Do you think it is ethical to automate your job and not inform your employer about it?
Displaying poll results.17976 total votes.
What this country needs is a good five cent ANYTHING!
What this country needs is a good five cent ANYTHING!
I can't Automate my job (Score:5, Insightful)
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My job is to automate programming automation.
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My job is to tell you you're all fired and to pass on the good news to the shareholders, have a nice day.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Looking for turtles? (Score:2)
so it's automation all the way down?
Fixed that for you. Maybe not the best fix, but the joke called for some reference. If not a turtle, perhaps an elephant?
Too bad I never get a (funny) mod point to give you? Or maybe it's a secret incentive program to motivate comments? Or even a trap in the code of Slashdot to penalize too many mod points canceled by comments?
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Well, someone must be getting them--and misusing them. I note that you never got the funny you deserved.
The broken moderation system on Slashdot is one of the biggest problems. However I still think the broken financial model is the mother of all the other problems and the reason none of them will ever be fixed.
Just went another round flogging that dead horse, though on this particular occasion I didn't mention the specific application to Slashdot's own dog food and the eating thereof. https://slashdot.org/ [slashdot.org]
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Just a quick reply, but I think the best general solution approach would involve something I now call MEPR (for Multidimensional Earned Public Reputation). In a way, this would be similar to the profile information that such corporate cancers as the google are already collecting about us, but shared with us, the providers of the information, so we could use it for OUR benefit, not just sit there and be exploited for their greater profits.
I think the simple "Like" option would act as a weighting increasing t
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He doesnâ(TM)t use stupid curly quotes.
Re: I can't Automate my job (Score:2)
Poland can't into space. (Polandball rule)
Re: I can't Automate my job (Score:2)
Steaming pile of YAML!
It's a trap! Or at least a trick question (Score:3)
The implicit assumption of this question that raises an ethical question is you have some reason NOT to inform your employer about how you are doing your work. The trick of the question is that your employer has hired you to do something and is paying you based on an understanding of how you will do that something. The employer originally offered a certain compensation based on that understanding, and you agreed and accepted the job on that basis. However you have changed the situation by automating your jo
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It's not that difficult a moral conundrum if you make it a car analogy: a mechanic pretending to continue working on your vehicle after repairing it quickly, in order to charge for work not done.
Most people can't work on/repair automobiles, air conditioners, home electrical systems; and most people cannot write code. The average human is dependent on, and at the mercy of, some level of outside expertise.
Why be that guy?
Re: It's a trap! Or at least a trick question (Score:2)
Many mechanics use a system that affords them an advantage. They estimate and bill based on the time the job is said to take out of a book. If they are a fast (or careless) mechanic they can perform the work more quickly, and bill out more hours than they work in a day.
A pertinent question seems to be whether the customer/employer is paying for what is being accomplished (the result) or your time spent to produce the result. A subcontractor on a T&M basis can't legally bill for hours that they origi
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I'm going to try to respond holistically rather than in detail to your interesting analysis. Mostly that reflects limited time right now and a relatively high priority task I should return to ASAP.
In theory, the employee in question should be free to bump his rate to reflect his higher productivity. If it were possible to pay purely by results, then it would all come out in the wash, and every programmer who was capable of boosting his productivity (via automation or any other method) would be strongly moti
Re: It's a trap! Or at least a trick question (Score:3)
"A pertinent question seems to be whether the customer/employer is paying for what is being accomplished (the result) or your time spent to produce the result. "
Exactly. If you are an exempt employee, it is a matter of law that your salary is produce the result. The tIme required is irrelevant.
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Law is not ethics.
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Many mechanics use a system that affords them an advantage. They estimate and bill based on the time the job is said to take out of a book. If they are a fast (or careless) mechanic they can perform the work more quickly, and bill out more hours than they work in a day.
This reminds me of a lawyer joke.
A relatively young lawyer died and was waiting at the gate to check in with St.Peter.
