
Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I've automated my job? - Ajedi32
https://workplace.stackexchange.com/q/93696/26528
======
imh
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.

~~~
timthelion
Adam Smith began his wealth of nations with a description of the division of
labor and an essay on how this division leads to an increase in productivity.
Specifically, he gives the example of a worker who's sole job it is to make
pins, and who devises a way to make them by machine, while previously, each
pin was hammered out by hand over a matter of minutes, the new machine makes
them in seconds.

This division of labor is often cited as the thing that makes capitalism
great.

This kind of optimization can be incentivized by way of piece work. Piece work
is when workers are paid per piece rather than by the hour. Piece work is
outlawed in the west. In the US, it was outlawed during the great depression
when the minimum wage was instated. In Europe, I'm not sure when it was
outlawed, but it is illegal here as well. In Asia and India, it is still
legal. I feel that things like Uber, and Amazon's Mechanical Turk, are
rejuvenations of the illegal piece work payment method.

Would it be unethical to apply AI to solve Mechanical Turk tasks?

I don't know if I think that piecework should be legal or illegal. The reasons
for banning it were very compelling at the time.

Edit: spelling

~~~
jgamman
everyone knows that quote but I doubt you've read WofN - about 1 paragraph
later he says that this will drive the worker insane and may literally lead to
the collapse of society:

"The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of
which the effects are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same, has no
occasion to exert his understanding or to exercise his invention in finding
out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally
loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid
and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become. The torpor of
his mind renders him not only incapable of relishing or bearing a part in any
rational conversation, but of conceiving any generous, noble, or tender
sentiment, and consequently of forming any just judgement concerning many even
of the ordinary duties of private life... But in every improved and civilized
society this is the state into which the labouring poor, that is, the great
body of the people, must necessarily fall, unless government takes some pains
to prevent it."

~~~
Natsu
That sounds about the same as normal factory work if we're being honest, which
is still around. Yes, it really does bore you to death. No, it doesn't make
you incapable of thinking. Usually the people who take a crap job like that
simply don't spend that much time on intellectual pursuits to begin with. What
it does do is to drain you of all energy such that it's hard to get away from
it to something more decent.

~~~
nwatson
> Usually the people who take a crap job like that simply don't spend that
> much time on intellectual pursuits to begin with.

There are many who through circumstance or poor (or good?) choices ended up
with the crap job but nevertheless pay attention to the larger world around
them learn as much as they can. Maybe they studied history and are working in
an Amazon warehouse. There is a lot of "squandered" intelligence and curiosity
and unapplied ability in the non-knowledge-worker workforce.

~~~
rubber_duck
I've worked this kind of job when I was younger - I think "a lot" is
overstating it.

There may be some people above the level working those kind of jobs but most
are not really what you would called untapped geniuses. These are folk you
can't rely on pressing a few buttons in the correct sequence when the
situation is life threatening. Guesstimate : a lot of them are sub 100 IQ.

Educated people working in professions which select related to IQ get
surrounded by other high IQ people they forget what the other side of the bell
curve looks like - despite the liberal blank slate fantasies all people don't
have the same potential, a big % is genetic/predetermined and those people are
much more likely to end up in the low income bracket (income and IQ are highly
correlated, and heritability of IQ is significant, and things like parenting
are not other then being potentially detrimental).

~~~
michaelmrose
From what scientifically valid sources do you draw your conclusions.

~~~
rubber_duck
They are super easy to find it shouldn't even be controversial if you search.

------
afandian
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.

~~~
gerbilly
You learned that people value _effort_ over results.

Here's a common situation from programming. A programmer, Steve, works long
hours but writes sloppy code. Steve is often seen by management fixing
critical issues in production, and 'saving the day'.

Eventually Steve, leaves to work at a bigger company and is replaced by a new
programmer, Dave, who is more methodical. Dave eventually cleans up the code
and gets it to run smoothly. The problems in production go away, and Dave can
work at a leisurely pace.

Management will typically think to themselves: Dave is pretty good but that
guy Steve was a real rockstar!

Humans are biased to like stories. The story of Steve slaying software
dragons[1] is just way more compelling than the boring tale of Dave watching a
machine smoothly do its work.

When that company hired you to work for them, a subtext of that arrangement is
that you were both going to go on a quest together. I believe this to be a
deeply embedded bias in human thinking, and that it explains part of why they
were miffed.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_journey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_journey)

~~~
undersuit
So how much does adding drama to my work routine help my compensation rate?

~~~
scelerat
True story (radically abbreviated and redacted):

One group, group A writes crap code. Another group, group B is meticulous and
careful, constantly refactoring, using good testing and code review practices,
taking care to design their software with forethought before ever committing
code.

Group A's code is in a constant state of breakage. Group B's code always just
works.

