
Kid Automates Work, Is Fired, Hired Back, Automates Business - andrewcooke
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/vomtn/update_my_friends_call_me_a_scumbag_because_i/
======
eggbrain
For those of you who want the short version of his story, the OP wrote a
password-protected program on company time that automated his data entry, and
because he was so accurate, was getting most of the bonus money meant for the
rest of his group (without anyone knowing he was automating it). He told his
boss, who fired him, but then the boss and manager asked for the password to
the program. OP refused, called up the boss's boss, OP was brought in to talk,
and given a new job as a software engineer.

He negotiated for a salary as good as what he was making before (with
bonuses), and negotiated for all the other employees who would be fired from
data-entry to get other jobs in the company. OP's original scumbag boss gets
fired, all the old data-entry employees/friends are better off, OP gets
amazing new job.

Now that being said, perhaps I'm skeptical, pessimistic, or just being
negative, but this story seems too perfect. Clever employee gets huge
promotion, and negotiates for all of his coworkers to be better off as well.
Scumbag boss who fires employee gets fired himself. All within the span of a
month.

Perhaps I have a negative view of companies as well, but when he said he
programmed it on company time, and wouldn't give up the password, I was
surprised that the company didn't just sue him for not giving up company
property.

~~~
rprasad
I agree. this story plays out exactly like every teenage coder's wet dream.
It's got everything: persecution, vindication, crap boss who for some reason
gets fired for firing the teenager ( _in the real world, firing someone who
refused to turn over company property is not a reason to get fired_ ),
teenager saves everyone else's jobs, and even gets a promotion to a much
better job.

This kid apparently also has insane negotiation skills, and somehow managed to
negotiate his own salary increase and salary increases for everyone else
around him.

All this, in a month...

We'll probably see an update in the next day or two that this story was a
hoax.

UPDATE: More evidence of a hoax: the kid was making more money in an entry-
level data-entry position than a manager-level employee in the company. And
that entry-level data-entry position paid substantial bonsuses (which is the
alleged reason the kid was making more than his manager.) And on top of all
that, the boss was not eligible for bonuses bases on the productivity of his
supervisees. Finally, the kid is now apparently the lead programmer in his
_own frigging department_ but somehow does not have the authority to change
his desk chair. Yeah, that's all completely believable.

~~~
Goladus
Upper-level bosses probably never had any intention of firing all the workers
just because some script automated a portion of their work. If it's a large-
scale, decisions like that probably wouldn't be made without considering MPL
abstractly or without considering the costs and bad PR incurred when laying
off a significant number of people. That part of the narrative was likely more
significant in the kid's mind than reality.

And apparently, the sub-boss was already on thin ice. This may have just been
the final excuse needed to get rid of him.

~~~
wisty
Also, I'd guess that when all his employees were re-assigned, there wasn't
much point in keeping him on.

~~~
simonbrown
The post states that one of his coworkers was promoted to the role.

------
jiggy2011
I have a similar story which I posted on HN before, here is the repost:

A fair number of years ago I worked a non tech office job for a few months.
Basically a large portion of the job was checking though a spreadsheet looking
at figures and checking them against a corresponding row in another part of
the sheet. Assuming the figures matched you would copy the figures elsewhere
in the sheet, append some characters to them and mark ones that were wrong in
red. The data I think came from some legacy database.

There were a few more steps that I don't quite recall but basically they
provided a list of instructions on how to do this part of the job and I
immediately recognized that this was basically psuedocode, there was nothing
"human" required at all. They expected a human error rate of around 1% with
this and sheets were often checked twice.

A few days into the job I decided to try writing a Macro to do this job, so
that night at home I wrote my macro and emailed it to myself. Next day I
loaded it up, ran it and then checked the results by hand. I did this until I
was satisfied that the error rate was 0.

Next few days I just started running my macro instead of working by hand,
meaning I got about 3 hours work done in under a second and could spend the
rest of the day doing other (marginally less monotonous) work.