When St. Peter checked his register, he mentioned to the lawyer that he had lived a very long life and he should be happy with this 94 years on earth.
The young lawyer vehemently objected, claiming he was only 42 year old and that there must be some mistake.
St. Peter checked his book again and told the lawyer that he was certain his records were correct and that he was 94 years old.
When the l
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It's not that difficult a moral conundrum if you make it a car analogy: a mechanic pretending to continue working on your vehicle after repairing it quickly, in order to charge for work not done.
That analogy doesn’t actually fit at all, since most of us weren’t hired to do one-time piecework.
A better analogy would be “a mechanic hired to make sure your car is functional whenever you need it”.
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Ethics depend not on doing the right thing according to some bizarre (and usually money-or-power-serving) "moral" code, but on the line "harm no one".
Does automating my work cause actual (not theoretical) harm if the work my employer assigns me is done faster than normal but at the same quality? No it does not.
Is any theoretical (not actual) "harm" in reality just a quandary about the definition of the word "work"? Yes it is.
If my employer provides me with a contract that does not clearly define the word "w
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It's not that difficult a moral conundrum if you make it a car analogy: a mechanic pretending to continue working on your vehicle after repairing it quickly, in order to charge for work not done.
Most people can't work on/repair automobiles, air conditioners, home electrical systems; and most people cannot write code. The average human is dependent on, and at the mercy of, some level of outside expertise.
So what? That wasn't the question here.
If you do the same or better job as the last guy, and charge the same or less money, how are you wronging anyone?
If I agree to pay someone $X to dig a ditch, and they get it dug just as well but faster than anyone else for that same $X, how am I being wronged?
I should do more business with that guy.
I'm not paid by the hour. I get paid to do things. Why should it matter if I actually take less time?
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If I do it better, or as well but faster, I deserve at least the same $.
That's how the free market works.
you get paid to GSD (Score:2, Insightful)
They pay you to get shit done
They dont or shouldnt care how as long as:
1. Its done corrextly
2. It is compliant with various governing or regulatory measures
3. It meets quality expectations
Its not about working harder, its about working smarter to free yourself to spend the time being more innovative to better serve companies expectations
If i have an employee that does this and demonstrates high quality work and can outperform other employees by being more productive. I will pay them more
Emphasis here on mor
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If an employer is hiring someone to complete a recurring task, then there is no responsibility on the employees part for this beyond telling the employer about the required resources. How that job is completed is irrelevant, since a price was agreed to by both parties for this job to be completed.
If an employer is hiring someone for their time, the employee should inform the employer of the time it takes them. Again, beyond the resources used and informing the employer of the time it takes, the employee doe
Re: It's a trap! Or at least a trick question (Score:2)
At one time what you said was part of a social contract. Thst contract became void when employers would downstaff and sack the remaining employees with the work of the missing position with no compensation. If it is ok for employers to work employees additional hours without compensation, I see no difference if an employee manages to regain some of that time back automating a portion of his job.
In intellectual property terms, the tools he built to do said automation should reap him benefits even after he le
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I think we're largely in agreement, but I don't think you write very clearly. Maybe it would help to try to put things into the form of slogans? Put up the memory hooks and then explain what ideas are dangling from them? Sort of like carcasses in a slaughterhouse, eh?
One candidate is "We the people" replaced by "You the worms", where the corporate cancers have become the early birds that are eating lunch at our expense. The cheapest politicians are bribed to rig the rules of the game to make sure the human
Re: It's a trap! Or at least a trick question (Score:2)
The employer shall only be interested in that the job gets done, not how. It's way more important to know how it's done and that's what you get paid for.
By automating the standard repetitive work you can improve your skills and take the next step up in the value chain for your employer.
Employers that fires anyone that has automated their job are kicking out valuable talent that may make the employer even more competitive on the market.
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The trick of the question is that your employer has hired you to do something and is paying you based on an understanding of how you will do that something.
Not really.
