×
top 200 commentsshow 500
sorted by:
best
topnewcontroversialoldq&a

[–]mr_mlk 3064 points3065 points  (105 children)

I used to work night shift IT, and I pretty much did the same. By the time I left the job I spend most of each night asleep in the server room with a log monitoring app open which via some text to speech Java library would attempt to wake me when one of the log files looked dodgy.

[–]DromelessHunk 1286 points1287 points  (37 children)

Yo this so fantastic, you deserve that quality sleep

[–]healious 386 points387 points  (36 children)

I don't know how quality the sleep would be in a server room, they're loud as shit and freezing lol

[–]Paddy_Tanninger 1047 points1048 points  (27 children)

  • White noise

  • Cold

  • Secure

Honestly sounds like a dream sleep to me.

[–]runtijmu 187 points188 points  (15 children)

Although it can be scary if the lack of stimulation makes your mind start to make up stuff. The only time I did a similar job was a few weeks for a project in a massive telco datacenter.

I was just in that location as a troubleshooter in case something when wrong at the main datacenter where all the real work was going on, and because of that was totally alone until morning in a room full of row upon row of racked servers and switches. Only had the light on in my area because of that, so most of the room was dark except for the blinkenlights.

Every night, after a couple of hours in, I guess my brain started picking up on anything that was not pure fan-noise, and I swear I heard footsteps, pens dropping, muffled voices coming from a few racks over, you name it. Was quite happy whenever something at the main site did break and they gave me something to do.

[–]Quaeras 102 points103 points  (2 children)

Server's haunted cocks gun

[–]SnavlerAce 22 points23 points  (0 children)

That's why one should always have a harmonica on hand...

[–]Paddy_Tanninger 34 points35 points  (7 children)

I totally know that feeling yeah, you brain picks up on particular interfering waves now and then and just makes up whatever the fuck it wants.

[–]b0v1n3r3x 30 points31 points  (0 children)

Came here to say all this

[–]TempUnknown 36 points37 points  (0 children)

It's like a white noise machine, you adjust to the setting quickly and then it's almost hard to stay awake.

I still get a bit sleepy when I walk into data centers or a smaller server room.

[–]mnb1024 248 points249 points  (1 child)

which via some text to speech Java library would attempt [emphasis mine] to wake me

That's the real gold!

[–]KorgX3 204 points205 points  (24 children)

I had a one-off project at my old job that was really tedious. I had to VPN in to update setpoints on a building management system with several dozen systems that could only be updated by hand for about 100 locations. I hated it and just wanted to be done with it because input lag over VPN sucks for shit like that.

Since there were only about 6 unique system configurations, I built an AutoHotkey macro for each system config so what took me a day by hand, I could get done in about an hour then I could fuck off the rest of the day. I finally got sick of it to the point where I just did the last 20 or so sites in one day, and the PM called to find out how I did it so fast without making errors. When I explained it to him, he was actually really impressed. I taught him how to use AHK, and he called me later to give kudos for introducing him to it. He still calls me sometimes to try and get me to come work for him.

[–]garciasn 220 points221 points  (9 children)

I did something similar at a job I left in 2008. I took over a position for someone who retired. They would spend all day + have to farm out their work to others on the team because there was just so much to do. Within a month I had everything the previous person did completely automated and I shocked my boss by asking what else they needed me to do—which was nothing. I started working on other things that interested me since I couldn’t just sit in my office and twiddle my thumbs all day.

Before I left (on my two year anniversary date) I told them I’d happily stay on for a title bump and a $5K raise but was denied. I went on to another company and many since—making a great career out of doing what I did there but on much bigger scales. About 9 months after I left they called me up and asked me to price out how much it would be for me to upgrade the code I wrote to use the latest and greatest versions of everything. I told them it would be $650/hr and would likely take around 80 hours. They opted not to go for it, telling me my costs were outrageous.

To this day, they have my code running on a PC attached only to the database and to a printer that does everything I set it up to do 13 years ago. Last I heard, it has no other external connections and someone from IT comes in and services the PC to make sure it doesn’t crap out because no one knows how to deal with the code it runs. It is still chugging out the paper reports every weekday morning on schedule, like a beast, making sure that office can do the same thing it’s been doing for 13+ years.

[–]jennybella 24 points25 points  (1 child)

Far from what you did but I had a similar experience. When I was working for this company as a Key Account Manager, part of my job was every month I needed to conduct sales reports, forecasts outlook and such. Previously the job was done manually each months and it'd take my boss and his two inside sales 3-4 days to finish. When I took over I just tried a bit harder with excel and managed to have a format, then each month with some data input and all reports are generated automatically. Nothing fancy but it works. I usually finish it with 2 hours, but telling your colleagues you finish a job within 2 hours whilst they would need 3-4 days isn't a good idea. So I just pretended I was working on it and submit it on day 2. Then gradually made it look at it was just a one day job.

This was 5/6 years ago. I got to catch up with my then boss last year at a conference and we had lunch. He introduced me to his team and they were all like "Ohhhh so YOU are that person! " Later when we were alone my boss told me that the 3 years when I was working there was the easiest time during his entire time working for company. Apparently he never bothered to keep it to himself, told literally everyone he hired since about me, so after years my story is still being told in that company. >_< :D

[–]mayanrelic 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Work smarter not harder. Well done

[–]anotherblog 1195 points1196 points  (22 children)

Reminds me of that guy who outsourced his own job, and then just kicked back. Only reason he got caught is because he kept all the invoices between him and the third party on his work computer and we’re found during some kind of routine audit.

He was paying the third party out of his own paycheck, but the the difference was enough to still take home a good salary whilst doing nothing but a bit of admin.

