation. People shouldn't be afraid to tinker and learn in the face of punishment.
There's nothing unethical with this situation as the poster describes it. Is it unethical for you not to tell prospective buyers of your house what other offers you've received? Is it unethical for you not to tell the other side of a legal trial what character, logical, and emotional arguments you intend to use to sway the jurors?
No, some relationships have an inherently adversarial zero-sum component, and maintaining informational asymmetry could only be unethical if the other party will bind him or herself equally to not taking advantage of your sharing it. And speaking realistically, there isn't a snowball's chance in hell a middle manager of a large company with legacy systems would not fire this guy if this information got out and he were told to directly or was generally pressured to keep down department costs.
I'd say, get rid of the intentional errors. If anyone asks, it's just because they became so good at their jobs that the work is now spotless. Which, frankly, it's the truth: business requirements were discovered in such detail that automation could be performed.
I don't think it is stealing. In fact, they are getting exactly what they asked for – the job is getting done. The fact that it is taking less work (but it is still taking some work, he still needs to do clean up before running the automation) should be irrelevant if it is his only task.
This is assuming there are no specific instructions on how the work should be performed.
If it were a silicon valley-type company, then it is possible that this contribution would be properly recognized and the employee offered another position due to the demonstrated skills. From the looks of it, it's unlikely to happen.
So here are the choices:
Not disclosing, and getting into philosophical arguments on whether or not they are being overpaid. Depending on the complexity, this is the kind of thing that consulting companies thrive on and charge big bucks for. So, in fact, they may even be UNDERpaid, if this is eventually disclosed and becomes company property (maybe when they decide to leave the company?).
Disclosing, will force some tough conversations to happen. They will probably want the software, which they are entitled to, as it was done on company's time. And, once they have it, there's nothing preventing them from firing the person.
And, to be fair, companies do that sort of stuff all the time. They may start doing things manually for customers, figure out some monetary value they should charge to cover costs, plus profit. Eventually things get automated. Do they reduce their prices? Of course they don't. Cost optimization and the like.
EDIT: typo (also, using gender-neutral pronouns is tough)
five years ago, I had an entry level overnight noc position at a big company, and within 6 months I had scripted almost everything and was watching Netflix most of the night and didn't make any particular effort to hide that I had nothing to do.
I got rewarded for it with a promotion, and then I did the same thing and got another promotion, and another. I'm making more than twice was I was making before and now my job is telling other people how to automate their jobs away.
I keep scripting annoying tasks because I'm lazy and get rewarded for it with more annoying tasks and more money.
If he had just told his boss, and put what he did on his resume, I'm sure he'd be making more money today and have more interesting work than he would have if he hadn't lied.
Ethical behavior generally requires honesty and forthrightness. If you are only concerned about your own ethical behavior, you should tell them. Keeping it a secret is effectively lying.
If you want to do some ethical calculus, you can probably quite easily determine that your employer (or the general economic system) is less ethical than you keeping this a secret, which may give you some "ethical leeway" when dealing with them.
Furthermore, you could determine that your employer is likely to behave unethically towards you if you told them, in which case you may be able to determine that keeping it a secret is a net-positive ethically speaking.
But yes, it is unethical to lie to your employer about how you're doing your job.
People here seem to be generally in favour of the OP, unlike the top-contributors on stackexchange. I too think that employers "naturally have the advantage of a power imbalance" (by keinos) and in my opinion they often take that advantage.
As OP I would think about two options in that situation - although I'm not sure if I can judge that well, since I don't have a child. In both cases though I would stop faking bugs. 1) Once OP stops pretending to work a full time job the employer might be smart enough to realize that said OP has more capacities and thus might provide him with more work. From my point of view it's not the employees fault that the employer does not know what's going on with the capacities. They don't give you enough work, why should you pretend to work? 2) OP could be pro-active and inform employer of his increasing capacities. Maybe they provide OP with new work.
It might be that the employer requests the automation-tool later on, but maybe it could be that the employer overlooks the free capacity aswell.
All software rots: If they had the ability to run the script this engineer built, there is a high chance the same folks would've noticed the automatability of the job.
IOW - I don't understand how the user thinks this will be taken away from him though. It would seem he is a core part to the execution of said script considering he has to adapt it to new data rules etc. once in a while.
IMO - The fact that he is spending 2 hours and billing 40 is deception though: I mean, in an ideal world, the company would totally notice if they estimated an assembly line to produce X items in Y hours and it actually ends up producing 2x items.