On the other hand, Group A is extremely vocal. Their manager makes sure to
give updates at every meeting. Hosts (mandatory) all-nighter pizza parties to
fix the crap they broke during the previous cycle. Large parts of the company
are privy to the drama. "They're working so hard, really pulling their weight!
So dedicated to the company!" Back slaps and high fives when things kind of,
sort of, stop breaking. This is a constant, regular cycle. All the non-
engineers think this is the hardest working group in the company. In a way
they are. In that same way they are the stupidest group in the company.

Meanwhile Group B steadily builds good software quietly. No late nighters,
engineers go home at reasonable hours, sometimes early. Same with managers.

Restructuring event. Cuts must be made. Who gets pink slips? The quiet ones.
And their managers. Not the retards putting out unmaintainable crap day in and
day out.

~~~
cuchoi
I feel that the manager of Team B has some responsibility in this story

~~~
scorpioxy
You'd think so but (bad) managers never take the blame or responsibility for
something unless it succeeds. That's been my experience at least.

~~~
tome
But Team B were succeeding and he wasn't shouting about it to his superiors!

------
ohyes
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.

~~~
abramz
So the guy is acting ethically because tit for tat? Fuck no

~~~
ohyes
I guess the question is: Why is the ethicalness of this action a consideration
at all? It's an economic transaction.

If enter into an exclusive deal to sell the number of widgets I make in a
month for a flat rate and then I make a widget machine that creates widgets is
that unethical? I think most of us would agree it's just a business
arrangement.

We might say that it is unethical to lie about them being hand-made or to
introduce defects for the appearance that they are hand-made. I think that's
the most compelling argument for his lack of ethics. But I think that's kind
of tangential to the business concerns.

Thinking about it, if 'guy' were a company with a board of directors and
shareholders he would be under a fiduciary responsibility to maximize his
profits. He would be required because of his responsibility to his
shareholders to undertake such actions.

What are the ethics of the people who he'd leave without employment? Not just
him, but also the QA team. Presumably the impact of downsizing would be more
than just this one gentleman now that he's given away the golden goose, so to
speak...

------
simonh
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.

~~~
mst
> He should stop introducing errors though.

Then the QA team would stop paying attention and if he ever introduced a bug
it would be much much worse.

Seems to me that in this case it serves a "test your backups" function.

~~~
jenkstom
Like his own personal chaos monkey.

~~~
mst
That's a better metaphor than my backup one was. Thank you!

------
hessproject
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.

~~~
posixplz
Furthermore, because there is significant financial gain in the deception, the
actions taken would almost certainly meet the legal requirement for fraud in a
modern jurisdiction.

~~~
camiller
Assuming they are salaried not paid hourly, they seem to being doing the job
asked at the agreed upon rate, not sure how it is fraud. That said, just
because it might be legal doesn't mean it is ethical. Personally I'd tell the
boss "I've gotten this task down to where I have some spare time, what else
could I do" and try to get some more work to do.

~~~
untog
> Assuming they are salaried not paid hourly, they seem to being doing the job
> asked at the agreed upon rate, not sure how it is fraud.

I'm not sure I've ever had a job that outlined my specific duties in the
contract. It usually says that I am to work X hours a week.

~~~
barrkel
Yup; and the company is making a bet that you produce more than you cost.
Sometimes employees generate a lot more value than they cost; the company
usually keeps most of the winnings there, and only gives you enough to stop
you going somewhere else. That is, the competitive pressure on employee wages
is much higher than the competitive forces within most companies that control
whether they get to keep the windfalls from particularly efficient employees.

------
renlo
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?

~~~
antisthenes
I think you're being a little too humble. You obviously had the insight to
learn how to automate your job and that it's actually possible.

There are many college grads who would just keep quietly copy pasting strings
from emails for 6 hours/day.

Incidentally, my first job also required some VB scripting, but the management
was actually smart enough to recognize that it was needed and that manual data
entry was unsustainable.

------
protonfish
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.

~~~
contravariant
Well, the question was whether it was unethical, and the ethics to me seem
pretty clear. He is lying to the company about what he's doing and when he's
doing it. He also had an agreement with the company to work 40 hours for
wages, which he has clearly broken. Neither of those things are ethical in any
way shape or form.

However resolving this in a just way is now extremely difficult (this is
mostly his own fault but still). The way I see it he (morally) still retains
the rights to the code, since the company didn't pay him to write it. However
the company has also been wronged because he has lied to them and broken his
contract. The question now is if the value of his code is enough to compensate
the wrong he did to the company, and if so by how much. That's not an easy
question to answer, hence the discussion.

~~~
FLUX-YOU
> __SO post __: The system is really old - and although I was hired as a
> programmer, my job is pretty much glorified data entry

To me, this is justification to not tell them about it. Programmers are almost
always distinct jobs from data entry. That he is only being given this task is
harmful to his career as a programmer. Take any discussion about interviewing
or careers from here, and all of the discussion about bad programmers
repeating 1 year of work over 10 years, and it's pretty obvious this is a weak
position to grow in.

Imagine this programmer was applying to a company from here, telling them his
only task he was ever given was spreadsheet data entry. And he automated it.
It's good, but not when it's the _only_ thing you've done.

------
smallgovt
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.