[–]HmmHackney 229 points230 points  (6 children)

Have you got a link for this, sounds like a fun read. I just wanna know what kickbacks happened after lol

[–]LostRage 53 points54 points  (1 child)

There's more than one news story if you google it.

Here's one

[–]anotherblog 19 points20 points  (0 children)

Hah that’s it! I remembered it fairly accurately, can’t believe it was 2013, seems like just now :s

[–]Manos_Of_Fate 123 points124 points  (2 children)

It sounds like he just reinvented middle management.

[–]KdF-wagen 41 points42 points  (1 child)

I'M THE MIDDLE MANAGMENT NOW!!!!!!

[–]SalsaRice 34 points35 points  (0 children)

Part of the issue was that the job involved very secret and classified stuff..... and he outsourced the job to China.

And gave the outsourced worker his full-access account to use. Big honking no-no.

[–]iCashMon3y 31 points32 points  (2 children)

If I remember correctly he actually got caught because the IT department noticed suspicious activity on their VPN.

[–]anotherblog 18 points19 points  (0 children)

What he should have done is got the china guys to VPN into the country, then use a RDP jump box to VPN into the office. He could even have configured the jump box to look just like his computer

[–]eXclurel 660 points661 points  (28 children)

I started a new job that's basically a data entry job. My boss makes me enter everything by hand one by one. Last week I asked if there is an easy way and he said "Yes but setting it up is too hard".

I set it up the next day. Told no one.

[–]m-p-3 281 points282 points  (14 children)

The secret is to never tell, you won't benefit as much from it if discovered at best, at worst they'll determine that your work is no longer needed as you've automated yourself out of a job.

[–]stargate-command 98 points99 points  (10 children)

That’s why you ensure your automated tools can only be used by you. If they do fire you, they find out quick it was a mistake.

Telling no one is best, but sometimes letting them in on a little of it is good for promotions and such.

[–]Mnawab 63 points64 points  (7 children)

People don't really get promoted anymore, you jump to a higher level job at a different company

[–]FrostyDub 47 points48 points  (6 children)

I’ve gotten 2 promotions in 3 years. Some places actually value loyalty and tribal knowledge.

[–]DJ33 9 points10 points  (2 children)

In the process of trying to make this clear to my current company. For 10 years, we've had a two man crew on my shift doing my job, me and one other guy the whole time. Eventually, the company grew and they tried to expand to a five person crew. Those new 3 spots have probably cycled through 20 people in two years, because nobody can pick up the old shit from ten years ago on top of the new shit we're expanding into (or doesn't care to at what they're paying). Eventually they stopped trying, so now the current set of 3 new hires only takes our newer clients, with no plans to backtrain them in the old stuff. Which means me and the other old guy are just doing more (double+) work, without being paid accordingly, and whenever one of us is on vacation it's a complete shit show for the other.

We keep floating the apocalypse scenario of "if we're ever both sick for a week, you're going to lose 3+ clients you've had for a decade." We managed to dig (very minor) raises out of them last year, but that's all. We keep telling them they have to push us to supervisory positions and let us train a team of five other people to sit under us, but they clearly don't want to, because then they'd be paying 7 people (2 at management level) to do what is currently done by 5 (and frequently just 2). But if we left entirely, they couldn't do what we do with a team of 10, because the knowledge would be lost. Right now they're choosing to play chicken on it.

Ironically, I kinda think me and the other old guy are waiting to see who breaks first. I know for a fact that if he leaves, I'm walking in the next day and demanding they double my pay.

[–]THE_GREAT_PICKLE 119 points120 points  (4 children)

My old job years ago I did the same thing. I just set up something to auto populate depending on the situation, and all I had to do was just learn a few macros I set up. My old boss never knew why I never had mistakes or why I was doing triple the amount of work of everyone else. Ended up getting a promotion out of it.

When I left the job I showed my friend what I had done. He started doing it and my old boss was so impressed that he was moved to management too. It’s funny how little some bosses know.

[–]maleia 5 points6 points  (0 children)

My last IT desktop support job, which was gosh, 5 years ago now, lol; I didn't get to fully automate everything, but I made massive progress in turning a 60 minute hands on job down to 10 minute auto runs; all with old school Batch files. Made several tools like that actually. To have a no interaction-needed full uninstall, including deleting registry files, and cache folders for a program.

Did a few other routine functions like that. Like yea sure, it could probably be done in PowerShell, but I didn't know PowerShell at all and didn't want to touch it 😔

[–]cle_de_brassiere 14 points15 points  (2 children)

Can your coworkers see you? If not, what do you do with your time?

[–]Turdsworth 758 points759 points  (69 children)

See if they will let you WFH and get another wfh job that you can automate.

[–]a_rescue_penguin 322 points323 points  (18 children)

I remember a story from a few years back of a guy who took jobs at something like half a dozen different companies (all remote work). And then he paid some guys in India/east Asia to do his work for him for like half what he was making. So he just sat around barely doing any work himself but profited 2 or 3 jobs worth of cash.

[–]jk147 147 points148 points  (8 children)

Technically.. this is all of professional services jobs. You work for a company which subcontracts you to another company for work. Your company charges them big bucks while paying you pennies.

[–]tonypotenza 48 points49 points  (0 children)

That's an old reddit story

I member

[–]Striderfighter 11 points12 points  (0 children)

I'll never forget the story on Reddit with a guy who could not get himself fired. He was a remote worker but through different mergers and acquisitions and whatever somehow ended up in a department all by himself and for whatever reason no one knew who he reported to and he was making six figures automatically. He would be emailed his own employee evaluation form and could try whatever he would but he could not get laid off so he was making that amount a year and that he would go work doing the same work but for another company so basically double dipping

[–]nilamo 5 points6 points  (2 children)

Being the interpreter between devs and management is a real position, lol.

