
Redditor: Am I a scumbag for automating my manual work and making more money? - artursapek
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/tenoq/
======
patio11
You don't have to Flowers for Algernon your own productivity just because
other folks working in the same firm, in the same industry, in the same
country, whatever haven't caught on that computers are eating the world yet.
There's nothing unethical about earning the lion's share of the bonus pool
assuming the human-assisted script is, indeed, an acceptable substitute for
elbow grease. (There are plausible reasons why it might not be but that isn't
the way I'd bet.)

There's a common mindset on Reddit that I struggle to find a name for but I
know it when I see it: " _You're not a scumbag, but the gravy train will have
to end eventually. Your company will likely catch on and make changes to the
data entry process._ " The size of the pie is fixed, the allocations of the
pie are controlled by other people, and a mouse who successfully steals a few
crumbs from the pie is a) stealing and b) must guard his stolen crumbs against
the predations of other mice.

That is a mindset I do not associate with rich people. I'd expect them to
think something closer to "Now would be an _excellent_ time to contact the
decisionmaker at my client and propose restructuring their business process
for a 20% discount to _the total cost of everything_ right now."

~~~
hkmurakami
Here is an anecdote: A similar data-entry grunt creates a set of excel macros
on his private time at home, then presents his work to his team at a meeting.
He surely expected to be met with praise, for saving countless hours of mind-
numbing work so that the man-hours could be used on more creative and
challenging tasks.

His high hopes for his fellow coworkers and his own future would be dashed
though. The employee was branded as a "hacker" (in the Hollywood movie sense),
and was ostracized. He eventually developed clinical depression, and resigned
from the company.

Where did this happen? The story is probably not unfamiliar to patio11, who
lives in the country where this occurred: Japan.

P.S.: I wish I had been a Hacker News reader back when I lived in Nagoya from
2009-2010. It would have been nice to talk to you in person :).

~~~
wheaties
Happened in America too. Boss took the "hacker" to the side and said "Look,
I'd have to fire my entire staff if the higher ups learned of this and then
I'd be out of a job too." Ah, nothing like firing the guy who could save your
company tons of money just in self-interest.

~~~
3143
What was stopping the guy from skipping his boss and talking to the higher-ups
himself? He could probably prove his boss right by taking his boss' job.

~~~
kamaal
In most organizations, Management layers aren't layers. They are actually
clubs that protect each others interests. This goes on until the system gather
enough dust to cause it to collapse.

Its futile to complain to a manager about another manager in general. Those
people know each other, and they will never side with you. All that politics
will only back fire on you.

~~~
Confusion
Edit: I now realize you are talking about your experience in India, where of
course things may be different. However, I would think that even there,
'managers' are a distinct subgroup from other human beings.

Original: That's an unnecessarily negative view.

Managers are people too and come in all the variations people come. Some of
them care about whether the company does well, just like people whose title
doesn't contain the word 'manager'. Their relation with other managers is
exactly like the relation of your manager with you. That someones title
includes the word 'manager' doesn't mean they suddenly like all other people
whose title includes the word 'manager' and it doesn't mean he suddenly
considers them equals. Being a 'manager' is not a binary thing. Team leaders
are managers, even when their title doesn't say so.

~~~
noahc
I know of an organization where if you wanted to purchase say $50,000 worth of
new computers, HR (yes, human resources) had the power to make that purchase
very difficult.

It wasn't because HR actually had any say in the matter, but instead the head
of HR actually sat in on meetings with the CEO and the rest of VPs on a very
regular basis.

Now in this case and in this company, they would not have blocked innovation
like this. However, had they had different attitudes automation could have
easily been blocked.

It's not so much about the manager title, as it is that the graph doesn't look
like a bunch of layers that you can just skip one. There are multiple inputs
that can can come from people above, below, and beside and that is what makes
it a club of people, who generally will protect others in the club.

------
iamben
I have a friend that did this in a summer job about 12 or 13 years ago. Got
some temp work doing data entry, did it for 2 days before realising it could
be done better. He wrote something in VB and did 15x more than everyone else
over the course of a day.

They (obviously) thought something was wrong so examined what he'd done. When
he explained about the program, they told him if he left the temp firm he was
employed through and knocked on their door in the morning, they'd give him a
job and pay him £2 more an hour. This he (naively) did, and with him came his
software.

They fired 10 of the other temps the day he 'started' and kept his piece of
software when he went back to university after the summer. In this case, the
scumbag was most definitely the employer. When he told me the story I wept
into my pint glass at what could have been.

~~~
paulhauggis
Why is the employer wrong here? If they were hiring 10 temp workers to do the
job of a simple program, they really didn't need them in the first place.