Now whether you can engage in said deception, whether everyone else is directly/indirectly doing it, your family situation etc. all lie in the zone of subjectiveness. You just gotta trust your gut and go with it. But one thing is sure though: You get caught, you are getting a reaction - fired/possibly worse. The hr/human ego is far too fragile to let this go in 99.9% cases.
How is this the smallest bit unethical?
The person is paid to do a job and that job is done, and seemingly well. End of discussion.
As software developers we implement change which often mean others lose their job. I've worked myself out of more jobs than I care to remember, automating ruthlessly, fixing even when it meant I was redundant as a result. To not do so would make me guilty about all those systems I wrote which made others redundant. That's really what I.T. was for years ago. Was a time I was like some horrible spectre. If you saw me that meant yo' ass. Once I interviewed some users about some task they were meant to be rekeying, they hadn't done it for months as the old requirement had gone. I followed it back to the person who was sending the first part, a nice little old lady and told her gleefully she didn't need to do that onerous first collection task anymore, whereupon she informed me that it was literally all she did. I just left.
If you're a salaried employee assigned a task, you fulfill the task, and are available to respond to requests during business hours, there's no ethical issue here.
If you're hourly and you are spending 3 hours a week and billing for 40, you're in bad ethical place in my mind.
If you were a company, no one would bat an eye, they'd say your employer is free to scour the market for the best options, they found you and are happy. I think many companies provide services that are easily automated and customers don't realize how little human labor is actually involved.
You could offer something like: "Hey, I can rewrite the entire system, make it completely automated. This will cost you ((time_it_takes_find_good_job + some)*your monthly pay). After that I'll be gone. hat you already did the work doesn't really matter imo and you leave your boss better of, and hopefully yourself too.
I'm surprised nobody has suggested he takes a second remote job. He's looking to send his kids to college after all.
I don't see the problem with doing your job super efficiently. Adding bugs is just "a duck", not a real productivity loss.
I don't see how you can claim the company wants hours rather than work done.
I had pretty much automated a past job and when I quit to try to become a software engineer, they asked me for advice for hiring my replacement (what they should be looking for, etc.). I told them not to hire anyone and that I had hardly been doing anything for months. They hired someone to replace me anyway.
Do you know how John Oliver's "cool" remark, when he's being sarcastic? That pretty much describes every single response I got when I told my superiors I automated (a part of) my job.
I don't expect them to pop a champagne, but they could say something along the lines "this is interesting, what else could we automate?", but it's usually more like "cool, here's more work".
It doesn't deter me from telling them in the future. Maybe someone will appreciate it one day. Maybe not.
The only ethics in business are those enforced by the state. Is it unethical for the state to ask a salaried employee to work more hours? No, it isn't, so I see no difference here. The exact same principle applies equally in both cases. Hours are meaningless if he's salaried. I think it'd actually be unethical to himself if he told on himself to his employer. Our first ethical duty, after all, is to ourselves.
Just for fun let's flip this around: Is it ethical to keep doing the job manually if you know how to automate it and not tell your employer?
Is capitalism ethical though? Isn't every employee an exploited person?
“What is the robbing of a bank compared to the founding of a bank?” - Bertolt Brecht
Reading this, it felt pretty strongly like the person wasn't asking for genuine input as much as they were asking for permission from strangers. He defends the "don't tell" side of the options with a fervor that strongly suggests he's already made up his mind but needs peer approval to assuage his guilt.
I can't blame the guy. I've lived in areas where tech jobs are thin on the ground. But what I would do if I were him would be to start looking, and try to find a new job as quickly as possible so as to minimize the amount of time in this state. I can understand a fear that it may take a while to find a new job - and if he has that fear, he should start looking now instead of assuming that coasting like this is okay.
OP asks "is it unethical?" in his question and proceeds to ignore the ethical issues raised by commenters. Sounds like he was just looking for validation to keep doing what he's doing. I would concur with the person that labeled it more humblebrag than question.
I think the discussion ignores the labor law regarding salary employees. At least in New York, a salaried employee must be paid in full for any day he works any part of, at least that's my understanding. In general, the law tends towards the position that salaried employees who are except from overtime are also except from being docked pay for missing an hour of work on any given week. (Although I believe the employer can take it out of your vacation time etc)
So, at least from a legal standpoint (IANAL) my understanding is as long as the poster takes even five minutes a day to verify his work, he is performing his duties as a salaried employee. It is up to the employer to determine if he is worth his salary or not.
I don't see much of a problem.
You are paid to do a task. Is the task getting done, and at the expected quality level? That is what matters, is it not?
Aside from that, if you can automate your job, you could likely create a service or product to sell that automation to that employer...
