> 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.
Not quite. First, this guy went out of his way to lie and insert extra bugs in his code to make it appear like manual labor. Second, this guy is doing it all the time, whereas normally people might only do this on occasion. You can argue about whether the latter is right or wrong, but there's quite a clear line between the two, making the former far more indefensible.
> First, this guy went out of his way to lie and insert extra bugs in his code to make it appear like manual labor. Second, this guy is doing it all the time
I don't see the difference. I've known people who intentionally work slowly or pretend to do manual labor when they've already got a process for automating it. They'll just goof around for a while and then run the automation.
Whether you're introducing bugs to fix yourself or pretending to work - the effect is the same.
Not as extreme in terms of time as this guy (more like doing a process that took 4 hours in 2 and pretending it took 4 hours).
Initially I felt it was unprofessional. I kind of still do. However, I also knew the management, and the behavior was consistent with the types of rewards management provided: The reward for this kind of increase in productivity was never financial, and was always "OK, now you can do even more work". One person's boost in productivity would raise the bar for the whole team - everyone felt punished. So as time went on, people would come up with process improvements and ensure the management did not know about them.
Why do I still feel it is unprofessional? Behaving like this is not why I became an engineer, where solving problems makes you regret you solve them. So I thought about it hard, and realized I should find a job that encourages and rewards improving productivity, and not uses it as an excuse to give more work.
Management almost always treat estimates as promises, and you get what you measure. If you automate and that reduces the best case time for a task, it might not improve the average case very much, and the worst case not at all.
That means the difference between the usual case and the worst case gets worse, and you'd be a fool to invite that sort of criticism from the management team more than twice.
Your smartest path is to do the task at or under the usual time and spend any remaining budget on improving the situation for next time. Only when you can draw down the worst case time (or frequency) should you set new expectations with the organization.
Really now? Are you sure it's not a case of you not wanting to see the difference?
> Whether you're introducing bugs to fix yourself or pretending to work - the effect is the same.
Being at work and not working is quite a far cry from actively lying that you did things that you didn't do, or from inserting defects in your code so that they pay you to remove them.
It's at least honest to screw around at work when your manager can observe that fact, and merely turn in the desired output on time. You could argue (rightly or wrongly) that the manager is supposed to be the one tracking your workload.
But it's dishonest (and frankly outrageous) to actively lie about what you're doing so that your manager can't track your workload, or to insert defects so that the company -- unaware of your deliberate sabotage -- pays you to fix the "accidental" mistake.
What kind of world do you live in where intentions and honesty don't matter, and only "effects" do?
Frankly, I'm finding what I'm reading from you and others here so outrageous that I'm nearing a loss for more words. I literally cannot remember the last time (i.e. I don't think there was one) I was this disappointed at HN users and ashamed of even being among them. It's disgusting.
>Being at work and not working is quite a far cry from actively lying that you did things that you didn't do, or from inserting defects in your code so that they pay you to remove them.
But that's almost exactly what my coworkers did: Lie. If the manager came by asking if the work was done, they'd say no even if it were done. Or they'd intentionally ensure they didn't have it done until near the deadline, which to me is the same as intentionally ensuring your work is not done by introducing defects.
>It's at least honest to screw around at work when your manager can observe that fact,
Who screws around work where their manager can observe it? These people would pretend to work. Which could mean having the Excel sheet open whenever the manager is nearby and do random work.
>Frankly, I'm finding what I'm reading from you and others here so outrageous that I'm nearing a loss for more words. I literally cannot remember the last time (i.e. I don't think there was one) I was this disappointed at HN users and ashamed of even being among them. It's disgusting.
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you are misreading people's comments. I could easily flip this around and say I'm disgusted that you think pretending to work is OK.
As I said, I still find the action unprofessional, and that's why I chose to leave. But I will point out that people who choose to stay and want to do well in the job should behave as the others are (pretend to work). If the employer is not fulfilling his moral/ethical duty, you shouldn't feel obligated to if you cannot leave.
> What kind of world do you live in where intentions and honesty don't matter, and only "effects" do?