~~~
sloppycee
You raise a good point, i.e. "do you steal a loaf of bread to feed your
family?"

> Do I value integrity? Do I value my family? If I value both, which do I
> value more?

To make that choice you need to quantify exactly how 'bad' something is
though, otherwise you can't determine which you value _more_.

It's like comparing stealing a loaf of bread vs. killing a man and stealing
his money _for your family_ ; you'd need to quantify how "bad" each is, to
determine that for ex. killing is worse than letting my family starve.

So how 'bad' is automating your job, is it even 'bad' at all?

------
bjourne
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.

~~~
photojosh
> Is it unethical for us to sell iPhones for $800 when they only cost $20 to
> produce?

If you're going to make an argument, why make a strawman?

My $1000 iPhone 7+ costs roughly $220 in materials. [1]

Apple's stated gross margins are 39%, and last quarter was a net profit of
$17.9b on revenue of $78.4b [2], so that's 22% net profit. So overheads are
somewhere around 17%.

To sum up where your $1000 on an iPhone goes:

    
    
      $220 components
      $390 other cost of goods: assembly, transport, packaging, blah, blah.
      $170 overheads
      $220 net profit 
    

I'm _more_ than happy to allow Apple $220 of profit on my iPhone. You may not,
but let's debate _that_ rather than a ridiculous claim that they're only $20
to produce.

[1] [https://9to5mac.com/2016/09/20/649-iphone-7-estimated-to-
cos...](https://9to5mac.com/2016/09/20/649-iphone-7-estimated-to-cost-
apple-220-heres-the-component-breakdown/) [2]
[https://www.macrumors.com/2017/01/31/q1-2017-results/](https://www.macrumors.com/2017/01/31/q1-2017-results/)

~~~
Gracana
> I'm more than happy to allow Apple $220 of profit on my iPhone. You may not,
> but let's debate that rather than a ridiculous claim that they're only $20
> to produce.

Huh? Your extensive nit-picking doesn't refute the parent's point or even
relate to it in a meaningful way.

------
Bakary
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.

~~~
quickben
Well that's the point. The society is trained to think that if something can
be automated, the people laid off can starve.

Most of people discussing ethics in this example, are oblivious to this filter
through which they are viewing reality.

------
hedgew
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.

~~~
Theodores
It is the employer's problem, there is also the matter of the competency of
the line manager.

Have you ever been asked to implement a feature with the first question being
'how long will it take?' for you to pluck a figure out of the air?

In these scenarios a voice inside my head wants to ask 'well, you are the
manager, aren't managers supposed to know these things?'

There is an aspect of this going on here. The manager should have some idea of
what is involved in the task and have an idea as to how best to solve the
task.

Once upon a time I learned a lesson about lying from The Simpsons:

Homer: Marge, it takes two to lie: one to lie and one to listen.

There is an aspect of that to this situation. I also am not too sure that the
deliberate errors are the wrong thing to do. With my coding errors I often
jest that these are 'deliberate mistakes' there to just see if anyone is
paying attention. I have also joked before now that there is 'one deliberate
mistake' in there to check that people are doing the testing properly.

In a fake-news world where people can be economical with the truth the OP has
the option to weasel out of the deception that way.

So how to rescue the situation in such a way that everyone wins?

Maybe the OP can taper down the deliberate errors to make the work perfect. If
there is also a claimed drop in 'time taken' to do this and some vague talk of
'macros' used to 'double check the work' then a slightly more honest bargain
can be struck where it is acknowledged that some initiative has been taken to
do things better is rewarded and not punished.

For the line manager this can be a definite win with nobody apparently played
as a fool.

~~~
FireBeyond
> With my coding errors I often jest that these are 'deliberate mistakes'
> there to just see if anyone is paying attention. I have also joked before
> now that there is 'one deliberate mistake' in there to check that people are
> doing the testing properly.

If I was your manager, I'd have an issue with this. Testers are there to
methodically work through the code, acceptance test, and so on.

Not to play "find the possibly invisible needle in the haystack that the dev
claims exists as his way of showing they're doing their job right". That's
called a wild goose chase.

~~~
Theodores
This is definitely in jest and is most likely to be when I am providing a
tutorial or at an early requirements gathering stage of a task, i.e.
definitely development code or numbers scribbled on a napkin. I know humour is
verboten at times on HN, but in some situations, e.g. say you have forgotten
to close a tag in some plain HTML and the whole page goes table shaped, then
you can lighten the mood and engage with people that bit more by feigning
'deliberate mistakes'.

