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Ask HN: I automated part of someone else's job in my free time – how to proceed?
103 points by JGugtw on Aug 20, 2022 | hide | past | favorite | 126 comments
Hello HN

I've been working at this company for some time in an administrative role. As part of my job, we – and many others – work with data which gets aggregated and refined by a centralized team of specialists. This process is only partially automated and therefore still quite heavy-handed. As I understand it, significant time is spent on the manual part of it all.

Out of curiosity I started building this small project in my free time just to see if I could automate it myself, since most of the data required is available open source. There are still many rough edges but what I have now is already superior to what we have at work.

Now I'm wondering about where to go from here - so far I haven't told anyone. Strictly speaking, this is not part of my job and I am "poaching" in someone else's area of expertise. I like my job and don't want to make enemies. On the other hand, I would love to see my solution put to use and maybe even enhance and/or expand it jointly with IT. However, this is code I wrote in my free time and I am rather unwilling to give it away without any benefit.

Any ideas?




The first person who needs to know, and approve, is your manager. Don't blindside them. Managers do not like that, and your manager is definitely going to find out if anyone else does.

After you tell your manager, you won't be in control of what happens next. Consider whether or not you should just keep this to yourself and treat this as a fun learning experience. Perhaps you can gauge their potential reaction by asking, hypothetically, whether or not they think working on automation might be a good idea.

I've done something like this before, but with the knowledge of the other people on the team, because we didn't like the manual work we were doing and felt that it was taking time away from other things we needed to do. Hopefully that is the case for your colleagues, or this will not be well received.


So far, this is the only sensible answer I've read here. This is the kind of thing you bring to your manager and let them decide whether it's worth pursuing further.

If you frame it as, "hey, I did this thing that I think might solve a problem and here's a demo," it might work out, or it might not. You could get a promotion out of it, or maybe not. If it's a good idea and the company doesn't want to do it, or doesn't recognize you for it, then you don't want to work there in the long term anyway.

Some of the comments are basically advising not to rock the boat. Anyone in 2022 who thinks their current computer-related job will not become automated or obsolete at some point in the near or distant future is living in a dream world. Nobody is entitled to a job doing tedious work.


Couching it as a "demo" is such a good suggestion! It implies you haven't wasted too much time on it, demonstrates that you are trying to creatively problem solve for the good of the company, and brings your manager in the loop to help promote it or head off any political faux pas. Do THIS!

(Quick edit: trying hard to leverage this to get any special credit or $$ or other goodness out of it is a non-starter. You did this with company data probably on company time with company tooling. It's for them - and that's ok! You are demonstrating that you are there for the good of the team on this one. Many points awarded.)


Your approach also depends on whether the person whose job you are automating has (or can take on) other duties they can do. If you can present this as “this frees up more of Fred’s time to work on x, y, and z,” this goes down a lot better.


Sounds like awesome energy and hustle on your part.... If you work somewhere especially good, you will get recognized and rewarded for it. If you work somewhere especially bad you'll somehow get punished for helping.

Telling your manager feels like the right first move and will likely help make it the best it can be, but the biggest thing is going to be the culture of your team/company.

(p.s. If it doesn't work out and you like working with data...I am hiring https://jobs.lever.co/bateau).


A lot of engineers have the mentality that “I’ve built something the company needs” and is “better than what we have”. None of that is valid until you discuss it and get feedback.

IME, 4 out of 5 times it’s complete wrong, feelings will get hurt. Engage your manager if you feel comfortable, but I would scale back the ambition/expectations and start from there.


No idea if this is you but the number of times I've seen an over eager employee (usually more junior but not always) think they've stumbled upon a great solution to a problem but really they were just missing some details is very high ... we are a very overconfident bunch.

> As I understand it, significant time is spent on the manual part of it all.

Get more details about the problem space before doing anything else.


Years ago I was in the US merchant marine and a very enterprising young deckhand joined my crew and figured out a “much faster process to get the power plant fired up.” Well, after we got the fire extinguished there was about $600k in damage and he was back to being a landlubber. Sometimes talking with more experienced colleagues is good before striking out on a new adventure.


Somewhat related to your predicament, a good friend of mine was working data entry in Verizon in the early 2010s, and automated his entire job with VBA.

Never told anyone on his team, least of all his manager. Spent a year or so doing no more than 10 minutes work per day. Learned Python and after a year revealed all and left for a better job. Apparently there was chaos afterwards.

So, either tell your direct manager and be up front about it, or say nothing and use the free time to do something useful.


I don't understand why you would reveal that you automated your job after all that time. If the contract states that you get paid in hours rather than tasks per time period, you might end up losing a lawsuit.

Just leave and say nothing. Don't give your code to someone else, don't give it to the company, just go. Even without the potential lawsuit, on the odd chance that your future employer ever calls up your previous employer to verify your credentials, the company won't describe you as a lying hack.


> on the odd chance that your future employer ever calls up your previous employer to verify your credentials, the company won't describe you as a lying hack.

This is a common perception but I don't think actually happens that much. A company be sued for what they say about you, so most will just provide your start and end date, employee type, and the type of termination.


That's my understanding of it anyway, they give start and end dates usually and no more. Otherwise they open themselves up to all sorts of legal unpleasantness.


> I don't understand why you would reveal that you automated your job after all that time. If the contract states that you get paid in hours rather than tasks per time period, you might end up losing a lawsuit.

> Just leave and say nothing. Don't give your code to someone else, don't give it to the company, just go. Even without the potential lawsuit, on the odd chance that your future employer ever calls up your previous employer to verify your credentials, the company won't describe you as a lying hack.

This. It makes zero sense to tell them "I automated my job and was doing 10 minutes of work a day for a year." There is only risk and no benefit for you, you're pointlessly antagonizing people, and you might be harming your former coworkers or causing other problems by doing this.