Probably the business world. If we momentarily put aside the intentional insertion of mistakes which takes the ethical considerations to a whole new level, we're still left with an interesting ethical question of whether automation of your own job requires you to inform your employer of how you're doing your job.
That answer isn't so clear to me. You're hired to do a job, and you're doing it to the best of your ability. Do you consider that unethical?
> If we momentarily put aside the intentional insertion of mistakes which takes the ethical considerations to a whole new level, we're still left with an interesting ethical question of whether automation of your own job requires you to inform your employer of how you're doing your job.
That answer isn't so clear to me. You're hired to do a job, and you're doing it to the best of your ability. Do you consider that unethical?
I'm not going to "momentarily put that aside". The active lying and sabotage of this case are extremely material facts of the entire discussion. The alternate circumstances you're asking about form an entirely different question that is worthy of a separate post and discussion, and I'm not going to get derailed trying to change the subject and address it here.
I imagine you're familiar with reasoned argument, similar to programming, where one starts with some generally agreed premises upon which one can build to ever more sophisticated conclusions. So again, do you have an opinion on the specific question I asked?
I really don't have an opinion on your hypothetical situation to present here. Nevertheless, you can still build your argument assuming one way or the other, if that's really what you're trying to do. People can question the assumptions if the need arises.
Why do you feel like this guy owes X company jack shit? Just like every other business in existence†, they'd drop him on his ass in a heartbeat if it helped their bottom line and you and I know it. This is business to them and it should be to him, too.
† Yes, some places at least act like they care. It doesn't matter if your dad's dad had or worked for a place that seemed to give a damn, that's not the point and you know it.
You don't understand the difference between honesty and dishonesty? This has nothing to do with who cares about people and who cares about money, it's a question of who is honest and who is dishonest.
“What kind of world do you live in where intentions and honesty don't matter, and only "effects" do?”
The world where, doing what this guy did, ignoring the intentional errors part, he would be just as likely to be fired as he would be to be rewarded for automating the process. In such a world, he is more ethically obligated to feed his family than he is to turn over a tool that would increase profits for a company that would terminate him.
I don't think there's an ethical consideration here; it's a transactional relationship, value delivered for wages paid. If the company could get the job done cheaper in a different manner, it would do it and dismiss the employee. Is that defensible? The employee is creating value for the company. They're holding up their end of the bargain.
Companies exploit employees all the time; if something made by an employee happens to be particularly valuable, it's not like the company gives the employee a big chunk of the profits. It's not like big hits can be manufactured on demand or incentivized by bonuses, so why would they let the employee keep some of the windfall?
I see it the same way. The employee is doing their job, albeit with software they wrote, but nonetheless it's getting done.
If I were this employee I'd spend my time at work contributing to open source software I cared about and that could help me with my career. Undoubtedly, as they already realized this, their job is going to be automated away from them so they need to keep themselves relevant.
The guy is actively and explicitly lying to get paid money that he otherwise likely would not, and yet you "don't think there's an ethical consideration here"? What has this world devolved into?
Communication isn't the value he's generating, and he's not causing harm through deception.
Companies employing me all my life have lied by omission to me, about my value to the company and how much more they benefit from my work over and above my salary. Is that ethical?
He is causing harm through deception. The bugs he produces as a ruse have to be checked for and repaired by other employees who might not need to check the output of a well tested automated solution at all.
Nope, you got that wrong. He reported the workflow (possibly extended on it in a comment) as he generates a draft, others check that for bugs, he generates a final version ostensibly based on that bug-checking. Intentional errors are introduced only into the draft, not the final version, so even if his colleagues miss any of them, they aren't in the final result.
So nothing _has_ "to be checked for and repaired"; as others have commented, he's just doing his part to help these colleagues have something to do, too.
Not quite. First, this guy went out of his way to lie and insert extra bugs in his code to make it appear like manual labor. Second, this guy is doing it all the time, whereas normally people might only do this on occasion. You can argue about whether the latter is right or wrong, but there's quite a clear line between the two, making the former far more indefensible.