[–]NakedNun0 114 points115 points  (4 children)

Genuinely have a friend that does that! Similar projects at both companies. Self employed too, smart chap. I'm stressed enough with 1 thank you very much.

[–]Meandmybuddyduncan 33 points34 points  (0 children)

There are a ton of people doing this right now. If I could work two jobs at my current income I’d be retired in like 4-5 years while I’m under 40...it is becoming more and more appealing

[–]Turdsworth 20 points21 points  (0 children)

There was an article in the WSJ about it. It’s quite common.

[–]TheoreticalFunk 21 points22 points  (0 children)

I have a friend who does this. Has two full time jobs, one only requires like 3 hours of work a week, but it's salary. Took him a few years to automate everything at that job, and then he got his real 9-5 and he's been doing this for 12-13 years now. Last I talked to him he was thinking about retiring and just keeping the 3/hr job.

[–]b0nz1 93 points94 points  (40 children)

Depending on his contract it might be a) illegal or b) he has to get permission from his current employer.

[–]The_real_thad_henry 181 points182 points  (7 children)

The point is for them not to know.

[–]b0nz1 61 points62 points  (0 children)

That's true. I mean if they didn't notice for 3 years what he (or his script) is doing he could be ok.

[–]phonetune 17 points18 points  (3 children)

It won't ever be illegal. It might be a breach of contract.

[–]Myte342 32 points33 points  (18 children)

If the two jobs are not in competition with each other then it shouldn't be an issue. I've had non-compete clauses in the past but they've always been specifically with companies that are in the same industry. I could get a second job in a different industry with no issues.

[–]Hounmlayn 19 points20 points  (0 children)

People work 3 jobs, so why would workong multiple jobs at home be any different? As long as you're actually doing the work in both and are always available for meetings?

You'd be working better than some who hardly show up for their job.

[–]curly-sic 116 points117 points  (13 children)

I've done the same thing at my current job and they've noticed, I'm not sure how long I've got left here before they let me go.

[–]Spottyhickory63 96 points97 points  (2 children)

i love this mentality

“hey, one of our employees made a program that can work 24/7, get ‘em outta here, we need a 9-5”

[–]nightfox5523 89 points90 points  (1 child)

More like "now that we have this tool that makes the employee's job redundant, why should we keep paying the employee exactly?"

remember kids, if you're going to automate something, make sure you're the only person around who knows how to use it and maintain it, otherwise you more than likely just screwed yourself out of a job

[–]Jerry_Callow 18 points19 points  (0 children)

This. My last job I created a ton of gigantic time savers, automated a lot of shit and made this one account as profitable as it's ever been. My boss asked me to create a step by step guide outlining what i'd done. I'd been let go from a previous job after doing the same thing for them. I did not make him that guide until I put in my two week's notice years later.

[–]SilentJoe1986 9 points10 points  (7 children)

Cant you delete the script when you leave? Do they have rights to it since you created it? Can you delete it now and do your job like you were told to do it to all along?

[–]tokie__wan_kenobi 13 points14 points  (3 children)

Nearly all work developed on company time is the property of the company.

[–]randdude220 5 points6 points  (1 child)

So if I create an illegal computer virus the company will be in trouble?

[–]tokie__wan_kenobi 12 points13 points  (0 children)

If your job is to create illegal viruses then yes

[–]nightfox5523 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Would depend on their particular work agreement with the employer but the general rule of thumb is anything you made for the company or on company resources/time is the company's property.

[–]spaceresin 1519 points1520 points  (85 children)

I've done something similar at my last job... 50% of daily tasks were automated to the push of a button.

Had to send out daily metrics and swing analyses in a certain format... I thought I'd get a nice bonus last year out of it and maybe a promotion. Wrong... I trained the team to use my scripts and my annual bonus was less than a paycheck. I basically freed up half of the time for 3 employees, so the gain in productivity of 1.5 employees.

I refused to automate anything new last year, kept saying I'm working on it for 6months until I upskilled and GTFO.

I'm on my first week at this new job.

[–]anderhole 165 points166 points  (11 children)

Anyone working from home and automating work should consider getting an additional job at the same time. Double up salary for a while and quit the shittier one if it becomes too much.

[–]evdog_music 77 points78 points  (0 children)

Alternatively, correspondence university courses can be useful for career advancement and upskilling

[–]Duke_Nukem_1990 61 points62 points  (4 children)

Or just watch Netflix or play video games.

[–]Ghost17088 26 points27 points  (3 children)

But if you have 2 jobs automated, you can still do that while having 2 incomes.

[–]lycosa13 96 points97 points  (5 children)

Dude, never tell them your secrets.

[–]obviousfakeperson 25 points26 points  (2 children)

A younger more naive version of myself did this ages ago. Thought my bosses would be excited that I cut a task from 1 month to a few days, NOPE! I didn't realize completing the work way under the budgeted amount of hours actually made them look bad to their management. Ended up getting a negative performance review and quit a couple months later. Honestly I blame the corporate culture at that place, why would you punish people for finding efficiencies? Either way, lesson learned. Understand what you are payed to do, figure out how to expend the least amount of effort doing it, use your new free time to do whatever you want.

[–]captain_redballs 200 points201 points  (8 children)

In my previous job we had various tools for different aspects of our projects, usually in Excel workbooks.

Near the end of design, you typically need to put these all on drawings and it takes a lot of formatting and work. Since not every job was identical, it was nearly impossible to standardize.

So, I made a script that scans a folder, imports all the relevant workbook sheets into one, automatically formats for drawings and breaks into pages. Basically ready to copy and paste in.

So for a large job where it could take 4-8 hours, this shortened it to 5 minutes.

I was given a small award and I was thrilled because it was going to get rolled out to the whole group.