With people that are not versed in how to test in a proper disciplined manner
with some methodology to it there are occasions when you need them to focus
more than they otherwise might. This could be important documentation rather
than code. In these circumstances you can include a 'deliberate mistake' and
set them the task to spot it. So long as you point out the answer if they
don't spot it then all is good. This is harmless and is a good way of
achieving the primary objective of getting your work double-checked outside of
a formal testing environment.

This is a bit like the legendary M+M's in the rider that bands have. If the
venue gets the M+Ms right then there is a good chance they will have got the
other requirements of safety, etc. correct.

------
pmoriarty
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.

~~~
Falling3
You're right that ethical axioms are subjective. But most arguments tend to
center around the application of those axioms . I often find that people are
in complete agreement in their axioms, but come to different conclusions in
real world scenarios - due to flaws in their reasoning or refusal to
consistently apply their own reasoning for personal reasons (I know this is
wrong, but I really want to do it).

~~~
DugFin
>due to flaws in their reasoning or refusal to consistently apply their own
reasoning for personal reasons

That's not the entirety of it. The problem is that these ethical problems
exist within a certain societal framework, and that framework is made of
multiple overlapping assumptions, habits, traditions, and expectations, some
of them contradictory. Two people's axioms might be identical, but they may
come to two opposite conclusions over whether these identical axioms apply to
a given situation based on how they each subjectively weight the assorted
related circumstances. They'll BOTH claim that the other's bad conclusion is
due to "flaws in their reasoning", and can still both have perfect internally
consistent reasoning for their own conclusion. Ethics isn't physics. There
often ISN'T a right or wrong answer, only a variation in assumptions.

~~~
Falling3
I know that's not the entirety of it. But it accounts for far, far more
ethical disagreements than people are willing to admit. I've had a lot of
discussions with people around ethics and the use of logical fallacies really
can't be understated.

------
jstanley
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?

~~~
davidw
> free time

The employer is paying for that time, so... he should be doing _something_ for
the company.

Ideally, he'd tell them of his accomplishment and get a raise and a job
helping other people automate their jobs, or something like that.

~~~
threesixandnine
No. He is working remotely and the employer is paying for getting the job
done.

There is no way of something ideally happening in this case.

The amount of taking the higher moral ground on Stack and here (in only a few
minutes) is laughable. He is a single parent trying to get things working for
him and his son. He is even questioning himself about this. This puts him into
5% of the honest population. I am old enough to know that internet warriors of
higher moral in real life are mostly, I say mostly scumbags who would do much
worse than this guy.

~~~
slantyyz
>> No. He is working remotely and the employer is paying for getting the job
done.

To me, the test of whether he is being paid for results or time is whether he
is paid more if the work required more than the 40 hours.

~~~
arthurjj
Agreed. Assuming he's salaried and not hourly there's no argument in my mind
that he should feel required to tell them. If he's hourly I'd say it might be
a gray area.

~~~
davidw
> If he's hourly I'd say it might be a gray area

If you're on contract to work X hours and you're doing 20% of that, it's a
"gray area"?

~~~
slantyyz
That really depends. I've seen a lot of contract engagements where part of
"the work" is just being there (or available) during standard business hours
(e.g., 40h) regardless of whether you're doing anything. So depending on the
situation, it is a "gray area".

------
gsdfg4gsdg
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.

~~~
exclusiv
> Their employer has 0% loyalty to them. Their employer would stab them in the
> throat for 50 cents.

You don't know that. The fact that he's asking this question means he thinks
they have more than 0% loyalty. If you knew they had zero loyalty and would
fire you upon disclosure of the automation you wouldn't concern yourself with
ethics.

I see what you are saying but it's still bad faith from my perspective. If you
automate part of your job you should celebrate that and figure out somewhere
else to add value. He's being paid a full time wage to provide technical
expertise as a professional. To withhold that expertise they are paying for is
unethical in my opinion. He's taking advantage of the company's lack of
knowledge in the space and also taking advantage of "working" remotely.

However, if I was him, I'd try to figure out if I could fire up an LLC and
license the script back to the company for maybe $1-2k/mo and then go do the
same thing for other similar businesses. He could potentially make more, come
clean, and still get to his goal of spending more time with the family based
on his mailbox money.

So he could move to full time contractor (so he can write off his home office
or whatever). "Write" the script. Inform the company that he automated it and
would like to license it to them. Even that is somewhat unethical because the
company should own the script, but at least he can move on and get rewarded
for his initiative.

------
dgut
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!

~~~
Tarrosion
> In a country with a terrible maternity and paternity leave policy, it's
> morally right to do whatever possible ...

This seems like quite a slippery slope. Who gets to decide what counts as an
acceptable maternity/paternity leave policy? And surely you don't mean it's
morally right to do literally whatever possible. Suppose I show up at my boss'
house at night with a gun and tell her than unless she keeps paying me full
wages as I spend all my time with my family, I'll shoot her. Is that okay? (I
hope not!)