Now in this office they tracked people's productivity levels as well as their
error rate, so naturally I end up with obscene performance stats and no
errors.

So the team manager of course asks me to explain myself and I show her the
macro and offer to show her how to set it up on other computers and explain
how well I tested it etc. The response I got surprised me somewhat.

"You are cheating your stats!" was what I was told. Of course I explained that
it wouldn't be "unfair" if everyone had the software. Now at the end of every
month they had some (cheap) prize for the person with the highest productivity
and lowest error rate and since other tasks were not so easily "scored" the
spreadsheet task was a big part of the deal.

No matter how I tried to explain it was like hitting a brick wall, because in
her eyes I was "cheating". They had been doing this monotonous work for so
long and were so used to it that wasting probably hundreds of man months was
preferable to questioning if there might be a better way.

Of course I offered to forfeit any "prize" I might win (despite potentially
saving them thousands of pounds), but no we type figures and then somebody
wins a prize at the end dammit!

~~~
mindcrime
I had a similar experience, that was at least as groan inducing. I was working
a low-level IT job, as an AS/400 operator / network tech. The "IT manager" was
a complete fraud who knew about as much about technology as I know about the
culture of ancient Mesopotamia, and she had some project she was trying to get
done, involving moving some data from an old database into a new one. OK, easy
enough, right? Well, a couple of her "pet" subordinates spent a couple of
weeks trying to migrate this data and couldn't get it done, so they gave up. I
came into work one evening and found a fracking HUGE stack of greenbar on my
desk, and then she comes in and goes "we're going to rekey all this data into
the new database over the next couple of weeks, so start chewing through as
much of it as you can tonight."

My first thought was "WTF?" My second and third thoughts were something like
"Are you f%!#ng shitting me?" and "You are f%!#ng braindead."

So, after everyone else left for the evening, I found the machine with the old
database (running Paradox 4 for DOS), exported the data to dbaseIII format
(because I knew it was a commonly used and widely supported format), put it on
a floppy, took it to the machine with the Access database and loaded it up.
Turns out I had to write one update query to populate one of the fields, but
that took something like 5 minutes. 30 minutes into the whole thing and the
entire database is finished.

Next day I see the "IT Manager" and she's like "How much of that data did you
key in last night?" I looked at her and said "none." She about blew a fuse and
started yelling "Why not, I told you to <blah, blah, blah>?" Then I told her
the whole thing was done and she's like "But.. wait, what? But..but...
_splutter_ _cough_ _splutter_ but, but... So-and-so and You-know-who spent TWO
WHOLE WEEKS trying to migrate that data and you mean to tell me you did it in
one night?"

Of course she never forgave me for showing up her "pets" like that.

Needless to say, I didn't work at this place very long.

Edit: there's another fun story to tell about that place, and how this same IT
manager used the AS/400 system message queue facility as a poor man's IM
system, and - more to the point - used it to talk shit about anybody and
everybody she worked with (myself included). Of course this dim-bulb didn't
realize that when I was logged in as QSYSOPR I could read all her messages.
So, on my last night there, I printed out copies of a few "choice" messages
from her, and then sent a systemwide message saying something like:

"Foo: You should probably be aware that a QSYSOPR can read all of your system
messages, and knows what you've been saying about everybody in this company.
You should probably hope that _somebody_ doesn't take offense, and print out
copies of some of these messages and distribute them so that _certain other
people_ can see what you've had to say about them."

In the end, I decided not to leave the printouts to be found, but a co-worker
told me a few months later that I nearly gave this "IT manager" a heart-attack
and that she spent weeks doing damage control and trying not to get fired.

That was like 13 years ago, and I'm guessing she hasn't forgiven me for that
either. _shrug_

~~~
mynameishere
I love stories like these. God knows if they're true:

<http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/The-Indexer.aspx>

------
nicholassmith
I remember reading the original post when he was asking for advice, nice to
see him coming back with a good follow up.