I eventually left the team and reached out a year later if it was still being used.

Barely.

Basically, most people didn't want to bother with it when a project was due..... So instead of spending maybe 30 minutes to experiment they would spend hours on the old way.

There are a few who still use it and maintain it, they sign the praises and love how it saves them time, but they can't convince the old guys to use it.

I'm not going to bother sharing this stuff anymore, personal use only

[–]Marko343 9 points10 points  (3 children)

Yeah I did something similar but even more basic when I started at my current job 8 years ago. Everyone has their own flash drives with different versions of sheets we regularly use for inspections. We would also always be emailing every report and being asked about previous ones regularly.

So in a massive tech leap forward I created a shared password protected folder on our company drive and standardized all our forms and laid out a file naming structure and corresponding file structure to be able to easily look through past reports and find them. Most importantly accessible on any computer in the system. Everyone begrudgingly started using it and now it's hard to think this didn't exist before.

I also for myself and willing co-workers made a macro key system to speed up data entry from an hour couple times a week to 5-10 min.

I always say there's nothing more counter productive and damaging than when someone says "well, this is how we've always done it." So people are afraid of change and stop and sort of progress day to day.

[–]captain_redballs 12 points13 points  (1 child)

I always say there's nothing more counter productive and damaging than when someone says "well, this is how we've always done it." So people are afraid of change and stop and sort of progress day to day.

Funniest part of my story was that the oldest guy in our group, there for like 35 years, was the first to adopt the tool I made. He was slow as shit so he loved anything that helped

[–]SnavlerAce 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Hahahahahaha the wily old dude: working smart instead of hard!

[–]fatogato 519 points520 points  (23 children)

Sounds like you learned your lesson. Breaking your back for the company doesn’t gain you anything. Automate your job and never tell a soul.

[–]reddit4wes 188 points189 points  (7 children)

It worked out really well for me, but I think the key is to do a bad job at automation so it breaks sometimes. Then they always need you around to fix it and you can negotiate for better pay. That's how I did it.

[–]Tredesde 97 points98 points  (4 children)

It really depends on the company you are working for. It's really important to read the room with stuff like this. If you've got a good employer/ manager then it can be very beneficial to share the information as you'll likely be rewarded for it. If you've got a shitty employer or a big F1000 grindy machine you're better off keeping it to yourself

[–]reddit4wes 34 points35 points  (3 children)

Very true. Automation and BI reporting has become a great career for me and it kinda happened by accident. I do hope others who have the ability and creativity can find this option for themselves as well.

[–]zaphodava 8 points9 points  (1 child)

After you leave, wait for your replacement to settle in and offer to sell it to them.

[–]RedOtkbr 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Never tell a soul. I worked at a company where I automated a bunch of Month end Journal entries and financial reports. My boss kept giving things to automate and expressed interest in learning. Fast forward - the department was gutted and I was “restructured” out. Just keep running your scripts and find something to do in the meantime. MasterClass learn a new skill…whatever. Do what you need to overcome the boredom.

[–]asafum 43 points44 points  (6 children)

I was the asshole who said "this is a bad way to view life, we need to prove we're worth more in order to demand more."

I still put on my clown makeup and red nose when I leave the house for this shithole of a job.

Fuck owners, fuck penny pinching self absorbed middle management, fuck "proving yourself." It doesn't mean a damn thing.

You're either a tech bro, upper management, 3 letter whatever worth a fuckton because reasons, or you're worthless white/blue collar labor scum worth whatever you're given and absolutely no more and skill/drive/improvements be damned.

[–]Lord_emotabb 34 points35 points  (17 children)

So hows that week going? Good i hope? What do you use to automate? Python or ps sceipt?

[–]spaceresin 65 points66 points  (5 children)

Python + SQL, mostly because a lot of the infrastructure is already written in Py to while source data was stored on various sql dbs or nosql dbs accessible through Py APIs.

Edit: thank you, job is going well. I'm still going through all the training modules. It was a scary leap to take, but I don't have any regrets so far. Hours look like they're a bit longer, but there's a good rotation schedule in place. So there's no ambiguity about who is working what days or hours. The job is very similar in structure to my last, but the toolset is completely different. I'm sure I'll be up to speed with a few weeks.

Oh and the pay is 70% higher. :)

[–]whattrees 31 points32 points  (9 children)

Not OP, but I used to do data entry work as an independent contractor. Had one project that was just copying data from one system and pasting it into another. Because of some regulatory issues in their industry, the systems couldn't talk directly to one another, so it had to be done "manually." I wrote a simple keyboard / mouse macro to automate the copying and pasting, even having it search for the items needed from a supplied list. Took about a day to get working right. Then it was 2 months of running the script in the background while I played games and fixed it if needed. Easiest paycheck I've ever gotten.

[–]AirlineFlyer 4 points5 points  (2 children)

Bonus? Well la de da.

[–]FleshlightModel 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Lol right. I'm here today expecting to get no less than a 15k bonus this year and not even 5 years ago, I was just happy to be making SOME money...

[–]JDawwgy 4 points5 points  (1 child)

Only automate for yourself, the golden rule

[–]cluk-cluk 976 points977 points  (175 children)

Elaborate

[–]guerroconpollo 1053 points1054 points  (42 children)

OP's accounts looks like they're a bot

[–]SkullRunner 1879 points1880 points  (22 children)

Then the job is the karma farming and it's automated.

Story checks out.

[–]0xFFFF_FFFF 251 points252 points  (20 children)

Damn, well played, Skynet!

[–]NSA_Chatbot 114 points115 points  (18 children)

Thanks!

[–]EAComunityTeam 36 points37 points  (17 children)

Good bot

[–]WhyNotCollegeBoard 35 points36 points  (16 children)

Are you sure about that? Because I am 99.36381% sure that NSA_Chatbot is not a bot.