Maybe if you really like the company and it wouldn't cause problems there could be a situation where you could pass on the software in case it was useful, sure, but not in an extremely unprofessional way where you're smugly rubbing their face in the fact that they were paying you to sit around and not do anything for a year.


I'd agree with you there, keeping quiet would be a better policy.

However, as it was told to me my friend revealed the automation scripting as a very deliberate FU right at the end of his employment. Not so much burning bridges, but almost taking deliberate steps to douse them in kerosene beforehand.

Seeing he ended up as a principal developer in a reinsurance company, I doubt it did much long term reputational damage.


I’m inclined to agree. If I’m a data entry drone and the company can’t / doesn’t want to automate the job then they made their bed.

I also suspect the person who did this is doing a fair amount of spot checking to avoid being caught, more than the company might do.


Frame it as I built a tool to add guardrails and perhaps it might be useful to the next developer or not.


> Just leave and say nothing

Or stay and say nothing? Why prematurely kill the golden goose?


Data entry jobs have a pretty hard cap on how much you can get paid. Besides no one wants to see a person's resume say "data entry" for 10 years.

That would be shooting your own prospects in the foot.


If you have another gig and did something useful during that time, I can't imagine you'd be listing 'data entry' on the resume?


You won't be listing data entry, obviously, because of title inflation.


> I automated part of someone else's job in my free time – how to proceed?

Fist, a misconception, there is no such thing as "free" time (opportunity cost: whatever you do means you're not doing something else in that same time that might benefit you more).

You likely used an hour in which you were not expected to work as work time (as others pointed out, check your employment contract's IP clause and the IP laws of your country).

Write a memo that _proposes_ what you have already built and share it with your manager. If you receive positive feedback, ask would it be valuable if you went ahead and tried your luck, given that you had the idea (and stress that it won't impact your day job!). If you get permission, show the resulting demo, but only after a substantial piece of work of your main job has been completed. Don't give the impression you dropped everything just because you had an idea. Add the line to your CV/resume that you "Proactively conceived and implemented a system that automated a mechanical human process in another department on top of daily duties.", and it may or may not help you get a little bonus and/or promotion at the end of the year - ensure there are other good things you have done in the same year, in particular close to your daily duties).


> Fist, a misconception, there is no such thing as "free" time (opportunity cost: whatever you do means you're not doing something else in that same time that might benefit you more).

"Free" doesn't only refer to monetarily free. What OP did was in their free time, as in, free to do whatever they want with. i.e. Not work time.

“free” as in “free speech,” not as in “free beer”, and all that.


> (as others pointed out, check your employment contract's IP clause and the IP laws of your country).

This is the most critical part. Using the US for example, this software whether OP reveals or not belongs to the company (even in California). The reason is it uses the same data, the same processes, and likely even the same language. Therefore, it is "in the line company business" and most judges would rule in favor of the company despite it possibly being written on OPs own hardware.

Best advice is to just delete it, or come up with a thoughtful way of bringing it up as this comment suggests. As it stands now it's likely that OP is in hot water legally otherwise. good middle ground is to take what you've written and draft it into a proposal, never mention the code you've written, and get paid to rewrite it better. Worst case you tell them, and then the company gets their IP lawyers involved and things get dramatically worse.


You've discovered the strategy of: Come up with a way to get people laid off so you can monetize a portion of their salaries for yourself.

The cynical me says they weren't smart enough to automate away their own work (so they could be assigned more, different work), so eff 'em, right? That is, until someone else automates away your job.

The business me says, you found and fixed an inefficiency, so capitalize on it. While you're at it why not add in extra shadow surveillance "features", and you've got yourself a unicorn. Get that VC money!

The "boss" me says, uhh... you did this work on "your own time" (as if there is such a thing) but with proprietary knowledge of my systems, "open source data" notwithstanding. So, yeahhh that work belongs to me, and I'll monetize it for myself thank you very much. That work product is not yours. Get the eff back to work already.

The "Overemployed" me says, hey, with this automation, maybe I can "work" two jobs simultaneously and pull double salary for no net increase in work. Get that easy money! At least until my employers discover the ruse and they both fire me!


> The cynical me says they weren't smart enough to automate away their own work (so they could be assigned more, different work), so eff 'em, right? That is, until someone else automates away your job.

Sort of besides the point but I wish someone _would_ automate my job so I can find even more interesting things to work on; I’m trying and I haven’t figured out how to yet. Yes, this is obviously only a position someone can feel if they are blessed with either lots of ability or economic security, but could we change that?

I know the problem is the resulting economic hit and not the having of a job or not, and I wish we had more of a safety net and support for people shuffling to better economic activities rather than being stuck in a local maxima with potentially disastrous switching costs. Things like UBI, public option healthcare, free state sponsored college degrees, and government sponsored vocational training have a decent record, and I wonder how we can scale them up past things like the GI bill.


> but I wish someone _would_ automate my job so I can find even more interesting things to work on

What makes you think you would work on "more interesting things" as opposed to "nothing". That is, why would your employer keep you on as opposed to firing you.


They might fire me yes and I would find another job (or try my hand at consulting or making my own business).

But, to me, that would’ve been preferable to doing busy make-work, or worse lobbying to keep the inefficiencies that provide me the busywork I use to justify a salary. Once something becomes automate-able, I think it should be. I have never seen software people at the big co FAANG companies I’ve worked at get let go because their core job was automated, only reassigned out of dead end roles that never would have gotten them promoted. I understand this position is only possible to hold alongside all those privileges.


But why do you not see or feel that if you’re capable of doing more interesting work than your current role that you don’t need wait for automation to make you redundant to switch roles.