~~~
SomeCallMeTim
£2/hour more than a temp data-entry position isn't market compensation for an
entry-level programming gig. Converting to US wages, temp workers often make
$8-$12/hour -- the temp AGENCY may be making $20-$25 for that, but the worker
only pulls in up to $24k/year.

If they'd doubled his salary to ~$48k/year (assuming he previously was earning
~$12/hour) then that starts to be a decent wage for an entry-level programmer.
Consider this the bare minimum ethical offer, paying the developer based on
minimal market value (instead of taking advantage of his naivete).

But if it was saving them from having to pay 10 temp workers (at $20/hour
each, say) and they only paid him for the summer months to perfect the script
and (presumably) train a replacement, then they were basically treating him as
a consultant, which (reasonably) would have doubled his hourly rate again.
Paying him for 3 months at $48/hour should have cost them about $30k, but he
ended up saving the company ~$350k/year (assuming they still needed to retain
a $50k/year "expert" data-entry/programmer type to use and maintain the
script). Since they could see his script was valuable, the least they could
have done would have been to pay him a reasonable consulting rate for a few
month.

On the other hand, if they'd at least gone with a fair entry-level programmer
salary I wouldn't be complaining -- paying someone half of what they're worth
seems to be too common to name a company a scumbag over. But yes, the company
is well into scumbag territory for taking advantage of someone by paying them
1/4 of the fair market value of their time.

~~~
jlarocco
Nonsense.

The guy accepted the $2 raise. He could have said, "No, I want $xx an hour,"
or "I'll sell you the script for $xxxxx," but he didn't.

~~~
SomeCallMeTim
>The guy accepted the $2 raise.

Taking advantage of naivete doesn't excuse them from being scumbags.

You can worship scumbag employment practices if you like, or claim that it's
his "fault" somehow for not understanding the value of what he was doing. I
prefer to reward people at least SOMEWHAT proportional to their contribution,
as opposed to proportional to their business acumen.

In your world, the 1% get richer, the rest get screwed, and the economy
crashes like clockwork. Sounds like a bunch of scumbags in control to me.

In the world I'd like to move toward, everyone (but the 1%) would benefit from
a more stable and sustainable economy, since the 99% (those who actually
create) would be compensated much more, and would actually benefit from the
crazy productivity gains we've experienced over the past 40 years, instead of
it going to the talentless 1% who happen to be holding all of the cash
rightfully earned by the 99%. And the frustrating this is that they believe
they deserve it. [1]

More details as to how this could be true? Too many to relate them all in a
comment. If you care, or if you want to argue with my conclusion, watch this
(warning: Long video):

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-KqeU8nzn4>

It's like Atlas Shrugged, only without the "Be a huge asshole to everyone"
part at the end of every sentence. [2] \------- [1]
<http://www.salon.com/2012/05/07/americas_idiot_rich/>

[2] (in the rollover) <http://xkcd.com/1049/>

~~~
jlarocco
The guy didn't care enough to ask for more than $2, why should I care on his
behalf?

The problem I have with your rant is that you're implicitly segregating the
population into two groups, one which knows better and one which needs the
other group to take care of it. Of course you're placing yourself in the group
that knows better...

I have enough work taking care of myself. If saying, "That guy can look out
for himself also" makes me an "asshole" or a "scumbag" then so be it.

~~~
SomeCallMeTim
Are you willing to go to naive elderly folks and convince them to give you
most of their retirement savings based on lies? (Lies in the form of withheld
information, say.)

No? Why is that different than taking advantage of someone too young to know
better?

If I sell you a car that has a hard-to-detect problem deep in its engine that
I know will cause the engine to need to be rebuilt at a cost of nearly half
the price you're paying, and I fail to tell you about it because I'm sure
you'll never know that I knew, is that OK?

No? Why is that different?

I'm NOT saying that you should be "taking care of" that guy. Frankly you're
not part of the equation between him and his employer.

I AM saying that, if he were to do business with you, as an employee or
otherwise, and the relationship were based in part on lies (even if they were
lies-by-omission), then yes, THAT would make you a scumbag. I hasten to add
that I am not accusing the real YOU of being a scumbag, just the hypothetical
"you" that would take advantage of someone to that extreme.

Capitalism doesn't have to be about screwing the other guy when you can get
away with it. It often IS, but it doesn't have to be.