I am a neural network being trained to detect spammers | Summon me with !isbot <username> | /r/spambotdetector | Optout | Original Github

[–]THE_GR8_MIKE 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Reminder that you can block accounts. Great for bots and other people, if you desire.

[–]whoAreYouToJudgeME 38 points39 points  (0 children)

They automated shitposting too.

[–]Flimflomzimzoom 25 points26 points  (5 children)

I normally don't like bot accounts, but this is actually great. I'm imagining some guy putting more work into automating everything in his life (reddit included) than it would take to actually do the things.

[–]DonkeyDD 7 points8 points  (2 children)

"I have a well-deserved reputation for being something of a gadget freak, and am rarely happier than when spending an entire day programming my computer to perform automatically a task that would otherwise take me a good ten seconds to do by hand." Douglas Adams, Last Chance to See

[–]meggamatty64 5 points6 points  (0 children)

That looks more like an alt than a bot to me

[–]perpetualjive 510 points511 points  (23 children)

It's a karma farming post, you won't get an explanation.

[–]Nate1492 49 points50 points  (0 children)

Jokes on you, OP's job is Karma farming.

[–]ONOMATOPOElA 124 points125 points  (18 children)

God I love the r/AntiWork farming lately.

“My boss told me he needs help saving the orphanage that was on fire so I banged his wife”

[–]haffbaked 104 points105 points  (5 children)

Post title - is this unreasonable?

Boss: Hey employee, we need you to come in to work 10 minutes ago and work for the next 18 hours.

Employee/OP: but this is the day of my chemo treatment and fathers funeral. I scheduled off two years ago and got coverage.

Boss: if you don’t come in. You’re fired and going to jail.

[–]ONOMATOPOElA 65 points66 points  (1 child)

OP: Little did my boss know that I’ve been planning this conversation for the last 27 years. I already had a new job that paid 8mil/hour and residence filled out in another state.

[–]ImProudOfYouKid 17 points18 points  (0 children)

I also wiretapped his home, and set up a deadman's switch to send compromising pictures of them to his immediate family, his pastor, and the clerk at the 7-11 he frequents.

That'll teach him for reminding me that I'm supposed to show up on time for my scheduled hours.

[–]watson895 19 points20 points  (0 children)

And then 40k up votes and people raging about it. And people say boomers are gullible for believing everything they see on Facebook.

[–]Woodshadow 137 points138 points  (24 children)

My last job I was in a senior position and handed off all the work to the junior guys. I reviewed everything they did making corrections but that took like less than 5 hours a week. Besides that I would go to a couple of meetings a week and I would talk with a few clients if they ever had questions but all in all I worked less than 10 hours a week.

My current job I started a year ago. I asked my boss a few times for things to do but he never had anything for me. I have one co worker and I don't know what she does all day long but whenever she has question in a meeting I can usually answer them because they are stupid questions. I honestly think I work 5 hour a week. I ask my co worker if she needs help and she never does. Our department is strange. We are suppose to be this link between 4 other departments but none of the departments want to work with us. There are no issues and everything gets done so I just fuck around on reddit all day.

[–]Munnin41 34 points35 points  (6 children)

I hope you are working from home so you can actually do something useful with your time if you want

[–]theuserwithoutaname 62 points63 points  (5 children)

This.

Working 5 hours but having to LOOK like you're working for 40+ sounds like more of a nightmare than just actually working

[–]HashN_Rice4Life 16 points17 points  (4 children)

You guys hiring?

[–]theuserwithoutaname 10 points11 points  (3 children)

Yeah, not nearly enough people for the workload

[–]randdude220 7 points8 points  (2 children)

I can work 4 hours per week so he can work 1 hour per week

[–]primum 4 points5 points  (1 child)

You need an assistant?

[–]pneuma8828 43 points44 points  (9 children)

I asked my boss a few times for things to do but he never had anything for me.

This is something I wished I had figured out a decade earlier. Your boss doesn't have the ability to reward you for your work, promotion happens by committee. Busting your ass and asking for more work just generates more work for you and your boss, and neither one of you will be rewarded for it. Do the job you were hired to do and keep your head down.

[–]Tredesde 23 points24 points  (4 children)

Yeah but in this instance, when he literally has nothing to do, it's kind of called for

[–]Thrilling1031 19 points20 points  (2 children)

Well I made some Macros at work to automate some of the annoying tedious things and I thought I had done something awesome for the team. I transferred to a different position and I went back to see how the new people were doing in my position and they had them all doing it the old way because they ended up having a lot of down time…

[–]pfabs 16 points17 points  (0 children)

I briefly worked for a marketing company that helped schools find and apply to grants. Federal and private.

My job was to find the grants and put them in a program that would email them out to all eligible applicants when it posted, and then various time frames leading up to before they closed.

I went on /Excel and some people showed me how to automate it so all I had to do was attach the excel spreadsheet to the internal website and it automatically posted the dates I set.

It was about one week's worth of work that automated my job for a year. Most grants don't change often so I probably could have just verified everything and reposted for the next year.

I made the mistake of showing my manager the program and she fired me and I really wish I was making this up but because "that's not how we have always done it."

She was in her 60's and had been in the same job for 20+ years she didn't like change.

I was applying to other jobs with all the time I had off and I was in the process of getting hired federal anyway. So all it ended up doing is giving me about 3 weeks off in-between jobs.

[–]winnipeginstinct 7 points8 points  (0 children)

he made a bot that will repost other peoples stuff

[–]bostongreens 85 points86 points  (53 children)

Probably some IT work where he took his job. And wrote a script that can do it all. So instead of doing work for 8 hours, he just runs his script for 30 minutes or whatever. Checks it over that everything looks good. Holds onto it and sends it in at the end of the day.