~~~
threesixandnine
Stretching it a little bit here are you, now?

The guy figured out how to automate his job when no one else before him did
it. Let the small guy get the fruit once in awhile. What do you think they
will do if he tells them? As he said, they will just take the software and get
rid of him. They won't even ask themselves if it is morally right or wrong. I
say keep the good work and spend the time with your son. I wish I could
automate my job that way and scratch my balls the whole day, even at the
office...

~~~
Tarrosion
I wasn't trying to make any comment about the job-automation situation; for
what it's worth, I find arguments both ways to be very persuasive.

Rather, I was commenting that the moral system in the grandparent comment of
essentially "decide what values are important to you, and if your country's
laws don't align well enough, feel free to break those laws" is quite an
eyebrow-raiser.

Do you disagree?

~~~
liuhenry
> "decide what values are important to you, and if your country's laws don't
> align well enough, feel free to break those laws" is quite an eyebrow-
> raiser. Do you disagree?

This is itself a moral judgement and the answer has been debated since the
invention of law :) Some might argue that obeying an unjust law is morally
wrong (i.e. civil disobedience).

------
peterburkimsher
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](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.

------
xenophonf
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.

~~~
dvtv75
Just a couple of weeks back, one of my colleagues worked an extra 25 or so
hours, but wasn't paid for the full amount. He went and had a chat with his
boss on Monday, demanding to be correctly paid.

The office door was shut, and when I saw him an hour later, he told me he had
decided to not worry about the money "for various reasons." He's still
expected (required) to work all overtime, it's billable, he's just not going
to be paid for anything beyond the standard 40 hours.

~~~
97s
This is pretty common to me. I worked a job where I wasn't at work at night,
but was responsible for doing network maintenance on servers late at night
when the business wasn't functioning. My boss made sure I billed those hours,
but I never got paid for them. At the time I was just happy to have a job
learning so much, but man, how terrible of a boss.

This type of behavior is a warning sign that this business will eventually end
up doing a lot of corrupt things in my opinion.

------
mikekchar
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!

------
etxm
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 :(

------
dewiz
A company automating jobs and firing people is called progress. A person
automating his job without being fired is sustainable progress.

------
stmaarten
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".

------
logfromblammo
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.

------
dragonwriter
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.

------
awjr
This reminds me of this joke [https://www.buzzmaven.com/2014/01/old-engineer-
hammer-2.html](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

------
Posibyte
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.

------
lr4444lr
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.

------
outworlder
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)

------
empath75
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.

~~~
Dashtego
But he's valuing his time with his son not the money earned. He's getting 38
hours a week vacation time, that might be worth much more than double or even
triple his pay.

------
whoami24601
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.

------
SubuSS
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.

------
nthcolumn
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.

~~~
tudorw
I think that's just about the right thing to do, the changing job market and
availability of work is a governance issue, trying to tie technological
progress to governance is like tying a brick to a unicorn, the results
undesirable at best. One of my big pain points is unemployment, I was taught
that the last thing a economic entity wants in a capitalist environment is a
scarcity of labour that might drive up the cost of production, therefore my
government, and many others, have in their remit a less than 100% employment
strategy, the unemployment of X% is financially of benefit to GDP, it seems
overly cruel that we punish the unemployed with a low salary, they are a
crucial part of the machine that is supposed to care for all.

------
pinewurst
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.

~~~
blackflame7000
If he's paid based on task completion then no ethical violation. However, if
he is paid based on hours worked then there is a grey area of whether he is
actually working.

~~~
int_19h
An alternative take: is paying based on hours work ethical? I know that it's
widespread, but in this case, it seems that if your answer depends so
significantly on a thing that is of such a little relevance to the actual
processes at hand (i.e. what gets done and who benefits), I can't help but
wonder whether this is because the premise is just wrong.

~~~
blackflame7000
Oh no doubt the premise is screwed up. Hours worked doesnt factor in a workers
effort level and motivation. I think companies will find out sooner or later
that people are most innovative when they are free to be themselves.

------
Spooky23
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.

~~~
vacri
If you're a salaried employee, you effectively have a standing contract where
you're billing for 40.

~~~
Spooky23
Not unless you have a contract that states otherwise.

A salary definitionally is a fixed periodic rate paid for tasks performed for
exempt employees. Piece-work, whether that be hours worked or output produced
is metered.

------
teekert
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.

------
lordnacho
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.