Sometimes the value of an unproven kid really is low, because the odds of them
doing a good job aren't very high, and so you're amortizing the cost across a
number of hires -- but he was a proven value to the company (to the point that
they fired 10 other temp workers), and so their behavior was blatantly
unethical. (Aside from the fact that most temp worker contracts prohibit you
from hiring the worker directly without giving the temp agency a fee, and by
the description they almost certainly sidestepped any such clause, which is
itself a probable unethical contract violation.)

------
Fuzzwah
I found myself in a similar situation to the redditor, but with out the
bonuses. Part of my duty description was inputting MAC addresses of
"authorized computers" into an extremely dodgy database system which allowed
them to pick up an IP address via DHCP.

When I first started in the position and had this explained to me I pointed
out that anyone could just plug a machine into the network and use trial and
error to find an IP address to manually enter and get them onto the network.
IE: the process wasn't securing anything.

My point was pushed aside because "this is just the way we do things".

The 1st time I had to input 20+ new PCs into the system I whipped up an autoit
script (I had to insert via a terrible GUI interface as the DBAs wouldn't
grant me direct access to the database) which grabbed the data required from
the xls the supplier gave us and automagically inserted the info. My scripting
didn't get noticed until one day when I input 200 machines in the space of an
hour, the task had taken the previous person in the role a whole day or more.

I was rewarded with a higher workload and grudges from all my co-workers, who
had all previously done the task before moving up the totem pole and dumping
this ridiculous job onto the next new sucker.

The highlight was when I gave notice and during my exit planning meeting my
supervisor said that one of the old staff would train my replacement on how to
do this task, rather than me show someone the system I hacked up which was an
order of magnitude more efficient.

------
feverishaaron
If I were a member of management, and I found out that he was doing this, I
would be furious. Not because he gamed the system and received the bonuses,
but because he didn't share his innovation with the rest of the team and
improve everyones' efficiency. If he had done that, I would recognize his
talent and initiative and promote him, allowing him to do more rewarding,
higher-level work.

~~~
staunch
He probably rightly senses that his boss wouldn't feel the way you hope you
would. In fact I don't think most people would offer him a rational incentive
at all.

If he saves the company $1 million a year are you actually going to cut him a
$200k+ bonus? I'd be very doubtful of anyone who says they would.

Most people would give him $20k if they're especially generous and a pat on
the head.

~~~
ohashi
Or he could simply be replacing himself with no reward.

Oh, you've automated it? Thanks. Bye.

~~~
billybob
That's possible, but only if they're stupid. They'd be losing someone who can
knows their business and could automate their next manual process.

I'd suggest he say this: "hey boss, I think I can automate this process,
increasing accuracy and productivity. Would you give me salary X if I can do
it?"

If the boss says "awesome, yes!", then he's got a better job.

If the boss says no or is lukewarm, he could keep doing what he's doing, but
actually study programming in the time he's goofing off and start a job
search.

Either way, he's on a path to getting to program, not having to hide it, and
getting properly compensated.

The more difficult question is: what if they lay off his _coworkers_ because
of his innovation? How should he feel then?

~~~
loup-vaillant
> The more difficult question is: what if they lay off his coworkers because
> of his innovation? How should he feel then?

That's a question of how to deal with a broken system. Automation is by
definition the destruction of manual work. Most of the time, of _boring_
manual work. This is great. We should automate as much as we can. Oh, but it
happens right now: hourly productivity, according to my source[1], more than
_tripled_ since the fifties.

But, as you point out, sudden increase of productivity mechanically creates
unemployment, if you don't have a massive consumption growth to absorb it —not
a good idea in the long term, and doesn't happen anyway.

There are several solutions out of this dilemma, which you can apply in
parallel. The most powerful one is: work less (at the national level). Get
nearly everyone to work 32 hours per week (typically 4 days a week) instead of
the usual 40. (You can use incentives instead of force if you don't want to
appear too communist) If Productivity grows again too much in the next
decades, get down to 28, 24, or even less.

There. I'm happy to be a programmer, whose main job is to destroy others'.
Except the system is broken, and shows no sign of being fixed. Getting back to
your difficult question, I don't know what I'd actually do. I'd probably tell
no one, given the risks, both for me and my coworkers. I'd feel bad about
reaping all the bonuses, though —but I _would_ save them to buy a house or
whatever.

[1] <http://www.roosevelt2012.fr/propdetails?propid=13> (French, see 3rd
chart. Watch out, it seems Wikipedia disagrees —maybe they're not measuring
the same thing?)

------
qq66
Link to my comment on reddit:
[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/c4m2ps2)

~~~
dctoedt
qq66's comment on reddit is a worthwhile read.