The company he works for is definitely doing it right, they've spotted an
opportunity to put someone in a correct role with no hiring process, and with
them up to speed on the corporate background. They've optimised a department
out and managed to retain the staff in other areas, and saved once again money
on hiring, and saved money on firing the dead weight (I'm not sure what Dutch
employment law is like but it's notoriously difficult to fire someone in the
UK). Pragmatic and sensible, companies take note.

EDIT: from my limited experience, every Dutch person (all 6) I've met has been
pretty pragmatic and sensible, maybe a cultural thing. I could be wrong
though!

~~~
hencq
Firing people in the Netherlands is sufficiently hard that it causes me to
think that this story has been fabricated or at least been exaggerated a
little. I can see how his original 'cheating of the system' could be seen by
his employer as misconduct and thus be grounds for firing, so I'm willing to
believe this part. However, the firing of the other people in his department
and his old boss smells a bit fishy. Unless they were temporary workers, the
employer would have to start a redundancy procedure. The story makes it seem
like they were fired on the spot as well.

~~~
nicholassmith
I'd guess they were temp. workers from how it sounds with bonus based on
performance and a few other bits from the first post, but even if they're
temps you'd still have to begin a firing process unless you can say 'hey, no
work left'. But then shifting temps elsewhere is unlikely so who knows, I'd
lean towards potential exaggeration.

------
kvnn
1\. Kid disrupted his entire company through the combination of a resentment
towards manual labor and a skill set that allows him to automate it.

2\. Kid did not respect the authority of Boss. When Boss fired him, Kid went
over his head and sold his actions to Big Boss.

Skill, resentment towards inefficiency, and careful disregard for authority.
That is a good combination to get ahead.

~~~
swalsh
I the the password he attached to the program also helped a bit. It would seem
the boss wanted to continue using it. It's possible he would not have received
proper credit without it.

~~~
gte910h
Depends on how hard it is to setup. He seems to think it is a little brittle.

------
scarmig
BS, BS, BS.

Way too perfect. At the end, all of his coworkers get transferred to other
places in the company to do translation work, for the same pay? Uh huh. The
only thing this kid did is spin a good yarn and rack up a ton of reddit karma.

Between this and the passing out at 10, I'm more and more of a grumpy, cynical
old man...

~~~
vaksel
you don't get karma for self posts on reddit

~~~
jquery
Like that matters. Getting front page is satisfaction enough. People are way
to credulous about Reddit stories, as if the usernames make them more credible
than 4chan.

~~~
mcantor
Now listen here, " _jquery_ ", if that _is_ your real--oh, whoa, wait,
_jquery_? The javascript framework!? Dude! Oh I'm sorry, man. My bad, I was
just... I didn't... I'm really sorry!

~~~
jquery
Now let me tell you a really cool nerd fantasy story that never happened.

------
zaidf
When I was 14, bunch of my cousins and I started working at my uncle's start-
up as a summer "internship." Bulk of our job was to find product images and
resize them in various sizes. For a while, my cousins were using photoshop to
do them and at the least, each image would take a minute. I saw the
repetitiveness and wrote a Visual Basic tool that would process entire
directories in seconds. Their work was significantly reduced.

We decided not to tell my uncle about my tool for a while so that we could all
finish our work a bit early and get out to play cricket together before it got
dark.

------
jcromartie
I wonder what the thought process of the original boss was? It seems like his
decision to fire the clever programmer was based entirely on the fact that he
wasn't doing what he was "supposed" to be doing, regardless of the massive
benefits.

I'm glad I've never worked for someone like this. But I'm afraid it's because
I've mostly worked in start-ups or small companies where efficiencies and
clever hacks are always appreciated. Is that kind of "logic" common in power
structures?

~~~
rythie
I think the problem is the boss manages, say, 10 people. Someone points out
that the work of those 10 people can really be done by one person part-time
and now the boss is redundant because no management is really needed anymore.