You're a resource. You're needed to produce a result. If you're highly-productive, then they can use you as a resource to do more things.
In time-based terms (and I believe ekronomics rulz), the employer thinks he is paying you a fair wage for a certain number of hours of your time
Your employer thinks he has a need for a certain quantity of labor to achieve an outcome. That expectation includes that your work is necessary at all, and not just a thing the organization does but has not considered--one law firm was warehousing contracts for 14 days until the 1990s, and eventually had their serious productivity issues sorted out by a co
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I'm apparently unable to understand the advocacy of fraud that's going on, but maybe that's the real problem with today's Slashdot. Last time I looked at the poll's results, it was still holding with more than 80% picking the answer that fits into one of two cases: (1) "I think fraud is good as long as I'm the one benefiting from it" or (2) "I don't understand the question."
There are times secrecy is justified, but near as I can tell, it always comes back to fire against fire and prior secrecy justifying la
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Folks seem to think businesses have contracts with the US Mint, and they create money to pay workers. Wages are paid from revenues: the consumer pays the labor costs.
Nobody wants society to benefit; they want themselves to benefit.
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Concurrence.
Re: It's a trap! Or at least a trick question (Score:2)
Belated response but, if you are in a salaried position, aren't they actually compensating you for doing certain job duties? If you wrote the automation and are thereby fulfilling the duties required, is that a problem? Until a time when they express interest in automating processes on their own, they aren't losing anything. And often times when an employee does something like this, the others don't know how it operates and scraps the automation when they leave for lack of expertise. Or if you tell them abo
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Mostly you're reminding me of one of my first programming jobs. I was actually sent in as a "word processing specialist" because they were trying to handle the crisis with lists, basically typed documents that they hoped to type faster with a better word processor. I'm not even sure if Word had appeared on the market at that time. I remember using a lot of WordStar in those ancient days... However they often sent me in to handle systems no one else had heard of. Does anyone else every remember Wang? (Now I
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So on the highly speculative assumption that you have a job, how do you think your employer would react if your carefully considered sentiments were to somehow come to his attention?
Oh wait. I forgot it's just another sock puppet.
No Excuses (Score:4, Insightful)
If you're working as a contractor to do a job, and you entirely automate that job, it's incumbent upon you to let your employer know you're done, even if that means they won't pay you any more. If you're working full-time in a salaried position, and you entirely automate everything you do in your current role, it's incumbent upon you to let your employer know that you're done with your current tasks and either ask if there's anything else you should be working on or find something yourself.
There's nothing wrong with automating your job, but it's deceptive to imply you're still working on something by not telling anyone otherwise.
Re: No Excuses (Score:3)
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In no document I have signed in my employment agreement are any of the terms you state as obligation. Therefore, you are factually incorrect. I do not owe them any such thing.
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If you buy a house, it doesn't matter how long it took to get built. If you pay someone $10 per hour to build you a house, it very much matters how long it takes, and it would not be ethical for them to charge you twice as many hours as they worked... even if in ignorance you thought it would take twice as long.
Furthermore, while there may be situations where this is a meaningful ethical dilemma, I posit that often a better strategy would be to tell your employer, write on your CV that you've saved (or coul
Re: No Excuses (Score:1)
Ahhh... to be idealistic again. I did more than was asked of me for years. No one cared. They beat the give a shit out of me and now I only do what I have to. Theyâ(TM)ve never been happier.
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Well, for sufficiently complex scenarios some maintenance will always be needed. After sucessfuly automating, your "new" job is to make sure the automation you did will keep working as it is supposed to. I don't see any problem with that.
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...there is no legal or moral imperative to do more work than you were told to do and your job requires. "It's not in the job description."
Part of my job description is "other activities as appropriate." My employer pays me for my time and I use the time they're paying me for to their benefit. And to post to /.. I also use the time they're paying me for to post to /.. But that's me goofing off when I'm supposed to be working, not me using "free time" because I've accomplished the required task-of-the-day.