I'm just guessing but there is a legal concept call "duty of loyalty". https://www.google.com/search?q=employee+duty+of+loyalty
The short version of which is the duty of loyalty requires that an employee refrain from behaving in a manner that would be contrary to his employer’s interests. That probably means what he's doing isn't okay but of course laws are different in every area and IANAL.
It's would be arguably different if he was a contractor I'm guessing.
Does it really matter if it's ethical or not? I mean, we're not talking about the ethics of, say, killing a tyrannical despot or allowing a terminal sufferer to commit assisted suicide. If it were me, I'd keep on collecting that paycheck while picking up a second job and double my pay. Again, is it ethical? No. But who cares? This person's mom is right, he has a free lottery ticket. Keep cashing it in. You can keep your ethics while I laugh my way to the bank. Just don't get caught :)
No, you signed a contract to help your employer accomplish their mission or goals. Your contract does not include the revelation of how you get your job done. If you can get it done my automating tasks, that is perfect. No companies has been ever created to employ people. The mission of a company is to raise fund and make profit for it to survive and strive. No individual is indispensable. Even the CEO gets fired if she is hurting the company in any way or fashion. What is important is to invest the time you save into what is important to you like family -taking care of kids or parents, doing errands where there is no traffic, doing chores, volunteering with other organization...What is even interesting and important is to spin out an application or a company out your skills to guarantee to get additional income with your spare time and build assets with the additional income for your family. You are working for yourself in the confinements of your employer systems. The unethical matter will be lying about your process when someone asks you how you do your job or there is a company or code or rule that spells out "Do not automate your tasks or job." Introducing bugs to deceive is unethical. Introducing bugs to test the resilience or the reliability of your scripts is highly desired.
One thing to realize is that at the higher levels, it's accepted that salary is basically a retainer. It's payment for the option to ask for work but not an obligation. This is truer the more "creative" or "strategic" your job is. It is known that specific tools need to be used in specific ways at specific times.
However work culture is so ingrained that things devolve into chaos if this is openly said. Games are created so that everyone has something to do mainly so everyone feels equally important.
The behavior itself is OK as long as the game isn't threatened. As long as you aren't actively destroying something anyone above you has created and can produce when called upon, do what you want.
In practice this may mean appearing to do nothing all day but this being OK because you give a script automating seminar every 2 weeks. Or maybe changing work spaces every now and then so when missing you have the benefit of the doubt.
If your level in the org is so low though that you have 5 managers above you all believing in the 12hr work day scheme then you are very limited and will most likely be punished. In most software orgs though this isn't an issue as the "new" culture around thinking work is more accepted.
In my point of view, no it's not.
Your employer's organisation's sole purpose is to make a profit for its shareholders. Unless you are either one of the shareholders or will be paid more for increased production you have no incentive to produce more.
Bar your personal relationships of course, if your boss is a great person and you feel like doing them a favour then that's an incentive.
If you believe you could be paid more for increased production, via a raise or promotion, discuss this with your boss in the form of:
"I have an idea, which I need to spend X hours working on and I'm fairly certain I can get it to work and it would provide Y% more productivity. If I do raise my productivity by Y% what would this mean to me?"
If they state something attractive as the outcome, get it in writing. I interpret this as basically the company paying you for your IP, specially if your automation can be replicated to other employees.
Now if your sole job is automating stuff / increasing productivity at the organisation... then that's a whole other story.
Just remember that if YOU automated your job, the organisation could ALSO do it and not need you anymore - so maybe use the extra time to find a job not easily automated.
An appropriate comic from Poorly Drawn Lines:
http://www.poorlydrawnlines.com/comic/welcome-to-work/
"Welcome to work. You'll spend your time here in two ways: overwhelmed and underwhelmed."
"Is there a third option?"
"Well, there's 'whelmed'. But I'm not sure if that's a word. So no."
I have mixed feelings about the post and what I would do.
1. In my current situation, having a wife that has a job with pretty good family health insurance, living in an area (not SV) that has a great job market, and with in demand skills, my first thought is that I would look for another job and explain that I automated myself out of job. That would be like saying I was laid off from Netflix because they didn't need me anymore after I lead the transition from hosting servers on prem to AWS.
2. But he isn't in that position. He needs to work from home to stay with his kid and according to him
Most likely they can walk out of their silicon valley office and shout “I want a job” and get 3 offers to start the next day. Unfortunately, there are places in the country that just aren’t like that. I’m not trying to have a go, I’m just saying that the situation absolutely does matter.
If I were in that position would I voluntarily tell them I've automated the whole thing? I'm not sure. Hopefully I would not intentionally add bugs. I would definitely be using the time to study and keep my skills up to date.