~~~
blackflame7000
Moonlighting is often against company's policy because there is a legal
concept which applies to all employees called the “duty of loyalty.” Because
legally employees are “agents” of their employer, they are required to act in
the best interests of the employer during their employment

~~~
lordnacho
It might be against some contract he's signed, which would make it illegal.

Aside from that I'm not sure I buy this "duty of loyalty" idea. What social
purpose does it serve? Sounds like something that's common because at some
point it became normal to be able to get people to agree to it. After all,
most people in history could not work remotely.

There's also plenty of other professions where you can work for several people
at once, for instance you can be a columnist and do prep work that's useful
for more than one column.

What I don't like is this idea that he's being paid for his time, not his
product. It seems pretty clear cut he's being paid to maintain this legacy
system. He's doing it. If something happens, he should be available, but
otherwise he should be able to do whatever he wants, including other work.

~~~
blackflame7000
Yes I totally agree. Too many corporations view their employees as boarderline
indentured servants and it's from that sense of ownership where the need to
control ones time originates. Time is after all the most valuable thing we
have.

~~~
Bakary
It's the only thing we have.

------
baron816
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.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
Management have incentives to do this, more staff means more prestige and
usually more pay.

------
drej
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.

------
mnm1
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.

------
mch82
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?

~~~
s73ver
Are they paying for it to be automated? Further, is it ethical to automate
yourself out of a job, and not be able to support your family?

------
auserperson
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

~~~
contravariant
Tu quoque isn't a valid argument. More importantly it implies you actually do
think his behaviour is unethical.

~~~
Qwertious
It's basically the "robbing a thief" argument - it's not stealing, because the
loot wasn't theirs in the first place.

------
EdgarVerona
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.

------
carlisle_
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.

------
whiddershins
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.

------
notadoc
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...

------
greggman
I'm just guessing but there is a legal concept call "duty of loyalty".
[https://www.google.com/search?q=employee+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.

~~~
tome
Acting out of "duty of loyalty" seems fine as long as the employer acts
reciprocally out of "duty of loyalty" to the employee.

------
richpimp
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 :)

------
stefbarrigah
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.

------
dlwdlw
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.

------
holografix
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.

------
peterburkimsher
An appropriate comic from Poorly Drawn Lines:

[http://www.poorlydrawnlines.com/comic/welcome-to-
work/](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."

------
scarface74
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.

------
getdatpapersong
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.

------
nemo44x
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.

~~~
cshenton
Except that under most contracts, the company already owns the code currently
used to automate the job.

~~~
nemo44x
You don't sell them that code. You sign an agreement and write new code.

------
mcrad
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).

------
buremba
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.

~~~
JauntTrooper
You say he's being unethical and 'stealing', yet then you say in his position
you'd lie to your employer and claim you developed the code on weekends
instead of on company time in order to charge the employer a monthly
subscription fee and also sell it to potential competitors. Really?

~~~
buremba
It's unethical because he puts some errors to make the work look like human
work and he also reports his employer 40 hours instead of 2 hours which is not
acceptable.

On the other hand, he doesn't want to lose his job and even gave the example
of "starving children" so it looks like he's stuck with it.

If he developed the software during the working hours and used the company
resources while developing it but still tries to own the software and selling
it to his employer, it's also unethical but I already told that "I would live
with this lie" because his employer never asked his to automate the job, he
did it himself. By selling the software, he can even save their money by
avoiding the verification and also will have to lie once and then he can relax
himself. So it's a grey area for him and probably better than trying to
legitimate himself or losing his job.

------
matt_s
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.

------
nehushtan
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.

------
janxgeist
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.

~~~
Vektorweg
No offense, but 1. sounds like slave capitalism 101.

~~~
janxgeist
It's not slavery: you are free to quit your job and work for another company,
or start your own business. But if you DECIDE to work for a company and take
the thousand(s) of dollars each month so that you can live a comfortable life,
then you owe them your loyality.

~~~
stmaarten
I wonder if you would agree with your statement on loyalty if the roles are
reversed:

"If the company DECIDES to hire you and use thousands of hours of your life
each year so that the company can enjoy a profit, the company owes you its
loyalty."

Rare is the company whose leadership feels that any meaningful loyalty is owed
to employees.

Edit: I want to add that your 4 guidelines are wonderful if you work for
genuinely good, moral people who want to "do the right thing" and who have the
luxury of setting such priorities. But caution is necessary. Far too many
employees devote decades to a company only to find when they're ill or older
that loyalty was a one-way street.

~~~
janxgeist
I agree with your reversed statement. The company needs to be loyal to it's
employees too.

But in my opinion, some principles should not depend on how the other side
acts:

"If my company is not loyal to me, it's my right to deceive them as well."

-> No, I will stick to my principles. I might bring it up to management. I might quit. But I won't act destructively because the other side does.

Otherwise it's a downwards spiral: you will meet many toxic people in your
life. If you lower your standards everytime you do, at some point you will be
one of them.

------
DogPawHat
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.

------
the_watcher
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)?

------
businesstips
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.

------
mythrwy
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.

------
stuaxo
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.

------
Hasz
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.

------
hateful
This describes my first job. We ended up automated everything and I ended up
getting hired as a programmer.

------
rayiner
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.