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You don't get the benefit of an automation programmer if you pay for a data entry clerk.
No employer have any ethical right to automation scripts unless they asked for them and paid for them.
The law and most contracts see things differently. I think you'll find that anything you create on your employer's time belongs to your employer, whether or not you were specifically instructed to create it. If your expectations differ, best get it in writing.
depends (Score:4, Insightful)
If you use employer resources or paid time to do it, your automation is usually the property of the employer. They should be told about it.
If you're working with an employer such as a military contractor on a federal contract and you bill time you didn't work, you have committed a felony and could spend five years in prison (for as little as 10 minutes mis-billing).
If neither of those things are true, you might be ethically OK.
Double billing isn't illegal (Score:3, Interesting)
If you use employer resources or paid time to do it, your automation is usually the property of the employer. They should be told about it.
Why does one person have the obligation of telling another what their property is? Further, if an employer knew that you could be paid more working somewhere else, would they have the obligation to tell you? As an aside, funny how useful things made on the job are the property of employers, but when something illegal to posses is made, suddenly it's property of the person that made it, regardless of when, where, or with what resources it was made.
If you're working with an employer such as a military contractor on a federal contract and you bill time you didn't work, you have committed a felony and could spend five years in prison (for as little as 10 minutes mis-billing).
That is misleading. Typical in the law profession but not els
Re:depends (Score:4, Funny)
If you're working with an employer such as a military contractor on a federal contract and you bill time you didn't work, you have committed a felony and could spend five years in prison (for as little as 10 minutes mis-billing).
LOL - Yes, if anyone should be the gold standard of ethical billing, it's military contractors on a federal contract.
Re: depends (Score:2)
Yes, yes - workers have no rights. From a legal perspective the worker is always wrong, the employer always wins. If there's a dispute the boss is always right in the eyes of "justice".
But ethically - no way. There is NOTHING wrong with with doing the job you're paid to do in the easiest possible way. An individual had no obligation whatsoever to "work hard" and make rich capitalists even richer at his own expense.
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Yes, my automation is the property of my employer, I signed an agreement to that effect. I check it in to company owned systems. However I do not owe them any explanation. Automation is something I do to help me do my job efficiently, they own the fruits of that, but there was no agreement beyond ownership of the IP.
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If you can't blatantly do it without making excuses, the chances are you aren't on good ethical grounds.
It astonishes me how many people seem to want to be able to sit around and do nothing. I'd see that as punishment.
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I can agree with much of what you say as well, though I've led a group since a couple of years into my career. I developed lots of automation and always at least made it available to the group if not mandatory.
I look at automation as a way to get more done, not a way to work less for the same pay. There is always too much work to do and not enough people to do it. Anything we can automate just gives us a chance to deliver a better product when the deadline hits.
One of my first bosses taught me that the best
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There are no ethics in employee/employer relations, just legalities. In the world of business, the standard is only the law. In every employer I've worked at, no time was spent debating the ethics of taking actions affecting employees, only legal consequences. If you believe that employees should be ethical regarding their employers, their employers should also be ethical regarding their employees. By design, that latter is pretty much impossible in any company over about 500 people.
Now if you have personal
...not inform and do what? (Score:3, Insightful)
You should automate your crap work....and then do something more valuable with your time for your employer and become more valuable.
I don't think it is ethical to automate your work, and then pretend like you are still doing it.
When I was in school for a CS degree, I had a co-op as a web admin. The old co-op gave me all of her crap work that used to consume all of her time. After a few weeks, I had it all automated so I didn't have to do any of that crap work anymore. I guess I could have slacked off and collected a paycheck, but that would be unethical and furthermore a big waste of time and opportunity.
I used the free time to do cooler jobs that I was more interested it. I got in to be more involved the higher-level architecture of our web farm while the old co-op was still doing crap work. I thought myself ASP. I was able to do DBA work when I wanted to learn about it. I built a new homepage and template for large site, etc.
Anyway, be smart and use the free time to make yourself more valuable.