Using a throwaway because people are going to throw a hissy fit.
Dude, you have family and your _ONLY_ responsibility is towards them. Period. How is this even a question? Get paid, during your "working time" learn something extra and increase your earning potential. You're in a very unique advantageous position, seize the opportunity.
You're doing your job, you don't have to be some schmuck too.
He should approach management and offer to automate this process for a lump sum of x-years pay. If they plan on using this method for 5 years then offer 4 years of salary for this tool.
Everyone wins. They save a years salary and don't have to deal with data entry errors. He wins because he is paid and can continue to earn more.
This is an example of automation and capitalism revealing their best features.
I have worked at enough places where "appearing busy" is rewarded far more than being efficient and truly productive. This seems to be where we're headed as a middle management society and it sucks. Ethical behavior would mean doing whatever you can to reduce such perverse incentives (venturing a guess that means keep your mouth shut in this case).
If he's getting paid for the result, then it's fine but most probably they pay him based on the hours that he works and he fakes it in order to get full wage. That's not ethical as stealing is unacceptable and even if your children are starving.
I would probably tell my employer that I wrote the software during weekends and it's done last week (Since I would probably get fired if I tell them the truth and I will live with the unethical side of this), and it also avoids the human verification which means for them to just get rid of the verification. I would start a company with the the software that I built and offer them monthly based subcription fee to get their work done. You will still getting paid and you cana also sell the software to similar companies.
If he doesn't want to deal with starting company instead spend time with his children, then he can find a business partner that can do the things other than product.
The poster there is referring to current state of things being automated. He is the expert of that particular system. If there are changes upstream, his automation will fail and if he isn't there, then what?
When upper management changes and someone would like to change the system or business process it supports they will need him.
Like others have said, there's unethical deception involved in inserting arbitrary errors - especially to make it "look like it’s been generated by a human".
But my feeling is that in addition to paying the OP to "do a job" the company is also paying him/her (him from now on) to "be on call". Yes, they want X results but they also are paying a salary so that they can tap him whenever they need to. This aspect of the job is referred to when he says there "might be amendments to the spec and corresponding though email".
To some companies (especially those with very little other in-house expertise) having "the computer guy" on call to handle all of that mysterious stuff is worth a great deal of money. The company could consider it their insurance against catastrophe.
Nevertheless I would say the OP should come clean at the next performance review.
So far (10 years) these rules have always worked out for me in the long run:
1) Your loyalty belongs to your company. Always do what is best for your company.
2) Always share your knowledge freely.
3) Never strategize in order to "secure your job".
4) Always pick the project or job where you will learn the most (grow the most as a person).
I would guess 90% of people I have met ignore this and start strategizing at some point. They seem to always lose in the long run.
"The company treated me wrong, so why should I work as efficient as I can?"
"I can't teach him EVERYTHING or my job won't be as important/secure any more."
"I will pick this project, because I have done something similiar already, so it will be easy work."
When sticking to 1-4, relevant people will notice eventually and your trajectory will go up.
When ignoring points 1-4, relevant people will lose respect for you. And even worse, you will lose respect for yourself.
This is just my opinion or my experience so far.
Right, look, This guy is doing everything that is being asked of him for the price agreed. None of the more wonky ethics of the situation change that, and I don't subscribe to the belief that he owes the company anything more then his fair-priced labor.
The only thing he is doing wrong is under-utilizing his own talents and potential productivity, for which the optimal solution is for him to find a better job. As he seems to indicate that the current options are to stay working 1-2 hours of work or be highly to be unemployed, I believe he seek to preserve his employment in future actions he may take regarding disclosure, and wait for a better opportunity to present itself.
If it's ultimately a choice between providing for him and his son and not, its pretty much no choice at all, ethics be damned. I know which outcome I would prefer.
In terms of feeling uncomfortable with it ethically, but also being concerned about finding another job, couldn't the OP just dedicate some of the free time to finding another job that allows him to continue to live the remote lifestyle he desired when he took the job, then let his current company know that he's created software to do the job he was hired to do and has been testing it over the past X months to iron out the bugs? Then he could give them the option of just keeping the software and not him (without anyone employed who can fix any bugs that might arise in the future) or allow him to continue on in the current arrangement (perhaps negotiating a lower compensation figure in exchange for him running everything in just an hour or two a week and then supplementing that with the new job)?
As business graduate who is not a coder, but interested in this discussion.
I believe your own moral compass will guide you, if you feel it is unethical, it most likely is.
However, I wouldn't just go back to how you did it before. I would proposition your boss about the possibility of making your job automated and how much he would pay of such a thing. Whatever you do, don't tell him that you have already done it.