~~~
smallgovt
In my opinion, something is wrong with your value set when you're actively
destroying productivity solely to seek alignment with your personal values.

~~~
JauntTrooper
It's like the old Milton Friedman story told by Stephen Moore:

'At one of our dinners, Milton recalled traveling to an Asian country in the
1960s and visiting a worksite where a new canal was being built. He was
shocked to see that, instead of modern tractors and earth movers, the workers
had shovels. He asked why there were so few machines. The government
bureaucrat explained: “You don’t understand. This is a jobs program.” To which
Milton replied: “Oh, I thought you were trying to build a canal. If it’s jobs
you want, then you should give these workers spoons, not shovels.”'

~~~
tome
Cool story, but did Milton Friedman genuinely do in his head the optimization
between the social benefit of the jobs program and the infrastructure benefit
of the new canal?

------
mathattack
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)

~~~
sowbug
Yeah, I don't see the employee's ethical issue. He was hired as a programmer.
While at the company, using the company's computers, as a hired programmer, he
wrote a program. The company owns the work product. Either he lies to his
employer about what he's done (which would be almost certainly violating the
employment agreement, because he's now using company property -- the program
-- without permission and for his exclusive benefit), or he truthfully reports
his work status (which is what the employment agreement surely calls for). End
of story.

The company, on the other hand, does have an ethical issue. It'd be totally
legal to do exactly what OP fears: say thank you for the automation and fire
him. But would that be right?

------
rcthompson
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.

------
slim
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

------
nandemo
If you believe in the Gervais Principle,

[https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-
principle-...](https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-
the-office-according-to-the-office/)

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.

~~~
theparanoid
Show incompetence in the testers and get them fired.

------
bayesian_horse
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.

------
jarym
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.

~~~
justboxing
> and op will be free to pursue other activities.

Nope. I think op has evaluated this angle and here's what he says in his post.

> Although I get the feeling there’s a specific audience at Stackoverflow,
> mainly the type of people who I imagine can not appreciate living in a place
> where jobs aren’t aplenty. 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.

and

> If I could get another job, of course I would. But the fact is, it would not
> be that easy. And as mentioned, I work remotely..

~~~
kelnos
Just because it's not easy to get another job, it doesn't mean it's not
possible. He works 1-2 hours a week and has a ton of time on his hands! That's
plenty of time to start looking for a new job (without quitting the current
one), while still leaving plenty of time to spend with his son. Since he has
specific requirements about the job (remote, work from home, etc.), it will
almost certainly take longer than "usual" to find a new job, but that's
fine... he has the time. After finding a new job, give notice, and give them
the automation tool, and that's that.

The issue I find more important here is that this guy isn't growing
professionally where he his now. If this do-nothing job would be guaranteed to
be around for the rest of his life, maybe that'd be ok. But it won't be. Maybe
the company fails. Maybe this division gets sacked. Maybe at some point they
_do_ decide to finally overhaul this system, and his job ends up no longer
being required anyway. Maybe at some point he slips somehow, and they figure
out how little he's working, get mad, and fire him.

After that, what then? Then he has no job, and no significant things on his
resume for several years that will help him get a new one. I think this was a
nice train to ride for a while, but it's time to start looking for a more
sustainable one.

~~~
jdbernard
I'm surprised this thinking isn't more prevalent. When I have lots of free
time at work with few interesting problems I know it's time to find a new job.

I agree with the guy in that I'd like to have more time with my family, but I
can't imagine effectively not working and growing at all. He seems in the
ideal position to search for a dream job. What he has is not a dream job.

~~~
ryandrake
It seems that he gets paid full time, but due to his ingenuity, gets to spend
most of it with his family. If that's not a dream job, what is?

~~~
jdbernard
Well, if he's not making any progress career-wise it's a dead-end job.
Personally, I'd love to scale back to like 20 hours a week and spend more time
with family, but in those 20 hours I'm working I'd want to keep growing.
Chances are that the job he has will end before retirement. I would want to be
prepared for that eventuality.

------
toast42
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.

------
ryanmarsh
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.

------
thirdsun
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.

------
flukus
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.

------
anovikov
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.

------
35bge57dtjku
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?

------
venture_lol
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.

------
hysan
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?

------
fisknils
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"

------
kyberias
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.

~~~
aykutcan
He is doing efficient work. It is so much efficient than working by hand.

Why automation will be owned by his employer ? Just why ?

~~~
triangleman
They hired a "computer guy" for "data entry". The computer guy develops a
system to facilitate data entry, which is exactly what he was hired to do.

It's not like he developed a cool iPhone game in his spare time, unrelated to
his job. The work was directly job related.

~~~
kyberias
Yes, and as you said, the work was directly job related, he developed a tool
to make his work more efficient. Then he didn't tell about the tool to his
employer. Obviously he should have.