If the place doesn't value you for being proactive, then I would quit and find a better place to work that does.
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AD 1218 (Score:5, Informative)
The peasant is immediately put to death for misappropriating the shire smithy. Later that year, the lord of the manor is awarded a higher title for his ingenious discovery.
Judge not, lest ye ... (Score:2)
Who are you, an ethicist [youtube.com]?
Keep it to yourself (Score:3)
Don't be stupid. Be smart.
Also, what are you doing sitting on your butt after automating one job? You should be starting a consulting business to offer automation services to other companies in your industry. You could be pulling in 10x your current income.
The lesson learned (Score:3)
Depends (Score:3)
In my opinion it depends on the nature of the engagement:
if your work suddenly takes LONGER to complete (increases or becomes more difficult) are you expected to put-in extra hours or pay out of your own pocket for whatever additional resources are required to address that?
Yes -> then you're basically an independent contractor, paid for a fixed service. Enjoy coasting if you complete your work in less time.
No -> you're a regular employee; the ethical thing to do is tell your employer.
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the ethical thing to do is tell your employer.
Wrong. The ethical thing for your employer to do would be to pay you exactly the value your labor generates. Whoever owns the business steals as large of a profit out of your work as they can get away with. Why should an employee be ethically compelled to aid the owner in his own suppression?
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The ethical thing for your employer to do would be to pay you exactly the value your labor generates.
Genuine question: do you believe that this principle applies to contracts other than labour too?
The other day, I bought a laptop. It's really great, and I would happily have paid at least £2000 for it. As it happens, the manufacturer was happy to sell it to me for £1000. Have I behaved unethically by paying less for the laptop than the value that laptop generates for me?
If not, what is it about the labour market specifically that changes the ethical calculus?
Fair share (Score:2)
The ethical thing for your employer to do would be to pay you exactly the value your labor (sic) generates.
Wrong. The ethical thing for your employer to do would be to pay you a fair share of the value that your labour generates. The reason that your labour has value is that someone, somewhere risked their money investing it in creating the business in which you work. They have to get a fair return on that investment otherwise there would be no motivation to make that investment.
Both you, and the original investor, each need to have a fair share of the value generated. Sadly what typically happens nowadays i
One slight problem with automation (Score:2)
You might find that your employer decides to "extend" your vacation indefinitely.
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Plus, he's improving productivity [youtube.com] for the American worker, while simultaneously increasing his virility! The future is amazing.
happy (Score:2)
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Actually, the employer gets his too.
Or did you think the survey said "Do you think it's ethical to not see to it that your job gets done, but get paid anyway?"
If the employer is willing to pay the prevailing wage for the work that gets done because of the intellectual capacity of the employee, that's the free market at work. He's free to pay nothing.
If, on the other hand, he is satisfied with what the worker de
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It's a bunch of people who don't realize employers don't have contracts with the US Mint for money, and pay wages out of revenues. Waste labor, of course, is paid for by the consumer.
Someone has to maintain the automation (Score:2)
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I thought that was the opposite of the criteria to determine who to promote.
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Re: Someone has to maintain the automation (Score:1)
And the way to do that is to spend the slack time you created to improve your skills and maintain readiness to react to crisis from beyond your domain.
Also, you never fully automate it. Automate 99% but leave a manual invocation to the "doallmyshitfortoday.sh" script otherwise it might run unexpectedly at an inopportune time, when someone else is doing maintenance, etc.
I don’t see the issue (Score:2)
Unless your boss has specifically told you how you’re supposed to do the minutiae of you job, anyway.
Most of us are hired to accomplish various tasks, and it is largely left to us to decide how to do them. Who cares if you automate a bunch of it? And where do you draw the line? I’ve been coding a long time, and easily more than half of my code on a new project is comprised of pieces I’ve lifted out of older projects. Is code re-use bad? It is, after all, not that different from automation.