Say that you might be able to do it,if the figure appeals to you. If the figure does not, keep going as you are going until they find out is my advice. Because if you have created it during work time, you have pretty much fired yourself anyway.
Have you done it with work computers during work hours? If you have, then what you have done already belongs to your company and thus your boss and they can sue you for not handing it over to them.
Is don't believe this is an "ethics" problem. No reason for existential angst.
This is a practical problem. What do you want from the company long term? How do you want to spend your days?
Consider the longer term. What happens if they find out you automated something and didn't tell but rather milked it? Do you even care about what their reaction might be? Is this company at all important in your future? (there aren't "right" and "wrong" answers to this, depends on what your goals are).
How do you see this ending? How can you make maximum advantage out of the situation while preserving what you want out of the company (including possibly continued employment).
As far as I'm aware Moses didn't say anything about these types of situations so you are on your own. But don't be a short term thinker.
I did exactly the same thing in a data entry job, after the 2001 internet bubble burst.
Semi-Automated a highly repetitive job that took 5 minutes per document to process, down to under 1.
Once we changed jobs, I went to the IT department, they were not happy with people outside their department automating things and had a similar project already.
In the end, a year later my manager was replaced by another that was his ex-wife and suddenly the fact I was wearing trainers to work was an excuse to let me go (though a lot of data entry people did).
It may or may not have been down to the fact, that with my automation, her department would potentially be 1/5th of its size.
That company no longer has their large offices in the town I was in, with inefficient manual processes involving lots of paper.
The good thing that came out of it, was pushing me towards software development.
They want x amount of data processed, and are willing to give $y to do it. If the OP has found a way to offer x at a much lower price than estimated, good for him.
People make shitty deals all the time, he is under no obligation to tell tell them to fix it. The relationship is contractual and nothing more.
This describes my first job. We ended up automated everything and I ended up getting hired as a programmer.
I'm surprised nobody suggested going back to doing it manually. If he can live with the moral compromise of what he's already done, he can eliminate any concern on a going-forward basis simply by deleting his script and doing things the old-fashioned way.
From a legal standpoint the company owns the automation. You need to tell them. They pay for your time and the IP you create.
An enlightened company would entertain your offer to deliver the same value as a fee for service at a discount to them. (You would incorporate)
I think the practical thing to do is for them to assume that this won't last forever and start using some of that spare time to improve their employment prospects, i.e. looking for another job that isn't in danger of evaporating if anyone looks at it.
If he had a boss, reselling his work, and making those margins instead of him, he would not have this ethical dilemma. Somehow the ethical aspect of work disappears when there is even the slightest layer of sales above it
If you believe in the Gervais Principle,
https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...
then OP is a "loser", and most answers divide into "losers" ("coming clean will be worse, so just keep doing the bare minimum") or "clueless" ("it is unethical to mislead your corporate masters"). I'd like to see what's the "sociopath" answer.
My recommendation would be to ask a lawyer if the employer has the rights to the software he wrote to automate his job. Depending on the answer, either offer the software or offer to write the software as a negotiated one-time purchase.
To find a basis for the negotiating, consider the salary for the foreseeable future and present-value that income.
The result would most likely be a happy employer, and an ex-employee with a lot of money in the bank who is now free to find any other job or move wherever he/she wants. Maybe even with the same employer.
Seriously... Op could quit his job, then go tell his employer he'll maintain the system for a fixed monthly subscription.
They'll have less headcount and op will be free to pursue other activities.
As a follow-up to this question, imagine a job where a significant portion of time is spent waiting on a computer (rendering animations, code compiling, etc).
Two contractors are hired, one with a modern laptop and the other with a 10 year old machine. The older machine takes at least twice as long to process the work.
Is it A) ethical to bill for time spent waiting for the machine to process and B) ethical to use the older machine? Assume the contractor using the older machine is using the best equipment currently available to them.
In business this is called innovation.
If a business found such an internal optimization would it tell its customers what a killing its making or keep the profit and grow the business?
Telling the boss is peasant thinking.
I understand that the company told him to not mess with the system, but why not show them that you found a way to automate the process without admitting that he's been using it for a long time.
Maybe I'm too optimistic or naive but after successfully showing them that it works and saves time the conversation could move on to optimizing other tasks and problems the company surely encounters. Instead of letting the guy go I could easily see how they find additional value in him in other areas.
It feels as though everyone is focusing too much on the specifics and not considering that there might be a bigger picture. If this person has a spouse to support, kids to feed and cloth and a mortgage to pay then the also have an ethical responsibility to not risk their income by coming clean. Even if it's just themselves there is an ethical responsibility to provide for themselves.