~~~
planetguy
Pretty much it. This is also a good illustration of the difference between the
private and the public sector. In the private sector your boss would rather
keep all his employees, but your boss's boss, or your boss's boss's boss,
would rather cut costs and increase profit.

Start working for the government, though, and _every_ level of management is
keen on having as many people beneath them as possible, and there's no real
desire at any level to reduce costs; the less efficient your department is the
bigger your budget is and the more important you look.

Occasionally a politician will sweep through with an attempt to cut costs
(they're the only ones who even pretend to care) -- the bureaucracy will
respond by firing the most _useful_ and publicly visible of their employees to
ensure that service levels drop thus justifying their case for an increased
budget later on.

~~~
zacharypinter
I had a co-op job with the Navy (civil service) while in college. I sat next
to a really nice lady named Peggy who was on the phone every day fielding lost
password requests. She'd reset the password, then read the new password to the
person over the phone, day after day after day.

I went to my boss and offered to add a forgot password link to the site. His
response: "But then what would Peggy do?"

~~~
nathan_long
This is what I imagine when I hear the phrase "job creation."

If you want something done - your lawn mowed, a meal made, etc - you'll hire
someone. But a job for its own sake? What, are you going to hire somebody to
move a pile of rocks back and forth across your yard?

A job starts with a need, not vice versa.

~~~
jcromartie
I have a pile of rocks in my yard... need work?

~~~
ph0rque
After a couple days of rock moving, I'll just build a pick-n-place robot in my
garage to do the work for me, ok?

~~~
beambot
I know you say this in jest... but if you can solve unstructured pick-n-place
(ie. non-uniform, unmodeled objects in arbitrary configurations with difficult
outdoor perception), you could make some serious bank. This is actually a
_very_ difficult problem.

~~~
Raticide
He'd rather just go home early than share his robot.

------
Turing_Machine
I've mentioned this here before, but this sort of thing has been going on for
a long time.

When the SF writer Arthur C. Clarke was a young man he had a tedious civil
service job that involved merging and consolidating figures (IIRC, it had
something to do with government pensions, and he got the job because he scored
well on a math test). Since the final numbers only had to be accurate to
within a few percent, he started using his slide rule to get his day's quota
done before noon then take the rest of the day off.

------
jquery
Reddit needs a 4chan disclaimer at the top--"only a fool would take these
stories as fact". Real life rarely has bookends.

------
krobertson
Preface this by acknowledging don't know much bout the OP and his professional
experience, but he is likely young.

I don't care for the "I'm now the Lead Software Engineer with my own
department". If he was in manual data entry, he is likely young and has
limited professional coding experience to cut his teeth on.

He is likely soloing himself, will limit his advancement by not having peers,
and when he changes jobs he may have unrealistic expectations not realizing
these.

~~~
dpritchett
He didn't have the resume to get a job in a proper software house with strong
peers before. Two years from now he will, assuming he wants to leave his one-
man-band operation.

------
simonbarker87
Don't see why he was told he shouldn't have done it on company time as the
time he spent writing the script was more than made up for by the increased
rate of record entry

------
ck2
This would never happen in the USA. I had a somewhat similar experience and
was fired.

I had a young, naive friend insist on giving two week notice at a job after I
warned him not to, and he was terminated immediately. Just doesn't work like
that anymore, maybe high-end salary jobs but not hourly wages.

~~~
PotatoEngineer
Depends on the manager, and probably labor supply. I worked a minimum-wage
stocking job a while back, gave my two-weeks' notice, and worked those two
weeks. YMMV.

------
mikemarotti
This is reddit nerd fan-fiction.

------
Homunculiheaded
I'm not entirely sure this guy is a "kid", and this clearly isn't just data
entry that he's doing (as many people are claiming). He claims to be making
250,000 USD with bonuses a year [0]. I'm surprised no one has questioned
what's really going on here, but if the author's claims are accurate this
certainly isn't the story of someone fresh out of college guy working a
mindless data entry job just barely scrapping by.