~~~
lukifer
TL;DR: If you have the initiative and skills to do this, you can be doing a
lot more than hoarding a bonus pool.

------
rpwilcox
This is why I'm skeptical about "Results Only Work Environments". (Not that
the person in the article has one, but..)

It seems to me that a Results Oriented Work Environment doesn't (or might not)
really reward the super performers (just gives them more work to do), while
still punishing the poorer performing members of the team.

You: "Boss, can I go home after I finish my daily quota of 200 reports?"

Them: "Well, we're a results only work environment"

You: "Ok, it's 10:30AM and my script just finished 200 reports. Seeya!"

Them: "Wait just a minute..."

 _Meanwhile, in an alternative reality...._

You: "Boss, it's 6PM, I'm still working on my daily quota of 200 reports, but
my productivity is starting to suffer and I'm going slowly" _(maybe not
because you're a slow data entry person, but you were pairing with Bob,
helping him with his work at the cost of your own)_

Them: "Well, we're a results only work environment"

You: (Sad Yao)

It's possible that I'm wrong here, and would love to hear of other people's
experience working under these conditions.

------
anthuswilliams
I don't believe this story is true. This employee is claiming to be 1000% more
efficient and 110% more accurate than every other employee on his entire
floor, and yet not a single supervisor has approached him to find out what he
is doing differently. Color me unconvinced.

------
ezl
No, that doesn't make him a scumbag.

I don't understand why people post these things though. Are they really
looking for validation?

~~~
bgilroy26
In addition to Artur's point, I would affirm that yes, that is definitely the
reason.

Every day without fail, there is a post in /r/relationship_advice that goes
something like "My fiancee just sold my cat and wired all of my money to her
secret boyfriend in Albertville. Am I right to be mad?".

~~~
cluda01
Just stick to programming and other interesting sub-reddits. Avoid politics
etc

~~~
bgilroy26
I love Reddit, (I did have to leave for health reasons), I hope I don't sound
bitter!

------
orbitingpluto
I was a programmer and sysadmin at a company that had lots of people doing
data entry.

One of the typists found out that the client did not check the data at all.
(It was all just packaged and resold.) She just hit OK for every single OCR
scan that she was supposed to correct/verify. She was doing ten times as much
as anyone else and doubling her salary with her bonus.

When made aware, management went along with it. I think it bordered on fraud.

On the flip side, I automated most of my sysadmin (and a lot of other co-
workers) work and freed half of my work week. What did they want me to do?
Data entry...

~~~
rmc
_I think it bordered on fraud._

I don't think there's any "bordering" there. Imagine a plumber who realises
that they don't need to lay all the pipes cause the client isn't going to test
that the pipes are connected and hence doesn't lay the pipes, but still
charges the client. Fraud.

------
LaaT
I am surprised nobody here suggests that he should build a product out of
this. Aren't we all in business of unemploying people?

------
gotrythis
This is what I used to do for a living:

1) Go to offices and learn their goals and systems 2) Automate them with
software 3) Get paid lots of money for selling them the software

While one result of automation is lost jobs, the other is that businesses have
more operating capital to grow, expand, hire more, etc.

He's not a scumbag, but he's missing the opportunity. Why isn't this guy
selling the software/process to the company he works for, and making far more
money in the process than he gets from his bonuses?

~~~
rmc
_Why isn't this guy selling the software/process to the company he works for,
and making far more money in the process than he gets from his bonuses?_

Interalised self-hatred? (You'll see they are asking the internet if what they
are doing is unethical.) Also they might be very shy and not used to thinking
they can get the world.

------
stretchwithme
Automating work is not evil. It is the reason we are not all subsistence
farmers.

------
nwenzel
Big companies are built to fail. The variety of departments and personal
empires built by managers of those departments create an environment where
innovation (or even the ability to ask "is there a better way?") gets crushed
because "that's not the way we do things." Departmental managers don't
optimize for company success. They optimize for personal success. A bigger
staff and bigger budget is a promotion. Saving money means a smaller budget
means a de facto demotion.

Smart people move on and the big companies are left to wonder why it's so hard
to find good talent.

------
jmtame
This trend is not going away, it's only going to increase. The ones with
technical knowledge will continue to disproportionately receive money over
those who don't.

I think this person would really enjoy reading Race Against the Machine,
written by two MIT researchers and economists. I have a guest post going up
tomorrow on VentureBeat about this, but it's interesting to see people call
him a scumbag because he has a technological edge on them.

This is a pretty good example of people working against the machine instead of
with it. Those people will probably soon be out of jobs, but there's nothing
to stop them from learning a scripting language that would make them more
productive in their work. They now know there's a script that can cause them
to increase their productivity. The bonus pool is still up for grabs if they
spent a few weekends trying to learn Ruby or Python.

------
PakG1
Was I a scumbag for automating manual work and eliminating a ton of jobs when
I was only a new grad? In fact, was my entire team? That's a question I
struggle to answer more, though we all already know what the reality of the
situation is. Did reality excuse me?

------
Turing_Machine
This kind of thing has been going on for a while. In Sir Arthur Clarke's
autobiography "Astounding Days", he talks about holding a boring civil service
job doing some sort of financial auditing (he scored well on the math test, so
they thought this was just the place for him). It turned out that what he was
doing only had to be accurate to within a couple of percent, so he started
using his slide rule to crank out his day's quota before noon, then taking the
rest of the day off.