I think it's probably unethical behavior, but probably for entirely ethical reasons.
Of course don't tell them. It is always stupid to leave the money on the table. You win nothing by telling in any case. They will fire you, they will own your app because after all you are a programmer and you coded it while on the job so it belongs to them anyway, and others in that company will hate you because you hacked through shit they had to do manually for years. And they will even think that you have scammed them after all that, anyway.
Ethical or not, I'd be more concerned about what I'd do if the current job ended, regardless of why it ended. What do you tell the company you're interviewing with about what you did at your last job? And I don't mean discussing this with them, I mean what do you say about the projects you worked on over the past n years when there's only this one automation?
If you are paid according to time and material, you could be sailing in bad legal waters. Ask an attorney about fraudulent billing.
If you are paid like an FTE, As long as your employer is satisfied with your level of productivity, then it really does not matter how long it took you to produce results.
Nevertheless, it's shady to insert bugs into your products. My work is my pride is what matters in the end.
I know this is an ethical question, but I wonder, would it be possible to have him license the script to the company for some annual fee and then offer the company a support contract as well in case new quirks are found that need to be updated? Combined license + support contract cost == his current salary. Or does the automated script he created already belong to the company?
No. You're performing the job you are paid to do. You could hint that you could handle more work if you think it would benifit you, but how you perform your job, as long as the end result is the same, is not something you want to "bore your busy employer" with.
Especially not if it means saying "You could do this without me now"
Wow. How can anyone be confused about this? This is clear cut. The stackexchange answers are correct and this HN thread is filled with really unethical, almost childish advice. What the guy is doing is basically fraud. The employer expects him to do efficient work. If he can automate it, that automation is owned by his employer.
Quit! Start your own company that sells your job as a service.
If you do it right your current boss can be your first customer.
There was a very similar story a while ago on HN: "Kid Automates Work, Is Fired, Hired Back, Automates Business " https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4167186
History repeating itself?
it's simple - how long do you plan to stay with this company? 3 years? so ask 3 years salary for your program or better even more for additional support and updates
if they don't seem interested in this just keep doing what you are doing
it's same like comparing performance of employees, some smarter of us learn workarounds to make our work more efficient, is it mandatory for us to share our findings? what would be my motivation to share unless i will get significant bonus or share on company profit gained through higher productivity?
now if you just started and you are in your 20s i can see how you still have naive idealistic attitude and let yourself abuse and help company to fire people including you, if your are older you are less prone to this bullshit
I think the only unethical thing is holding back on the results. It's great to automate tasks and the company doesn't need to know about it unless it is explicitly stated. But your obligation is to deliver high quality results as fast as you can.
I counter with another question. Is it ethical for a company to pay you the same to do more work? If you tell them you have automated your job, I guarantee that the reaction will be to give you more work. You will not get more free time or more pay.
This is why I like the new innovation-project type in EU where you are both allowed to work for the company and sell a project to them at the same time. The problem here is how you could sell them the system, if you are allowed in US?
Interesting question here to me is how to align incentives in a manner that works out best for both, the employer and the employee. Automate your job and then move on to higher level problems, rinse and repeat. Profit share?
I can't help but think the ironic day will come where someone in the organization will get the idea to automate his job and bring someone in to do it, and that's how he'll finally be let go.
They haven't just automated the job - they've deliberately inserted errors to make it look like a human made them. That's a big step over the line into fraudulent behavior.
This is a wonderful thread for all the employers out there that want to see how ethical the people applying for their jobs are. If they have a HN account, just read the comments here.
Willfully putting bugs in code is ridiculous - that alone would be grounds for firing. The OPs concern about ethics has made his actions unethical that would otherwise not be.
Companies treat us so unethically why are we so gracious to them?
Whether you answer "yes" or "no" to this question basically amounts to whether you're an entrepreneur or an employee at heart.
I'm only half kidding.
Congratulations. You are supporting yourself on a monopoly rent. Don't be a fool and give it away for nothing. You've already said too much.
I'd argue everything they're doing could be portrayed as ethical in some context.
If they aren't actively looking to replace the job they feel the need to fraudulently accomplish, I'd argue that's the unethical component. I don't think they mentioned anything about looking for more work.
It's one thing to be in a situation where the only options you can perceive as valid are fraudulent ones. It's another thing to choose to stay in it instead of choosing to extract yourself.
The best solution is to become a contractor with this employer, and charge a flat rate per result or per week/month.
I wonder, if OP told the company about his script and the company demands the script is he forced to give it to them?