[0]
[http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/tenoq/reddit_my_f...](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/tenoq/reddit_my_friends_call_me_a_scumbag_because_i/c4m2owc)

------
andrewcooke
don't normally like linking to reddit, but thought this was awesome.

also, felt i had to give different title as original not informative.

~~~
eru
Reddit is a diverse place. And sturgeons law applies.

(I even found some thoughtful discussion on youtube recently.)

------
micahgoulart
As a backup strategy, the guy should have made a version of the program that
is buggy and only gets 7x the regular production rate of the other workers.
Then if company wants his code, they get the inefficient program and he gets
hired to make it work 100%.

He can explain his bonuses as script + great manual work in case they wonder.

~~~
tfb
I really don't like this idea. While it might have helped ensure the OP's
longevity in the company, it's selfish and is really doing more harm then good
in the long run. And that doesn't really seem like the OP's style.

I hope you and others don't view the world this way. If you do, you're only
holding the rest of us back. It reminds me of the other comment here about
screwing things up on purpose just to increase budget:

 _Occasionally a politician will sweep through with an attempt to cut costs
(they're the only ones who even pretend to care) -- the bureaucracy will
respond by firing the most useful and publicly visible of their employees to
ensure that service levels drop thus justifying their case for an increased
budget later on._ \- <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4167459>

~~~
micahgoulart
How is that any different than adding a password? He's protecting his own
interests so he won't be fired without a chance to come back to his job and
finish automating the whole company. He made himself indispensable with the
password. This would be another way to do it in case they figure out the
password with some other methods, such as a keylogger, before letting him go.

~~~
rtkwe
There's a difference between protecting a buggy alpha, which he probably
didn't realize (or maybe wouldn't be) company property, and intentionally
making an artificially weaker program in order to ensure your job security.

------
tlianza
I searched the threads and couldn't find anyone asking this question, but this
is a red flag to me:

> they have a 90% accuracy rating and 60-100 transactions > a day completed. I
> have 99,6% accuracy

If there's no automated system to do this, who or what is calculating the
accuracy down to a fraction of a percentage?

------
mynegation
Automating something and efficiency may or may not be desirable thing
depending on the alignment on incentives.

Let's say you are a small company with a relatively flat structure and you as
the owner, also work as CEO. Then every bit of efficiency is precious to you.

Let's say you, a techie hotshot, come to work for a big company, and automate
some process that suddenly makes 20% of staff in your department redundant.
Essentially that means that your boss and may be boss of your boss will have
to lay people off (which is bad for morale and relationships), they get
smaller headcount and budget numbers.

Let's just say you may see a lot of resistance.

------
paulsutter
I'm skeptical. The story seems fishy to me. And who would trust an employee
who develops something, keys it to his machine only, password protects it, and
goes around boasting about it?

TLDR: Believability low + employee proud of poor ethics

------
mratzloff
This is fantasy, of course. My guess is that it's some college course doing a
social experiment rather than an individual troll. Perhaps it's called The
Creation of Myth (user's name is CM-NL). There's probably some college class
out there patting themselves on the back for convincing so many people through
a cleverly-crafted-but-just-a-little-too-perfect story that was tailor-made
for Redditors.

After all, the follow-up is basically created from the most popular responses
to the original post.

------
domador
Assuming the story is true, I especially like the part where he insisted that
his former coworkers keep their employment with the company, even though he
automated their existing jobs out of existence. Nice solidarity!

~~~
MartinCron
_even though he automated their existing jobs out of existence_

He didn't automate away their domain knowledge or the company's understanding
of them as known quantities. Immediately getting rid of someone just because
their narrow job description doesn't fit anymore is incredibly wasteful.

------
snitzr
This is the dream of many HN readers.

------
moron
I remember reading the original post as well. And, man, that could not have
ended much better. I'm glad to see that someone at the company realized the
potential of what this person created. I would have expected pride to get in
the way of all that, so kudos for him having the balls to go above his former
boss's head. That was crucial.