It's all about quality (Score:3)
If your automation results in a superior product, and you keep an active eye on quality, congratulations, you've got a powerful new tool to help you do your job.
If it does things in a lower quality manner, you're cheating your employer.
It's Not Like (Score:2)
I've never seen that happen.
Macros? (Score:2)
Look, there's fully automating your job and then there's stuff like macros.
I'm going to assume you meant fully automating your job, which I consider a "gray area."
knowledge as capital? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ethical? (Score:1)
This is business. Ethical does not enter the equation.
Or, in other words, show me a CEO that gives a shit about "ethical" and we'll talk about whether I should be "ethical" at the job.
Time to grow in your career (Score:1)
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Most likely, the employer will be impressed and give your more responsibility or cool stuff to do, and if you are lucky even a pay rise.
Thanks, I think we all needed a laugh!
Industry (Score:1)
C'mon (Score:1)
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Not ethical IMO, but ... (Score:2)
I don't think it's right to not say anything, but then one has to balance that against the employer's likely reaction. Anything other than "great, now let's find something else for you to improve" is equally unethical, on the part of the employer. If I were working for a scumbag, of which there are alas far too many, I might decide to say nothing. While looking for a new position, of course.
If your job is that simple... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not sure this is a real dilemma for most. If you are smart enough to completely automate your job, it probably means you are smart enough to get a better job.
In practice, I suspect very few skilled jobs can be 100% automated in a way that could be hidden from an employer. If you can create tools to automate individual processes, that to me is no different from learning keyboard shortcuts or other efficiency tools.
If it was "fair capitalism" (Score:2)
If it was "fair capitalism" the person that created the automation would be granted the rights over that automation for a reasonable amount of time and would, therefore, own the newly created means of production. If the employer wanted to use said automation he would have to pay for it, based on how much he uses it.
But this is not. Creation by the employee is considered employer property, this capitalism accepts only wealth concentration. If the only way to receive the profit for your ingenuity is to keep i
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get more done (Score:2)
Think about it the other way (Score:2)
Still worth the same (Score:2)
Whether or not the tasks are automated, the end result is still worth the same. If you can accomplish the job you should get paid for it. The automation still needs to be monitored, maintained, and supported, and there is value here as well. If the results are more accurate and reliable then that has its value as well, all thanks to the employee who found such a solution.
No (Score:2)
Of course the flip side of that would be that your employer finds out you automated your job, copies your work, and then fires everyone but you, so that you can make sure the automation still six months later, and fires everyone else in the office. Is that ethical?
Sure.
Automating is ethical, doing nothing after isn't (Score:2)
It is totally ethical to automate your job. And if you are paid for a task, you don't have to tell your employer how you did it.
If you are paid for your time, my idea is that you should tell your boss about it. You don't have to give out all your secrets but personally, I am confident enough in my skills not to need to keep any secrets. In fact, I'd rather give them out to someone else so that he can do my job while I get to do something new. I think it is the right thing to do for everyone.
What is not OK i
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What is not OK is to automate your work and then use that as an excuse to stop working. You are not paid to play video games or whatever.
So what you're saying is that I should feel bad for being on Slashdot while my script runs?
I don't, FYI.
Does automation mean equal quality? (Score:2)
There are several factors here. First, if the purpose of the job is to get the job done, and automation allows the job to get done with the same level of quality as if YOU had done the work, then there is no problem. In theory, more work will get done in the same amount of time, but monitoring and quality checking the work that comes with automation IS required. At that point, you, the worker, are expected to verify the quality of the resulting work, and deal with problems.
There are several factors th
Grey area .... (Score:2)
IMO, this is like most things in life .... more complicated than a "one size fits all" answer.
For example, I work in I.T. doing systems support and network administration. (There's a group of 4 of us who wear "all the hats" related to I.T. for the company, and we're located in different geographic locations. We all take helpdesk tickets that come in, relative to our respective time zones and ability to be "best one to resolve issue X", but spend a lot of time on other projects too, including patching serv