They pay for his time. He should have disclosed that he can now perform the
work much faster so that they can use his time for other stuff.

Why is this so hard to accept?

------
aey
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.

------
suls
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](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4167186)

History repeating itself?

------
Markoff
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

------
danthemanvsqz
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.

------
bhgraham
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.

------
punnerud
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?

------
erkkie
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?

------
nsxwolf
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.

------
ceejayoz
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.

~~~
crispyambulance
"Fraud" is a _really_ strong word.

Intention matters greatly in situations where someone is doing something which
may be interpreted as duplicitous.

This is someone who is in a situation that not many people have experienced.
He has the integrity to think out loud about his actions and bring them into
question for himself and others.

I think he should come clean about the automation to his employer (he doesn't
have to say its been going on for 6 months, of course). Unless the employer is
a total ghoul, it is unlikely that this would get him into trouble.

If the story is true, the guy is NOT a fraudster. There are vastly more
unethical things to worry about than a clever guy who puts VBA macros to good
use.

~~~
Eyas
The employer can choose to fire them, not because they are in trouble, but
because they are no longer needed. I'm surprised you don't think that is
likely.

I would bet most companies are interested in reducing "waste" by not hiring
people no longer needed. The way the OP talks about the company, it seems like
they have no need for actual developers.

~~~
crispyambulance
Sure, the validators that were checking his work could easily be canned. Mr
VBA-Wizard, however, might be put to work doing other "magic" in the
organization.

~~~
kelnos
The OP already addressed this: "This isn’t like a company with tons of IT work
- they have a legacy system where they keep all their customer data since
forever, and they just need someone to maintain it." The OP believes that
there won't be other work for him if his current job becomes unnecessary.

------
kyberias
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.

------
methodin
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.

------
ryanmarsh
Companies treat us so unethically why are we so gracious to them?

------
omginternets
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.

------
aj7
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.

------
crawfordcomeaux
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.

------
m83m
The best solution is to become a contractor with this employer, and charge a
flat rate per result or per week/month.

------
TheBaku
I wonder, if OP told the company about his script and the company demands the
script is he forced to give it to them?

------
myrloc
My question is - will he ever tell the employer about the program? Even after
the point of employment.

------
tfont
So you mean "Is it ethical for me to tell my employer I've automated my job?"

------
Vektorweg
Having a employer - employee relationship is already considered unethical by
socialists.

------
alkoumpa
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).

------
adamzerner
There's no universally accepted "right" answer to questions of ethics. See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normative_ethics#Normative_eth...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normative_ethics#Normative_ethical_theories)
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.

------
NoCanDo
Nah, it's fine.

------
known
NO as per
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_Law_of_Headline...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_Law_of_Headlines)

------
danjoc
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-...](https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/3845107/argos-worker-who-came-up-with-
idea-which-saved-company-over-1-5million-is-thanked-with-10-gift-voucher/)

~~~
booleandilemma
Thanks for that article!

Whenever I see this kind of thing come up I think of the chicken nuggets scene
from The Wire.

tl;dr Just code to the spec, and leave your creativity for your own time.

[https://mortonandgeorge.wordpress.com/2011/01/28/the-wire-
on...](https://mortonandgeorge.wordpress.com/2011/01/28/the-wire-on-mcnuggets-
compensation-schemes-and-consumer-surplus/)

------
timthelion
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.

------
hsod
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.

~~~
icebraining
_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._

Why? Virtually all companies keep secrets both from their employees as well as
their clients. In fact, these are even protected by force of law. Why is it
dishonest for the employee to act towards the company in the same way? Isn't
that a double standard?

~~~
hsod
I addressed this pretty directly in my second paragraph. Some people are
interested in behaving ethically even in the face of unethical behavior. It is
absolutely a double standard, but one that a person willingly applies to
themselves.

~~~
icebraining
No, it's not a matter of "they're unethical, so I can be too"; I don't see why
keeping a secret is necessarily unethical in the first place. Are trade
secrets unethical?

~~~
hsod
Keeping a secret is not _necessarily_ unethical, deception is (with the same
caveats as above). For instance, your employer isn't ethically obligated to
tell you how much money your co-workers make. However, if they _do_ tell you,
they are ethically obligated to tell you the truth.

In this case, the author has told the employer that they are doing this work
in a certain way. They are continuing to lie about it in ongoing way by
intentionally including mistakes to make it look as if they did it by hand.
This is unethical deception.

If the author truly believed that the employer didn't care, then keeping it a
secret would not be unethical. But clearly this is not the case.

------
keksicus
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.

------
Para2016
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.

[http://www.salon.com/2004/08/18/evan_brown/](http://www.salon.com/2004/08/18/evan_brown/)

------
s73ver
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.

------
vacri
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.

------
thinkfurther
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](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.

------
_RPM
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.