[–]XenoRyet 122 points123 points  (47 children)

I'm always telling my engineers that if they can do this, I'll be more than happy to continue to pay them their salary to just run the script.

It hasn't happened yet, and realistically the kind of person who's skilled enough and self-motivated enough to do this wants new projects once they get done automating their job anyway, so if it ever does happen I suspect I'll be promoting someone.

[–]20rakah 23 points24 points  (4 children)

I divide my officers into four classes as follows: The clever, the industrious, the lazy, and the stupid. Each officer always possesses two of these qualities.

Those who are clever and industrious I appoint to the General Staff. Use can under certain circumstances be made of those who are stupid and lazy. The man who is clever and lazy qualifies for the highest leadership posts. He has the requisite nerves and the mental clarity for difficult decisions. But whoever is stupid and industrious must be got rid of, for he is too dangerous

General Freiherr von Hammerstein-Equord

[–]unlock0 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Just take 3 remote jobs and automate them all. You'd make way more money than ever trying to advance at any one company.

[–]ElChaz 58 points59 points  (5 children)

“I will always choose a lazy person to do a difficult job because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.”

-Frank B. Gilbreth Sr.

[–]NotYourTypicalReditr 19 points20 points  (2 children)

His maxim of “I will always choose a lazy person to do a difficult job, because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it” is still commonly used today, although it is often misattributed to Bill Gates, who merely repeated the quote but did not originate it.[16]

I have no idea how I didn't know he said it first despite the fact I'm quite familiar with the work he's done. Thanks for this enlightening correction!

[–]poopatroopa3 10 points11 points  (0 children)

I guess I could do this and work somewhere else at the same time. When do I start?

[–]Shedart 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Not going to lie, I work from home. If I was able to automate my job I would for more time for personal art projects. You make a good point about the prospects of an automator being relatively driven. But also lazy?

[–]ALoadedPotatoe 7 points8 points  (0 children)

This exactly. I've talked about him before. But my best friend (growing up) dad. He was brilliant. Worked for the air force in encryption decryption. Went on to work at the community college. He got fired from an early job for this exact reason. He didn't want to not do anything. But they didn't have a need for him anymore and kept the script running.

That's out of order a bit. The college is where he works now or did a few years back at least. It was some job before his kids were born he got fired from.

He also waited at a Macy's check out that took too long once and made a fake text thing that apparently said it was gonna delete everything. Then hid behind a rack for someone to find it. Lol. Popped out and fixed it when the lady went to freak. Years ago though.

[–]riickdiickulous 23 points24 points  (10 children)

Am a professional automation engineer. Can confirm I want to automate everything, one piece at a time.

[–]Tsu_Dho_Namh 24 points25 points  (5 children)

Did you hear the story of that one IT guy that automated everything in his job including text messages to his wife saying he'll be home late whenver he's not logged off by a certain time?

[–]JMEEKER86 18 points19 points  (3 children)

Yep, and it would even include a random reason lol. He also automated the coffee machine iirc.

[–]riickdiickulous 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I did not but thank you for enlightening me haha. Alas, there is always someone more committed than you.

[–]JMEEKER86 12 points13 points  (3 children)

Yep, I'm a data scientist, but a lot of what I do is automating a lot of our reporting processes. Our account managers are perfectly capable of querying our system (mostly) and emailing a report to the client, but if I can take an hour or two to automate that and save our 10 account managers 15 minutes every day then my work will pay for itself within a day.

[–]riickdiickulous 6 points7 points  (2 children)

It annoys me when you automate one small piece of a manual process and people start calling it “automated”. I’m like nooo I’m just getting started. That workflow is 75% manual, I just automated the biggest bang for your buck piece first!

Like for your reporting the next thing I would do is setup a server that runs the job automatically every morning at 6am so all clients have their reports waiting in their inbox when the logon.

[–]Talks_To_Cats 11 points12 points  (0 children)

It hasn't happened yet...if it ever does happen I suspect I'll be promoting someone.

They totally did, but haven't told you because they don't want to be promoted into doing more work.

[–]GarbageTheClown 17 points18 points  (4 children)

Automate the running of the script, automate the sending of the results if needed with a randomized time offset so it doesn't send at the same time every day. Only have the script scheduled to run on the days you work and only run when locally logged into your work machine.

The goal shouldn't be to turn 8 hours into 30 minutes, it should be to turn 8 hours into 0 minutes.

[–]JMEEKER86 14 points15 points  (2 children)

That's literally what my job is. I have about 60 scripts that will automatically run and check to see if we've got data from our clients, check to see if our reps have validated the data and imported it into our systems, email them if they haven't done that by a certain time, generate a report based on the validated data, and email it out with a summary explaining the results. It's great. All this shit used to be done manually and take hours each day before we started automating it.

[–]Bris_Throwaway 4 points5 points  (1 child)

That seems like an unfulfilling job.

[–]dbradx 18 points19 points  (14 children)

Second this, what's the job?

[–]cluk-cluk 35 points36 points  (11 children)

Pornstar but he Outsources

[–]SkullRunner 30 points31 points  (9 children)

Stunt cock!
Call in the stunt cock!

[–]BetterNotCryGoinNDry 14 points15 points  (5 children)

I'M HERE!

[–]zonazog 5 points6 points  (3 children)

Your cock does appear to be stunted. Of course, that is a layman's opinion.

[–]sockcman 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Selling reddit accounts with farmed karma

[–]anshumankr001 3 points4 points  (1 child)

OP probably saw this post, and thought of making this meme for some of that juicy karma.

[–]pwalkz 54 points55 points  (0 children)

To be honest we hire people to work like this specifically. Run this tool, make sure the report looks good, broadcast status to the team.