Because my work isn’t fully automate-able yet; if I became aware of a method to do so I would do it.


> They might fire me yes and I would find another job (or try my hand at consulting or making my own business).

> But, to me, that would’ve been preferable to doing busy make-work

Good news. You can totally stop doing busy make-work and find another job, start consulting or start a business right now! You don't have to wait to be fired.

Yes, if you work at a large software shop, they may reassign you. Or maybe not. Apparently even FAANG is trimming workforce.


This misses the point that things become busywork because there are better alternatives. There is a difference between weaving a pattern by hand now vs hand weaving before the invention of the loom. My work isn’t busywork _yet_ because I don’t know of a way to automate it.

As an aside about large software shops reassigning, I’ve found at large software shops a big part of the role is making up meaningful work for yourself that helps the firm, and that’s a large part of what is actually rewarded (as opposed to fixing bugs or maintenance). I think a lot of people fall into the career trap of needing their immediate manager to narrowly define what is useful exactly. Usually when you are made redundant nobody reassigns you directly they just kinda ask you to figure it out and give you a couple weeks to a month to talk to teams with headcount and pick one with a problem area you think you can make progress on.


In theory, they could work on nothing, with over all productivity staying the same.

In theory, looking at a complete society's productivity, unemployment is a great thing, because it means little work is needed to sustain a specific level of wealth.

The problem is only one of distribution.


I genuinely believe we can make a world where no one is required to work for survival. We could intentionally automate as much as possible while also ensuring that automation is collectively owned. Then we could all collect dividends on our system with ample time off for "what we will" as the activists fighting for the 8 hour work day used to say.

I believe strongly that the current economic system is effective primarily at concentrating wealth at the top and using the general population as a pool of cheap desperate labor. I believe we can actually generate more wealth if we abandon intellectual property and develop technologies specifically to free people from toil in an open, community-oriented way. Of course this will be a fight because those who hold the reins of power today have no interest in diluting their power.

"But automation is expensive" - well engineering development is expensive. Which is why I think we should spread the costs out as much as possible - make everything open source, so none of the work is repeated, and anyone in the world hungry to get in on the action can contribute, instead of secretive siloed orgs spending a hundred million on some secret sauce for one single application, without sharing the benefit of that work for all the adjacent applications. Instead smaller investments distributed throughout the world will lead to large scale innovation of the crowd, the way we saw 3D printer development explode AFTER the patents expired. Because 1000 people working on an idea get way more done that one well funded organization in many cases. This is exactly the kind of innovation that patents extinguish, and worldwide agreements ensure patents have widespread enforcement.

We all need the same basic necessities, so there is so much overlap, that these systems built by the crowd could rapidly mature.

Eventually we could envision a system that can function with just 10% workforce participation, as people basically volunteer for maintenance and development. Before then we need to educate as many people as possible on engineering, robotics, and computer science.

But the end goal of a world where a highly automated "means of production" is held in community ownership is I think very important. Working in a world of privately held companies with closed source engineering leads to VERY different engineering requirements, and fails to realize benefits of community based engineering development. There are people all over the world that need what you are developing, and some of them have the time and energy to make it their own and contribute their own spin. But only if we make that community.

I have tried to discuss these concepts on my youtube channel in this latest video, though it was unscripted and I'd like to produce a clearer scripted version in the future:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sx_2-xwWJUk

EDIT: For additional motivation, I highly recommend this talk by Jenny Odell called "How To Do Nothing". I feel so strongly that we are wasting ourselves away at jobs that could be automated away, and this talk really captures some of what the alternatives could be for the human psyche:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izjlP9qtmBU


How do we allocate resources without prices? How do we assign prices without profits and losses?


It’s a good question. I don’t really propose we eliminate markets. But I think we can insulate individuals from prices by letting small cooperatives worry about that where individual cooperative members can just follow co-op rules.

For another example, see this real world practical example in India where a single facility gives out 50,000-100,000 free meals every day. There is a real economics to this, and it’s something I want to study. I presume they have a multitude of funding sources including donations of money and product, probably some government support for the free meals they send to schools, and volunteer labor. But they have an organization which across India gives out over 1.2 million free meals a day. It’s well worth studying how they make that work, but they certainly do make it work.

https://youtu.be/qdoJroKUwu0

But imagine you are part of a co-op that owns an automated farm. How do y’all determine who gets what? Well that’s up to the members to decide. But I think it’s an eminently solvable problem. On a larger scale different co-ops might trade using money, or might have sharing agreements between co-ops. Again, it’s up to the members.

And then for things that are reusable, libraries are a great source of inspiration. The Oakland public library has a tool lending library where you can borrow all kinds of common household tools for free. I think there’s a great number of possibilities for how to share wealth without the exchange of money, and in other cases money can be handled at the organizational level.


I admire your optimistic view, but in every collective project there's an a-hole just and solely looking out for themselves.

And what you mightn't see is the threat this poses to the evidently unfair, but also evidently well entrenched status quo.


Certainly a functioning collective needs ways of dealing with assholes. I’m a member of a local makerspace collective and it seems to handle this just fine. There is a rich history of collectives and cooperatives and I think given what is at stake, it would be better to pursue this end and manage the difficulties than give in to the assholes.

I think it’s important to really understand what is at stake. The current structure of society is such that everyone is under the thumb of assholes today. Better to have an asshole as another member of a collective than an asshole as your boss.

I do certainly understand the threat this poses to the well entrenched status quo. My strategy is to start small so the big players don’t believe you’re worth stopping, and then once you’ve proven your method works you’ve already picked up enough momentum to keep moving despite opposition. But in the end this is a project that will take lifetimes, and may never be achieved. I’d still rather work on this than design some robot designed to make the lives of very comfortable people slightly more comfortable, while simultaneously ensuring the CEO gets a new vacation home in Colorado.