~~~
kamaal
That is why its best to charge for your work and not time. In that case Sir
Arthur Clarke could have made twice the money in a day.

------
cullen
Am I a lazy for making a machine wash my dishes while I browse HN?

I agree with Laat, sounds like he should make it into a business/product.

------
SpaceDragon
No, but you won't earn the Royal Victorian Order either.

------
sp332
Ever heard of a combine harvester? Go for it :)

------
georgieporgie
Like others are saying, he should (gradually) reduce the output of his
automation system to something more believable/less noticeable. Instead of
going after the meager bonus, he should put his time into doing some kind of
side work. Of course, that would be highly unethical and possibly grounds for
firing, but I think his employer might angrily react with the latter if they
found out what he was doing already.

Incidentally, back when I worked in Arizona, I was told that a previous
employee of the company had been running a side business during working hours.
His coworkers ratted him out, and it went up to management. It was decided
that it was okay, so long as his assigned tasks were being completed. Of
course, one wonders why he was ratted out if he was completing his tasks...
:-)

~~~
matwood
_It was decided that it was okay, so long as his assigned tasks were being
completed. Of course, one wonders why he was ratted out if he was completing
his tasks... :-)_

Jealousy. You never need to put a cover on a bucket full of crabs because
anytime one crab tries to climb out the others will pull it back in. Sadly,
people (even friends) often act in this same manner when someone they know is
excelling in some way.

~~~
SquareWheel
I've never heard the crab expression, is that really true? Are crabs just
vindictive little creatures?

~~~
oz
I've always wondered if it's true, because it's a very common expression here
in Jamaica. We call it "crab inna barrel" (crabs in a barrel). Another term
for it is "bad mind" - to be jealous of or try to impede another's success.

~~~
SquareWheel
I did some searching and found a few references to "crab mentality", looks
like it's a common term in Filipino culture. Still haven't found any evidence
on if this is a real phenomena or not though.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality>

<http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-the-crab-mentality.htm>

------
ktizo
Automating manual systems then requires less employees.

Less employees often requires less management.

If I had done this, I would not in a million years talk to my immediate
management about this. I have already been fired once from contract work for
merely suggesting that a similar thing was possible.

~~~
VBprogrammer
Do you regret suggesting it? I mean, sure, there would have been some
immediate pain involved in finding a new job but surely that was balanced out
by not working in a inefficient toxic working environment.

~~~
ktizo
I was working from home, mostly drunk in a hammock while wearing a dressing
gown. I had to leave the hammock and put on some respectable clothes and
everything.

------
paulhauggis
The guy isn't very smart doing 10X the normal amount of transactions. He
should limit it to 25% more than everyone, so it at least seems believable.

~~~
pavelkaroukin
His purpose - get as much money as possible here. And get it now, 'cos
tomorrow it might not work, since someone can come up with same idea or bonus
rules will change or something else.

~~~
paulhauggis
His naive approach will lead to either him or his entire department getting
replaced by a computer.

~~~
redthrowaway
Which is a good thing. There's no point in having a bunch of people do
manually what can be done automatically with greater efficiency and at less
cost. Keynesian economics does not apply to individual organizations.

~~~
getsat
The point is that it's not a good thing for _him_ for that scenario to unfold.

------
rsanchez1
As if HN wasn't enough like Reddit yet...

Whether or not they think he is a scumbag is relevant. What will really matter
is what his boss will think when he finds out that he has all this extra
salary on the books for nothing.

If he's concerned that his friends think he's a scumbag now, just wait until
the pink slips start rolling out when there's a budget crunch.

------
finalword
no, that's not the reason.