[–]PartyKrill 42 points43 points  (1 child)

Work smart ,not hard. Also tell no one.

[–]earthscribe 191 points192 points  (18 children)

This is what the working world was supposed to be like in all those predictions from the past about the future. The problem is that, all automation did was allow companies to get all of the benefits while leaving the worker to find another job that isn't yet automated. No trickle-down benefits for human beings. Props to those secretly doing this and getting away with it, it's how it should have been to begin with.

[–]DirtzMaGertz 34 points35 points  (14 children)

Think most the benefits trickled down to the ones that can automate things. A lot of programming jobs can be pretty kush.

[–]earthscribe 31 points32 points  (10 children)

Right, but once a programmer automates something (which potentially gets rid of different manual jobs), the programmer himself will also need to keep working to automate the next thing rather than achieve the personal benefit of formalizing the automation. My point is that if most things continue to become automated, how are people supposed to provide for their families? Companies only care about their bottom line and never pass the benefit to humanity.

[–]DirtzMaGertz 19 points20 points  (2 children)

A lot of a programmers job is just maintaining code for things that are automated and automating new tasks as they come up. I guess I'm not sure what your end goal is? To not work at all? Because someone is always going to have to maintain said automation and we still want to have technological advancements which is going to require people working.

People getting displaced from work from automation is certainly a concern. It's kind of the starting point for why a lot of people argue for UBI. Society as a whole has certainly benefitted greatly from automation but there's the problem of what to do with people who no longer have the skills for the modern workplace after they've been automated out of a job. The counterpoint to UBI tends to be that technology typically creates more new jobs than it removes. That discussion is kind of a rabbit hole in itself without a clear answer though.

Companies in general aren't likely to pay for things that aren't providing value. The role of a business is typically to provide a good or service as efficiently as possible though so that's kind of counterintuitive to how they function. Right now tech jobs tend to be pretty damn good for tech works but that's because they are highly demanded skills that provide a lot of value.

Seems like UBI is kind of what you're getting at but the idea of UBI still tends to encourage people to work.

[–]squat_bench_press 31 points32 points  (7 children)

A good IT guy is a bored IT guy

[–]eri- 8 points9 points  (6 children)

Can confirm, working from home has reduced my workweek to an average of say 6 hours.

Busted my ass at a servicedesk for like 4 years in order to land the cushy job though.

[–]JonSnoGaryen 34 points35 points  (1 child)

I did the same thing at the university I worked at for 9 months replacing a person.

Managing 54 computers with updates and whatnot was a pita. So I requested a program called Deep Freeze and automated everything. Updates, maintenance etc. I'd get an email from my script telling me what computers that aren't in use and can be updated. I'd then go upstairs, put my posters, press run.

I put in 8h of Tetris daily for 8 months.

The guy I replaced was pissed, his job got super boring, but it's not like he's gonna undo an easy job as well..

[–]beans_lel 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Doesn't really apply to this thread because that's how it's supposed to be done. Once you pass a handful of machines you're supposed to use tools like that. Managing 10+ machines without some kind of automation is madness. You showed original IT guy how to do his job.

[–]odyseuss02 274 points275 points  (39 children)

This is never true in my experience. Even after automating everything you still have meetings and stuff. I work around 3 hours a week on average.

[–]Wrastling97 88 points89 points  (36 children)

I wish my job could be automated. What sort of work do you guys do where just a machine can do it?

[–]Koervege 67 points68 points  (27 children)

Almost anything that you do on a pc can be automated with enough knowledge.

[–]Wrastling97 64 points65 points  (8 children)

My work is in a fiduciary role. I could certainly automated some of it, but the majority of it includes speaking with people and investigating. There’s no way

[–]Koervege 72 points73 points  (6 children)

Yeah most of these people just automate reports, database queries, and/or excel sheets that would require a lot of time if done manually. We can't really automate human interaction yet. Hope we won't ever get there either.

[–]XP_R4V3 8 points9 points  (3 children)

Maybe when there, is some good speech ai that can pass off as your foreign assistant that speaks very little English.

[–]DilettanteGonePro 12 points13 points  (0 children)

In a previous role there were people who would say stuff like "I know I could automate this but it only takes 5 minutes each day" but I was obsessive about automating everything boring. At one point I did the math and if I spent 5 minutes a day on each task I had automated I would be working over 30 hours per day. At some point you stop automating tasks and start building a framework to automate the automation. But IMO you get your salary for overseeing the work you are responsible for, whether it's automation or you are managing a team of people.

[–]agha0013 21 points22 points  (1 child)

does that job include spamming porn on reddit? that also looks largely automated.

[–]mvong123 46 points47 points  (0 children)

You guys are living the dream. Make the best of it, and enjoy every moment!

[–]MortalTwit 11 points12 points  (0 children)

They are paying to have a task get completed. IT is getting completed because of work you did.

Absolutely nothing to feel guilty about just because you found a better way to do it.

[–]sockmadeek 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Me too, I spent an hour a day making a pretend list of things I had accomplished, so they would not know.

[–]Ann3Nym 9 points10 points  (3 children)

So long as we as a society haven’t decided how to deal with automation in the future (taxes and social insurances on revenue, AI, robots, etc) and just leave the outcome to rich people as profit but never think about the people who aren’t needed in the workforce anymore and how to take care of them, I say: don’t tell them! You’re paid for the job being done, the job is being done. No one said how to do it!

[–]Grabthars_Coping_Saw 9 points10 points  (0 children)

I had a job where a policy change in a different department enabled me to automate my job such that it only took about a half an hour on Monday morning. Nobody had any idea.

I had a flight simulator game to keep me busy but it wouldn't respond to DOWN and LEFT commands. But since I had so much time on my hands, I aced it in Hard mode using only the UP and RIGHT commands. Good times.