Don't forget to automate defence (yah that one, military), and how to prevent any interested party in controlling that automated defence system.


I think Americans over estimate how much investment in defense is needed. Massive defense spending is needed when you’re abusing the rest of the world. Less so if you’re not.


> I think Americans over estimate how much investment in defense is needed.

I don't think you understand the concept of risk, particularly as it pertains to things like war and armed conflict.

Defense spending always looks excessive and unnecessary until you need it. Saying a country overestimates how much defense spending they need is like saying you don't need car insurance because you've never been in an accident.

Wars are similar to car accidents. We're really bad at predicting when we're going to get into one and it can be a whole lot worse than we ever could have imagined.

Additionally for most western countries, the U.S. military acts as a fail-safe of sorts. If Belgium, for instance, underestimates their defense needs they know at some point the U.S. will jump in to help them if need be, which is largely what's happening in Ukraine right now.

By contrast, if the U.S. underestimates its defense needs and suddenly finds itself under attack, say by the Chinese, who exactly would come and save them?


I understand that the USA has chosen a strategy of global imperialism as a plan for maintaining control of world affairs. Our military occupies or encircles nearly every country on Earth. This is obviously an extremely expensive strategy, and one that no other country has ever chosen.

But all this talk of military spending is orthogonal to my original comment. I am saying we would be better off if washing machines were open source, and the workers at the washing machine factory would be better off if the organization was cooperatively owned and managed. I never suggested abolishing the state. The comment mentioning the military was in error if they thought I was talking about making my own country. You can do what I propose inside the USA, and the government can keep taxing exchanges to fund the largest military the world has ever seen. I have opinions on that, but those opinions don't relate to the idea that non-military technology should be open source. Obviously militaries prefer secrets.

I will say, it is interesting that you say I don't understand risk. The USA does not have the largest army humanity has ever seen in order to manage risk. The USA has this army to maintain power over other countries. Belgium as you mention relies on the USA for some extra defense protection. But this also means that Belgium cannot oppose us. We have covered the globe in US military bases so that we can maintain control. This strategy goes far beyond managing risk. If we merely wanted to manage risk, we could have avoided treating every country south of our border like shit, fostered healthy relationships with them, and after decades of healthy relationships formed a military alliance with them. Then that organization would defend the Americas against foreign invaders, not the USA.


Ukraine seems to be happy with the military aid the US is supplying


I guess I should note that I never said anything about abolishing the existing state. But for us regular people I think there are better models for an economy. And we can form cooperatives and do things however we want. I just happen to believe it would be better for pretty much everyone to abandon things like patents and private wealth accumulation in favor of cooperative economic models.


About 3% of the global human population (or 70 to 85 million people) died in WWII. Following WWII, NATO was developed to make every military leader in the world grok that attacking a NATO country meant certain annihilation, and as a consequence, every NATO country has known only peace at home since WWII.

Last year, I would have responded to your position with this quote from Ruth Bader Ginsburg's dissent in Shelby County v. Holder, "t]hrowing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet." and reminded you why you're dry. But this year, with the umbrella being on full display and not only stopping rain, but also stopping a genocide by the murderous LGBT-hating Siloviki class ruling Russia, I'm just kind of confused about how you could argue that we've got way too much umbrella.


"no one is required to work for survival"

Sadly, this automates away the #1 source of meaning in one's life. "I made it this far, in spite of all the adversity" is what most decent adults lean into to motivate themselves out of their beds in the morning.


Family? Friendship? Education, community, creative pursuit, experimentation, travel?

I really don’t think that compulsory labor is the best way for people to find meaning. We’re not going to sit around on the couch forever feeling so miserable that we can’t go out and do anything. We’d be so free to explore what we want! Sure, people raised in a society that worships labor would feel unsure of their footing for a while, but I don’t think that’s a deep part of the human condition. People absolutely would still work. Imagine creating a theater production. All the work on planning, set design and construction, etc. None of that may pay a living but it’s still meaningful work that most people can’t spend time doing today. In a world without compulsory labor more meaningful work will be found.


All these are important, /because/ life is survival. Remove the /because/, and the secondary characteristics will fade away. One can just do whatevs, it doesn't make a difference anyways.


Is that true? People wealthy enough to ensure their lifetime survival don’t seem miserable.


Ha! If only rich heirs wasting their lives on drugs & hookers weren't such a pervasive stereotype.


How do you know the stereotype is correct? And poor people wasting their lives on drugs is another pervasive stereotype.


It does seem hard to live in a work-centric world when you as an individual don’t have to work. But I wonder a) how true this stereotype is and b) what it would be like it no one had to work. There would be more community oriented resources for finding meaning. Wealthy individuals in a work centric world don’t have that.


What do you mean by “decent”?

In the US at least, we’re going to get a point in the next few generations where it’s going to get harder and harder for many to find meaning in life. Increased automation, increased climate change, decreased financial security for people who expected to be secure.

It’s going to be rough.


Collective ownership of automation means everyone sees the benefits from automation. Decent means a life better than that for 90% of Americans today (but available to anyone worldwide). But “better” is subjective and I’m talking about good healthy food, a clean safe home, good clothes, transportation, and a wealth of free time to spend with others.

And people can still work for more if they want. I just don’t think that makes sense as a focus for everyone, because it devolves in to what we have today, which is a mess for most people.

But ultimately what is decent is up to everyone. I just think open community innovation is a better way to manage progress than what we have today, and would benefit everyone more than what we have now.

We aren’t exactly meeting everyone’s needs to the maximum we could today.