My question is - will he ever tell the employer about the program? Even after the point of employment.
So you mean "Is it ethical for me to tell my employer I've automated my job?"
Having a employer - employee relationship is already considered unethical by socialists.
similarly, on a larger scale, one could ask whether deep learning is unethical for automating millions of jobs (if not yet, certainly in the future).
There's no universally accepted "right" answer to questions of ethics. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normative_ethics#Normative_eth... for some approaches.
I'll provide a few perspectives.
Act consequentialist ("hardcore"): Is the world as a whole better or worse off after you take that action? Probably better off. By taking that action, there'll be less money in your companies pockets. That money may trickle down a bit to Average Joes, but probably will go mainly to rich people who don't need it. On the other hand, you'll have more free time, you'll be happier, and your child will get to spend more time with your son.
Rule consequentialist: Evaluating the costs and benefits of this particular action is error prone, so you're better off just following a good rule of thumb. In this case, I think a good rule of thumb is to oblige by your contract. Your contract as a full time salaried employee is to, basically, give us your time for 40 hours a week and work reasonably hard. If your contract was some sort of fixed price freelance gig, then things would be different, but by signing the contract you did, you gave them your word that you would work reasonably hard for 40 hours a week, and keeping your word is a good rule of thumb.
Rule consequentialist: Evaluating the costs and benefits of this particular action is error prone, so you're better off just following a good rule of thumb. In this case, I think a good rule of thumb is to be honest, and tell your boss.
Deontologist: You have a _duty_ to follow your contract. You should do it _because it's your duty_, not because you think it'll lead to good consequences.
Deontologist: You have a _duty_ to be honest.
Deontologist: You have a _duty_ to be the best possible father you can be, no matter what it takes.
Virtue ethicist: You should follow your contract, because doing so is sticking to your word, and sticking to your word is virtuous. You shouldn't be sticking to your word because you think following that rule-of-thumb will lead to good consequences, you should be doing it simply because it's virtuous.
Virtue ethicist: You should do what is best for your son, because being a good father is virtuous.
Personally, I believe in consequentialism, and I believe that you can use your judgement to decide whether or not to use act or rule consequentialism, based on whether you think you have a decent grasp of the trade offs. If you don't have a good grasp of the trade offs, you can expect a rule-of-thumb to do a better job than your attempted analysis, and should go with the rule-of-thumb. Otherwise, go with the results of your analysis.
In this situation, it seems to me that the trade offs are relatively clear, and that you could go ahead and keep it to yourself. But I wouldn't blame someone for taking the position that the trade offs aren't actually too clear, and it'd be better to fall back on a "be honest" rule-of-thumb.
Note: I expect that if you told them, they would take the program, and either a) use it and fire you, or b) maybe keep you around as a contracter or something to add to the program. You wrote the program during work hours, on a work computer, presumably. So legally, it is there intellectual property. Assuming you don't have some atypical clause in your contract.
Nah, it's fine.
You should tell the company. There's probably a $20 gift card in it for you.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/3845107/argos-worker-who-came-...
Recently, I paid two guys $150 to cary 4 tonnes of gravel up some stairs into my garden and level it. I figured it was a days work for the two of them, and that the price as reasonable. But then, they ran the whole time, and did it in half the time I had estimated for the job. And emotionally, I felt really ripped off, because I was paying twice the going rate for workers in my country. But WHY SHOULD I FEEL RIPPED OFF???? It is wrong to feel ripped off in such a situation. Their doing it quickly saved me time and stress as well.
How ethical is it to tell your boss and then lose all that time with your son. What ethics do you care more about? Making sure your boss gets all the time he thinks he's paying for out of you? Or your son getting as much time as you can give him? Are you more loyal to your boss than your son? If your ethics are driving you to cuck-out and screw yourself, it's time to delete your "ethics" and install new ethics. There is such a thing as fear of success, I'm hoping you don't have that fear.
I wouldn't tell the employer. I'm guessing they don't care about you and they will take your idea, use it, maybe get rid of you without any compensation for creating the automation.
The job you've been hired for is being completed by a tool you made, and you're getting paid. Maybe look for something more appropriate to your skill set like another post suggested.
Oh and if you're feeling guilty you can read this story about Alcatel stealing IP and forcing a guy to work like a slave.
No.
You're performing the job you are paid to do, that's about as ethical as you need to get, unless there are other parts of the equation.
You should also ask yourself if your employer could use the automation you've created without you. Because to an employer, ethical questions are more often than not disregarded if there is a financial gain in doing so.
However, seeing as you'll have more time to do less yourself, also ask yourself if you might profit from asking for more work/responsibility.