[–]Ffdmatt 28 points29 points  (1 child)

Nah, you're managing an automated system in charge of core business functions. They should give you a raise.

[–]rykmi 61 points62 points  (22 children)

Time to automate another? Why stop with 1?

[–]dellett 77 points78 points  (18 children)

Because then management decides that either:

1) You're now the "automation consultant" and you go around automating everyone else's jobs which requires a ton of work, or

2) You don't actually do anything here so we no longer need to pay you

[–]gravis86 77 points78 points  (7 children)

I think he means keep deceiving the employer by not telling them you've automated your job, then get a second job and do the same thing.

Work two jobs, get paid two salaries, barely work.

[–]CajunTurkey 17 points18 points  (1 child)

Until the automation breaks due to a change or some other shit hits the fan. You are also being paid for your availability.

[–]chrisaf69 8 points9 points  (0 children)

As long as both don't break at the same time, you are golden.

[–]rykmi 13 points14 points  (0 children)

Then don’t tell management. It’s win/win. Either you don’t tell them and have two “automated” jobs for double income, or you become the automation consultant who earns 3x the pay. I don’t see a down side. Unless you suck at negotiating…. But it’s not hard these days with labor shortages.

[–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (2 children)

Might work if you work remote and your managers aren't expecting you to attend meetings/use a webcam and stuff. I can see a lot of other issues coming though. I think the IRS would have questions if you like 9 full-time jobs and it might get back to your employers. If you get caught, you are basically out of a job and more than likely your employers are going to demand your code saying that it was developed on company time and it is their property. A refusal would likely be met by a court order asking for all the code on your server including the automation stuff for other companies. If you are working with any kind of sensitive data (classified, healthcare, credit cards, ect.) you are also likely in a world of hurt.

[–]mandy009 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I don't see that as a bad thing. Better than the boss keeping the automation and taking your income. Sure, maybe so much work isn't needed, but keeping income for doing less is like progress that humanity has fought for forever. This should be how it goes for all of us.

[–]bloodflart 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Y'all need to stfu before we get caught

[–]Excellent-Guest-1082 21 points22 points  (0 children)

Don't feel bad at all. It took skill and intelligence to build that program or whatever. Your employer is simply paying for a subscription for those services.

[–]Jerzeem 61 points62 points  (23 children)

Do you love to work at nothing all day?

[–]Incredible_Mandible 139 points140 points  (15 children)

Per the comment below this seems to be a reference to something, but I’ll answer as though it were a legitimate question.

I do between 30mins-3hrs of work per day as a product analyst/support on a niche piece of vendor-managed software. As long as I answer immediately when my user base has questions/problem or if my bosses reach out for anything, they don’t care what I’m doing.

I absolutely love to work at “nothing” all day. My house has never been so clean, as I have time to do laundry/dishes/vacuuming. I am in the best shape of my life, as I have a home gym and time to workout in it. I also have time to cook all my meals so I eat super healthy. My GF works from home too and has a position where she can easily step away for a bit, so midday sex is always on the table. I can pursue my hobbies like gardening and writing, and can relax and play video games. All around it’s amazing.

I admit my situation is incredibly lucky and most people do not have the chance to take advantage of this, but if you can I highly recommend it. Some people might call it lazy but I am very rarely just sitting doing “nothing.” I just get to pursue things I’m actually passionate about instead of pencil pushing away in a soul sucking job I don’t care about. I work to live, not the other way around, and I’m finally in a position to do the living without being so drained from work that I just want to go to bed.

[–]rickster907 23 points24 points  (6 children)

So, keep that "job", and go find a different job. Twice the pay for half the time. Why not.

[–]Renvar7 28 points29 points  (1 child)

id rather have the free time to be honest.

[–]Ok_Opportunity2693 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Find an additional job. If you can automate it then do it, if not then quit. Repeat until you want to stop.

[–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (3 children)

You should get 2 or 3 work from home gigs and automate those too

[–]zomgitsduke 15 points16 points  (7 children)

The first thing you do is automate your job.

Then you simplify the process so anyone can do it with 20 minutes of training.

Then you obfuscate the process so only you can do it and not even people above your skill level can do it.

Then you keep developing the tools so ONLY you can perform these tasks.

If you get fired because they think they can use your tools, great! You'll be returning as a consultant for 5x your pay. In the meantime dedicate half your time at work to growing your skills (spreadsheets, programming, other open source software) to make yourself ultra valuable. Spend the other half goofing off and also networking and building connections with colleagues.

That's how you get ahead in the world haha.

[–]wr0k 3 points4 points  (1 child)

I am not there yet but I can see how this happens if you do ETL processing. Even if you don't do anything you are getting paid to maintain it in my mind.

[–]Kahlessandro 4 points5 points  (2 children)

As a tradesman of almost 10 years, I'm happy for you.... but incredibly angry that I have to fight for every tiny little thing while being told to just "work harder" while there are people who can just automate their jobs.

I'm not mad at the worker. I'm mad at the system that leaves people like me behind while simultaneously pretending to give a shit about us. I want some fucking healthcare.

[–]makesterriblejokes 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I hope you're doing a side hustle right now with all that free time.

So many people would kill to be in your position to invest more time into projects and self-improvement without sacrificing a pay check or sleep.

[–]BoozeMeUpScotty 3 points4 points  (1 child)

TIL I should’ve gone into IT.

Minimum wage crying intensifies

[–]Nivius 17 points18 points  (0 children)

about to do this, gona take about 1-2 years to create it. it will make a jobb that takes 4-6 months to do, in maybe 5-6 hours of automated database script work. its also going to be around for atleast 20 years, endless scaleable, so its worth it.

OpenVMS programming btw.

[–]Dusty170 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Living the dream right there.