EDIT: I just think open community innovation is more likely to produce what more people want and need. I think it will actually produce more innovation than the current system. Remember that the sole function of a patent is to prevent innovation on top of existing ideas by third parties.


If open source has taught us anything open community innovation will create a lot of what we want to work on but much less of what we need.


This is a great insight. Once "work is no longer required for survival", people are going to soon discover that "work is not longer sufficient for survival" either.

"Decent" as in: we believe that character, including work ethic, can make or break a life.


Our species should always prefer more to less interesting work

Look around, your eminence. Most of our species prefer not working at all, and if we must, prefer expending the least mental effort.


Sure, I get it, it’s naive and idealistic. However, as a counterpoint I have seen repeatedly that people actually go a bit nuts without interesting work or hardship. I think that’s why puzzles, video games and dramatic television shows are so popular.

The problem is that we want work that is accessible, and interesting. It should be right near the edge but firmly within our abilities to be satisfying and meaningful, and we have problems when it deviates from that significantly.

It’s possible that for wide swaths of people that edge won’t keep up with the edge of what is not automate-able, but I think a) accepting that someone people will have to be supported out of work and b) others can have their personal ability edge pushed further with vocational training is both good for those individuals and good for society.


The problem is that we want work that is accessible, and interesting

In the words of Chris Farley, "sounds like a personal problem."


The cynic in ME says: establish an LLC, find a front man/woman to sell it back to your current company, and rake.


Ignoring whether it's a good idea, this is not trivial these days - both parties need to really trust each other given the number of ways things can go wrong.


Agreed, but you can say that about 2 cars passing each other at a 4-way stop.

Sometimes you just need to take a calculated risk and see where it goes.


Cynical me says maybe some of them were smart enough to automate away their own work and are slacking off like crazy. Presenting your automation solution to the bosses is marking you as a class enemy because now they will be expected to do a lot more for the same pay.


This is fantastic description of incentives and why technology is neither good nor bad, but provides leverage that can be used in dystopian ways when different forms of power grow unchecked.


I’d suggest exploratory convos with the people who own this part of the process - like you’re curious and want to learn more. Find out how many hours that part takes them on a weekly basis. Whatever your automation reduces that to is the value of it. Find out why they haven’t automated it before now. What would the people doing this manually be utilized to do if they weren’t busy with this? You may figure out that there are things your automation needs to account for that you weren’t aware of. When you’ve gotten more information, you could approach your manager with a proposal about what you are willing to do in your spare time for an agreed upon bonus and / or promotion - as if you haven’t done anything yet and of course, sell them on your ability to do this and why it should be you. You’d probably also want to understand if they’d lay off the people involved or just give them different work to do (don’t expect them to be honest though). If they’re interested and willing to pay you for it, great, go off and “finish it” and bring it back to them and implement it / integrate it. If they’re not willing to pay you for it, it’s not your problem to solve and you’ve learned a new skill - just maintain with them you’ve not built anything. The only way you should give this away for free is if you’re confident it’s going to put you on a better career track with that company (promotion, pay raise, etc). Great initiative - but it’s worth money and they should compensate you for it - because they will compensate themselves by either cutting costs through reducing their headcount, or increasing the output of their operations to make more money.


Be careful. There is a possibility the person who's job you are automating will not appreciate it.

Someone I used to work with had what I would consider a tedious portion of her job automated away by an officially sanctioned project involving multiple people in multiple groups. She thought everyone was trying to get rid of her.

I can't tell you how to communicate your intentions so they are not taken the wrong way, just that there is a reasonable likelihood that they will be.

Sibling comments address other pitfalls.


This sounds almost exactly what happened to me and got me inspired to move into tech. I was working at an economic data company that had a bunch of grunts uploading publicly available data into our databases so our users could use it with our software. I figured out how to automate and simplify the some of the steps of the update process and shared it around with coworkers. I didn't get rewarded for it at all, then quit to do a coding bootcamp.

My advice: if the coding part is what you enjoy, pursue that. Go become a software engineer.


Why not go to the person whose job you're trying to supplant and show them your POC? Approach from the angle of "this can free you up to do other things" and not "I'm trying to figure out how to replace people".

As far as ownership of this project goes, you need to think carefully before making any sort of claim. Depending on the language of your employment agreement, the IP of this project likely belongs to the company because it's based on their systems. "I did it on my own time" probably isn't going to hold up in a lawsuit either. And companies tend to have a lot more money to spend on lawyers than individual contributors, especially in cases where significant aspects of their operational model is threatened.


> Why not go to the person whose job you're trying to supplant and show them your POC? Approach from the angle of "this can free you up to do other things" and not "I'm trying to figure out how to replace people".

No no no. Go to your manager first. Otherwise that other person might tell your manager, who will be very displeased about being blindsided.

If you know your manager would react badly, even if they heard about this directly from you, then you already know what to do: keep this to yourself.


It also clearly shows this is a very bad idea. Whether the code works or not.

Nobody wants to lose their job especially these days.

Yes OP will make an enemy even at the suggestion this code exists. Plus OP will be labeled by employees in the company as someone to not trust.


Nah.. if you have a "lets get things done" team then that co-worker might love you. If you've saved them time, then word might get out that you've helped them. If the other person tells your manager it will be "X helped me so much."

They might start asking you to help with other things. Others will hear about it, not as you're trying to step on them, but that you're making their life easier. You could become the "go to person". Then you might get some time to study on the company dime.


Decades ago I was temping at data entry and very quickly figured out how to streamline/script much of the process. It didn't occur to me that I should keep this eldritch knowledge to myself, so I showed (permanent, salaried) colleagues what I was doing. A week later I was out of a job. Pretty dumb, huh?

I don't think this would happen to you, but you might lose some other folks their job. Something for you to consider.