Considering that they're just as likely to fire you as they are to promote you, I would say it's perfectly ethical to not tell them.
Congratulations. You are supporting yourself on a monopoly rent. Don't be a fool and give it away for nothing. You've already said too much.
If the author is an employee, it's pretty clearly unethical to withhold information from the company. The real question is not whether or not it's unethical, but whether the author is okay with behaving unethically.
note: before posting I realized logfromblammo said what I'm trying to say and more much shorter and better: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14657981 but now that I already rambled so much I don't want to just throw it away either, so here goes nothing.
> Is this the kind of example you want to set for your son?
Yes. I can nearly touch the very smart and decent person behind that post (which I didn't fully read because you bolded this and I had to get my opinion out before reading on :P)
Use a lot of your time on that son, and some of it on helping people here and there who don't have much time. Spend little money and lots of time! You can answer your son's questions, you can play with him.. don't sacrifice that luxury light-heartedly. Don't spend that penny without turning it over lots, it's the first of that nature you got, and many people don't even know a person who had one.
Of course, as others said, also learn interesting things and keep your eyes peeled for a job that would have meaning to you you can be 100% straight about to everyone involved. But I assume you're already doing that anyway.
This stroke of luck might not last forever, but it is a stroke of luck IMHO, from the sound and content of your post I'd say a nice thing happened to a nice person who put in the work to deserve it. Nothing unethical I can see about it. If they want it automated, they can hire a programmer. Wanting to have it automated by someone for data-entry wages, now that's unethical. So if you want ethics, calculate a generously low programmer salary for 6 months, then coast along some more until they paid you this much.
One thing I'm sure, suffering 40 hours a week when there is no need is kind of the worst example you could set for your son. IMO, of course. His father at least for a moment is free from bondage, but also free from delusions that often come with "aristocracy" (for lack of a better word, I just mean most people who "live the easy life" pay with it dearly in ways they don't even register). That's as rare as it is beautiful. Take the advice of anyone who never tasted this with a grain of salt. Especially if you use free time to seek out things you can do or create that are interesting to you -- I don't believe in relaxation or entertainment that much, I love being focused and busy, but I believe in autonomy and voluntary cooperation.
Everybody should... well, okay, 2 hours a month wouldn't be enough by a long shot, but I do believe life work life and starvation levels for all people on Earth could and should be compatible with a dignified, strong personality. But we're really programmed to not even want that, to not even recognize that as the minimum responsible adults should settle for, but rather belittle it as utopian. Yeah it's a hard problem, but it doesn't get easier by working on unrelated gimmicks instead.
As you said yourself, the company already gets the end result out of you what it wanted out of you for that money. Now they get the bonus of you improving yourself and the world and spending more time with your son than you otherwise could. At least on a human level, anyone who doesn't see this as an added bonus to be happy about is petty. This makes the world much better than you saving the company a job would, which often is just pissing down the drain. You didn't get this job with the intent of automating it, and you probably started trying that without even knowing if it would work, because you like coding. And then you knew that they wouldn't just say "good on you, enjoy the time with your son". I know I'm trying a bit hard here, but if you squint you might say you have to "lie" to get them to "do the right thing".
> You cannot strengthen one by weakening another; and you cannot add to the stature of a dwarf by cutting off the leg of a giant.
-- Benjamin Franklin Fairless
This is true. And yet, if you would let them, they would do it. To be fair, I know none of the people involved, but for a general "they" this is too often true. And nothing would be gained, only something would be lost, and you would have lost the most.
I say you got lucky, it's yours. Use a lot of it selflessly, but use it! Maybe ask a lawyer for advice, don't be reckless of course. But if your only danger to this is your conscience being infected with the general pathology of society, rectify that. Fuck survivor guilt, you know? Good for everyone who gets as far away from the prison system (in the sense of System of a Down) as they can. Don't leave us in the ditch, but never get dragged back in either.
Workplace.stackexchange.com makes me cringe. It seems every post is written by socially challenged people with absolutely no social awareness or confidence. I had to stop subscribing to it.
This question is a beautiful example of typical incentives workers feel and how screwed up they are. On HN people talk often enough about how if you have a worker who gets their job done in 30 hours instead of the company's usual 40-60 hours, you should give them 30-100% more responsibility, but much more rarely "and 30-100% more pay." Butt-in-the-chair hours are super important culturally and it's been that way for a while. Incentives are screwed up enough we're getting questions like this.
If you've ever thought "I'm done for the day, but I'm going to hang out a little longer to leave at a more respectable time," then you're feeling (and doing) the same kind of thing.