Did they at least give you some kind of severance?


He said he was a temp, so I very much doubt he got severance.


I think there is a genuine divide between people who view repititive tasks as an insufferable hell vs. those who either don't mind or even might enjoy the work.

Most software engineers, for obvious reasons, fall into the category of the former. They will always be a minority of the general working population.

The toiling majority generally does not take kindly to having been made redundant. Proceed with caution.


This is well said! This is to get burned at the stake!


I had a similar situation at my previous company. After rewriting a web app for another team, I started E2E testing and questioned the entire app’s existence and whether the business process could be automated.

After verifying in the server logs that the users never really validated data (always clicking “submit” after a second or two), I discussed this idea with our business analyst and got the go-ahead, and spent another couple of weeks to automate everything.

Long story short, it was a mess. There was actually one piece of the puzzle that they owned that I couldn’t automate away (essentially clicking a button). So when presenting it all to them (via email), the team lied and told us it “wasn’t working” and CC’d our managers and one level up the chain as well. This manual business process stayed with them. They kept the web app tho.

My advice is to make sure this kind of thing is known to management, and to make sure you can prove to them that this entire process can be automated without problems. Or let it go if you don’t think you can handle the backlash.


Most of the IT industry is about automating tasks that would otherwise have to be done manually. Many of us here, myself included, are employed to do precisely this kind of thing on a full-time basis.

If you've come up with a way to make your employer's business processes more efficient, that's a good thing. You should share your work with the relevant people, talk about it with your manager and the people who are doing the work manually, and see where things go from there.

What will the reaction be? I don't know. In a healthy company with sensible people, they'll appreciate your initiative, and if they feel it's something that will help them they may adopt it (if they agree with your assessment of its value and usefulness). If the company you work for has a toxic culture where everyone only cares about their own short-term interests, it could backfire in some of the ways other commenters have suggested. I don't know how to deal with the latter case other than to just plow ahead anyway.

Think about this as one instance in a long term pattern of work philosophy, not as a once-off thing. If, throughout your career, you consistently look out for ways to improve things for the organisation you work for, including but not limited to automating manual tasks (and importantly, if you do so in a relevant and actually helpful way), you'll develop a reputation as someone is valuable and may be worth promoting or hiring to better positions where you can participate in or oversee IT projects.

In this specific instance being discussed here, the outcome might or might not be a good one, but as a general approach to your career I think yours is a good approach to take and will serve you well. But do communicate as much as possible with colleagues as soon as you have a proof of concept, since you need to validate it from an organisational as well as a technical perspective.


> If you've come up with a way to make your employer's business processes more efficient, that's a good thing.

Reading your comment, common sense woud agree with you. But it feels like you're reversing things. IF (and only if) OP's company promotes a healthy culture, that initiative IS actually positive (because OP doesn't have to worry too much about the outcome, they know they'll be rewarded and well received by other employees). If the culture is toxis / incompetent, there is very little benefit to that: OP would face the backlash of other employees, wouldn't be rewarded by their bosses, and other employees might face negative consequences for OP's initiatives.

There ARE definitely cases and culture where optimization isn't a desirable trait.


I might test waters saying ...do you think it is worth exploring if automation is possible in this area? Maybe that will allow them to focus on more human intelligence and analytics tasks?

If they are receptive ... I am happy to look around for any possible solutions that might help you. Will let you know if I find anything that might interest you.

If my boss / other team sound comfortable I might share snippets or demo a possible solution a week later.

Otherwise if the response is not encouraging I will keep it to myself.


I'd stop overthinking this, some of the answers you are getting here are ridiculous.

Show it to your manager.

Your job is to add value, that's it. You can add value by automating this process. You did it outside of normal working hours, so what? I'd guess most people here work extra hours.


When you show this to the manager, he will choose between 1) having several reports that he can easily supervise and keep busy, 2) lose some reports and instead having you become a defacto sort-of-equal in discussions about the process.

Managers hate the second option because it's a step backwards in their careers.

Managers with a stake in the business will be more reasonable.


whomever you tell (I like the idea of telling your direct manager), consider the option of only telling the following: "Hey boss, I have an idea how to automate this task of my colleagues and I am quite sure I could do it. However, since I already have a job for 100% of my time, I could arrange to do it in my free time for a bonus etc. etc."

What I've learned with automating my own tasks (I am in an administrative role myself), is that there's usually not much of an advantage in telling it. Which is why nowadays I don't tell anyone and just use the added free time however I want. (well, part of the reason is that I don't like my team enough to share it with them, as harsh as it sounds. I liked sharing with my prior team because there I knew that everyone was doing their part...) The incentives usually are not set up well for automating your own (or your colleagues') tasks. Would probably be different if you were in a manager role, though.


To reiterate what others have already said about letting your manger decide how / whether to implement this, I have seen an employee be shown the door immediately over something as simple as optimising an excel spreadsheet. Tread carefully, dont present yourself as a hero.. Automation is a sombre subject and should be treated as such.


Very Early in my career by bosses job was 90% running reports for others. A solid 7 hours of work each day. She spent 2 weeks teaching me how to build the reports then went on vacation.

When she got back the reports were a 5 minute job.

She proceed to use her now mostly empty day to have teach her to program. Then started taking on more responsibility in the company.

I got a 25% raise.


Here's what I would do:

"Hey Boss, could I get a $50k bonus and a promotion with 20% raise if I automated 30 hours of work per week that someone else does?"

If Yes - get it in writing and say "Here it is!"

If Not - do nothing.


Let’s get real: you’ve built a toy prototype. The real business use case is more complicated as you’ve discovered because there is team and budget and process allocated to the current solution. Your solution is maybe 1/10th of the current solution: no team, no budget, no process, and a nice demo.

Acknowledging that, you have a bunch of really bad options and few good options.

The absolute safest thing you can do is to keep it to yourself, and to use it when you can to make your own job easier. If you’re able to find time to use the tool to load your own data because the team that owns this process is overloaded, then they’ll appreciate the relief, so long as your tool doesn’t break or violate their standing policies.

The best advice in this thread is going to your manager and asking for time to develop and demo an automation solution. No one wants to hear that you’ve already built it because that raises thorny political and management questions. The best you can hope for is a sanctioned meeting where you can demo the capability to your manager and the manager of the other team.

If you’re fortunate enough to get authorization to proceed, make sure to tell everyone that your solution only handles the common simple cases and that the tricky special cases still need manual review- an 80% solution. The achieves two goals: allowing you to get away with having bugs, and allowing the other team to believe that they are more specialized and, hence, more valuable now with your solution than before.


I do this for a living. A lot of people think it's wrong to automate other people's jobs because they will get laid off. What really happens is usually that their job changes from data entry into exceptions handling. The savings isn't labor, it's throughput, giving the company an edge over competitors and in many cases that prevents the company from going under, there by saving a lot of people's jobs and creating revenue that can be used for promotions and raises. If that's unlikely where you're working, leave. The only reason companies that behave poorly can continue to do so is because you're helping them. Finally, as for profit, the heart of your question, the way this goes is pretty simple. You arrange to introduce a third party who has a solution for something. The third party, joins you and boss for a sales meeting, which you will arrange. Like a good human being, you will admit shamelessly that you have a stake in said third party. This is a lot more common than you think and no one is going to be surprised by it. Good hunting.


No good deed goes unpunished.

Even if your idea is good, logical and beneficial someone in management will take it as a slight that you had a good idea they didn't. Maybe you will have receptive management who are decent human beings, but in my experience you will be lynched for daring to step outside your lane.

Proceed with extreme caution. Your good feeling vibes about the effort you put in will NEVER be received the way you want. Management will see this as a slight and a threat.


Quit, start your own company, come to your former boss with an offer for a service he can't refuse. Possibly approach other companies who could benefit from this...


This is the option to go with if the thing they've built is a big enough deal to change business dynamics. No way of telling from the post, but something tells me OP isn't from that category. That sounds like a ballsy approach though.


Just make sure you can prove you developed it at home, not on ex-company time/hardware et cetera.


https://gizmodo.com/so-you-automated-your-coworkers-out-of-a...


Imagine having an obese friend and deciding you're going to research obesity, weight loss, etc. How do you expect him/her to react to your 'helpful' advice?

With obesity, you'd only be hurting feelings. With work, you'd be threatening someone's ability to earn a living.

The fact that you're asking this on the internet, instead of a chat with a friend, sibling, parent or mate, means your social situation is not what you'd like it to be. It'd be a very good idea to address that, as soon as possible.


What you did was a prototype. It's not something that can go into production. Tell your employer that you believe part of the manual effort can be made more efficient via automation. The reason you feel that way is that you've created a prototype that shows it working just enough to prove it to yourself, but it's not production ready. You'd like to work on it on company time and so that it's ready.

Consider what you already did as the prototype. Whether you believe it's already ready now, or isn't, is immaterial. No software is "done". It just whether it meets a set of requirements. No doubt there will be additional changes waiting to be done, and maintenance. Consider those to be part of the formal implementation plan.

Hopefully they will appreciate your initiative, and now you can continue to get paid for the thing that you were previously doing for free. And, maybe, you can help automate other things. This is good experience for you that you can use elsewhere.

The last thing you want to do is worry about compensation for the work you've already done on your free time. You're being penny-wise / pound-foolish about that. The good will you'll have with your current employer will far outweigh that.

And if it doesn't go as you describe, don't make a big deal about it, but clearly that's not department for you. Either transfer or go to a different company.

This exact scenario happened to me, and this is what I did; my future career benefit from it.


Proceed with caution.

I was once a msp monkey and casually mentioned to someone, who described their job of doing various operations in excel, why not just write a macro and stop doing that? Work smart, not hard.

She went ahead, learnt macros and automated her entire job. She finished her day's worth of work in a few minutes each day. Her mistake, she started talking much more. Coworkers snitched on her but her boss checked if she got her work done and she did.

Boss was sneaky and asked her if she could do a little extra work for the day. She said yes and she completed it right away.

She then went on to basically automate an entire department out of a job. She saved the business oodles of money. Those people got laid off, but they really disliked losing their job. They firebombed her car middle of the day in the corporate parking lot. She ended up being protected by the police briefly. Couldnt tell anyone where she moved but she got an awful lot of money from her employer and was promoted.


Charge 80% of what the other company is charging and negotiate as a contractor to do the work instead, leaving your job as an enployee. Don't disclose that you've done it "already". All you've done is built a proof of concept. When you win the contract, rebuild it clean room style from memory and reap profits.


I see some good suggestions in here. Here's something else to consider:

Imagine the person who's job you've automated decides to quit.

"Hey boss, instead of taking the time and money to replace so-and-so, how about you just increase my pay by (percentage) of what the salary would be? I have a solution to this staffing issue you might be interested in."


"However, this is code I wrote in my free time and I am rather unwilling to give it away without any benefit."

Good luck with that. You just posted that you came up with an idea directly related to your job. Your employer will most likely block you from making it commercially available and claimnit as their own. Even if you offer to let your company use it, they likely won't reward you more than a pat on the back and a gift card or trinket.

Basically, nothing beneficial will come of this. The best you can do is let your manager know about this code and that they can use it and hope the other people aren't too pissed.


Only one word of caution. Your manager might ask why you were spending as much time as you were coming up with this solution instead of asking for more work. Most likely the answer is reasonable, but best to have an answer prepared before talking about it.


Sadly some bosses would rather you spend more of your time to get your "day job" done more quickly.


I'd chat with the person who does the job now. Offer to help them out, and automate part of it.. In stages..

I do this when I get technical requests to generate reports. First time I run the sql/code manually.. Then at the third time I build a button, and show the requester the button.

Often they love me, because I saved them hours of work. And I can then we tweak it to make it even better for them.

I 100% don't go through my manager. They'd say no on the effort, or it would be coming top down to that co-worker. I'd rather be a hero to the co-worker. If I've got the skills to give them a better day, then they spread the love. Trust me, it comes back.


Build a generalized SaaS product that doesn't rely on proprietary information, make it polished enough that there's a chance the organization will start using it, then arrange for decision-makers in your the org to find out about it without exposing yourself.

Otherwise your boss might get some minimal level of credit for this, but you're not going to get anything out of it, and there is every chance of it backfiring spectacularly for you if that would provide an easy way for the organization to more efficiently absorb 100% of your work product (or if it would limit embarrassment for well-connected managers).


The next thing you should do is watch this scene from HBO's "The Wire" and think about what it means for you:

https://youtu.be/xyg_v7Vxo4A


Ask for permission to take a programming course, with the intention of automating some of the processes of the business. This gets you a credential and credit for the work, plus it's on the up and up.


If I were you, I'd find the other similar companies to your workplace and show them your solution. I'd try it with 100 companies and see if any of them find it useful.


Find out if there is interest from a competitor. If yes, get an LOI and find another competitor. Once you have 3-5 LOIs and maybe even a deposit, quit and start a company.


Discreetly donate your project to the person you are automating out of a job, and never talk about it again. Let them figure out how to handle the situation.


Try to get it implemented. I doubt someone would miss this repeatable part of their job that much... usually there are more problems to solve than people to solve them, so freeing up this person's time will likely just have him pick something else, and not making him redundant.


Don't show it to anyone. There's a lot of likely outcomes, most of which aren't good.


There's lots of useless replies in here so far, and some half-baked ones. First, determine whether you have an intellectual property assignment for this idea. This could be determined by local laws, a contract you signed, and the manner in which the idea was created an implemented.

Many companies and jurisdictions don't have an explicit intellectual property assignment. Let's assume that's the case. Let's also assume that you came up with the idea outside of working hours, and utilized your own software, equipment, internet connection, etc to build this thing.

Next, consider whether or not this invention of yours is applicable to others in the same industry, or different industries that need to accomplish a similar task. If that's the case, then you might have something valuable.

If you have something valuable, you might want to look into filing a patent. When you file the patent, and if it gets approved (can take years), you now have exclusive rights to the invention. Patents in software are more how the 'process' than the actual code itself. EG: "use computer software to take values from data source X, do something useful here, output results to Y."

You should consult with a patent attorney if you think it's really valuable. You'll need to perform some research to determine if the invention is already patented.

Now, once you've applied for the patent, and you believe that you don't have an intellectual property assignment favoring your employer for it, would be the time to offer to demonstrate the software. The software should not be present on company machines, etc. You probably want to work out the exact steps with your patent attorney on the protocol here.

Even though it make take years to be awarded the patent, if the patent is found valid, then you'll have coverage from the time of filing, at least in the US. This means if the company steals your idea and implements it themselves, they've stolen your patent, and would be liable for damages. What I think the best outcome is you agree to license the product to the company for $X/yr.

Now, all that's a heavy handed approach and might lead to litigation, so consider your best options carefully.

If you decide the above is too much, or the invention is not that valuable, or you think it's not worth the trouble, I would bring it up to management that you have an idea to solve the problem, but don't mention you have the solution. Negotiate a bonus, promotion, or raise for the implementation. Unfortunately for you, they can just decide to make you work on it during the course of your normal day, and you'll get nothing.


Make it into a product, put someone elses name on it then promote it with the employer with straight face. Could even include an email exchange where you list the missing features and respond with willingness to implement them.


That sounds an awful lot like fraud. You’re promoting a product to your employer while actively hiding your financial stake in it.


Ask to switch to the team in charge of processing the data manually. Use your solution and don't tell anyone. Do 1 hour of work, pass it off as 8, spend the other 7 enjoying cocktails on the beach.


Try to get an idea on why nobody else before it was not done, why you could do it, try to open up a conversation as if you did not implement anything. Every business is different.


ah the sweet naivete of a junior developer

not every problem is your problem.


The company probably owns the code as it's related to your company, even if you did it in your free time.


Sell it as Saas solution


I would suggest talking to your manager. But don't let on that you've already built the automation - they don't need to know that. Instead, say you've observed something, that you think you'd have the skills to automate it, and if the business would be interested, and would they compensate you if you could indeed improve the process?

This presents no threat to anybody and allows you to gauge reactions.


You're an admin. No one's going to take a second look at your toe-stepping pet project.


As for the property, check your contract, your employer may own anything you do in your free time already. And also check with an attorney in your state, such contractual obligations may be invalid by local laws.

As for yourself, you have an important decision to make. Are you a wolf or a sheep?


what do “wolf” and “sheep” mean in this context? Genuine question.


He's implying that a wolf would sacrifice his fellow workers job to advance for themselves, while a sheep would stay with his flock of fellow coworkers and not release the project.


Almost. I'm implying a wolf would feed on their fellow workers to advance themselves and the other wolves.


Don't wolves work in packs to succeed?

Since when do wolves kill all their pck members so they can hunt alone?


It's the "lone wolf" alpha male type ideal, it's not a thing in wolves in real life.


Predator or prey.




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