You don't have to Flowers for Algernon your own productivity just because other folks working in the same firm, in the same industry, in the same country, whatever haven't caught on that computers are eating the world yet. There's nothing unethical about earning the lion's share of the bonus pool assuming the human-assisted script is, indeed, an acceptable substitute for elbow grease. (There are plausible reasons why it might not be but that isn't the way I'd bet.)
There's a common mindset on Reddit that I struggle to find a name for but I know it when I see it: "You're not a scumbag, but the gravy train will have to end eventually. Your company will likely catch on and make changes to the data entry process." The size of the pie is fixed, the allocations of the pie are controlled by other people, and a mouse who successfully steals a few crumbs from the pie is a) stealing and b) must guard his stolen crumbs against the predations of other mice.
That is a mindset I do not associate with rich people. I'd expect them to think something closer to "Now would be an excellent time to contact the decisionmaker at my client and propose restructuring their business process for a 20% discount to the total cost of everything right now."
Here is an anecdote: A similar data-entry grunt creates a set of excel macros on his private time at home, then presents his work to his team at a meeting. He surely expected to be met with praise, for saving countless hours of mind-numbing work so that the man-hours could be used on more creative and challenging tasks.
His high hopes for his fellow coworkers and his own future would be dashed though. The employee was branded as a "hacker" (in the Hollywood movie sense), and was ostracized. He eventually developed clinical depression, and resigned from the company.
Where did this happen? The story is probably not unfamiliar to patio11, who lives in the country where this occurred: Japan.
P.S.: I wish I had been a Hacker News reader back when I lived in Nagoya from 2009-2010. It would have been nice to talk to you in person :).
I agree. I think a business person would either tell his boss or find a way to start a business associated with automating similar data entry. A person who doesn't say anything and tries to "get theirs in the short run" will eventually lose out. It's not a huge ethical concern in my opinion, but it represents an unproductive attitude towards creating value/wealth that you identified perfectly in your post.
I think there's a difficult decision to be made between making decent money working 8 hours per week and taking the risk of leveraging your skills to bump yourself up a level in a data-entry operation. Lacking details, the first scenario seems more attractive to me. I would encourage the OP to develop another money-making operation on the side while he has some free time.
I didn't take away anything like that from that sentence. I felt that he was saying "the pie is not fixed, and when your company realises that they can get the same results with a much smaller pie, most of your co-workers will be fired, possibly yourself along with them, and replaced with the script you wrote. Prepare to find another pie."
The mindset you speak of, using words like "client" and "contact the decision maker", is associated with people who are used to having a great deal more power and influence than somebody hired to be a data entry grunt.
The mindset may be useful for climbing out of the data entry grunt "class", but probably not for "fixing" his existing employer's practices. Someone on that level in a company of any substantial size is going to be ignored, disciplined, or outright fired for rocking the boat.
I have a friend that did this in a summer job about 12 or 13 years ago. Got some temp work doing data entry, did it for 2 days before realising it could be done better. He wrote something in VB and did 15x more than everyone else over the course of a day.
They (obviously) thought something was wrong so examined what he'd done. When he explained about the program, they told him if he left the temp firm he was employed through and knocked on their door in the morning, they'd give him a job and pay him £2 more an hour. This he (naively) did, and with him came his software.
They fired 10 of the other temps the day he 'started' and kept his piece of software when he went back to university after the summer. In this case, the scumbag was most definitely the employer. When he told me the story I wept into my pint glass at what could have been.
Why is the employer wrong here? If they were hiring 10 temp workers to do the job of a simple program, they really didn't need them in the first place.
I found myself in a similar situation to the redditor, but with out the bonuses. Part of my duty description was inputting MAC addresses of "authorized computers" into an extremely dodgy database system which allowed them to pick up an IP address via DHCP.
When I first started in the position and had this explained to me I pointed out that anyone could just plug a machine into the network and use trial and error to find an IP address to manually enter and get them onto the network. IE: the process wasn't securing anything.
My point was pushed aside because "this is just the way we do things".
The 1st time I had to input 20+ new PCs into the system I whipped up an autoit script (I had to insert via a terrible GUI interface as the DBAs wouldn't grant me direct access to the database) which grabbed the data required from the xls the supplier gave us and automagically inserted the info. My scripting didn't get noticed until one day when I input 200 machines in the space of an hour, the task had taken the previous person in the role a whole day or more.
I was rewarded with a higher workload and grudges from all my co-workers, who had all previously done the task before moving up the totem pole and dumping this ridiculous job onto the next new sucker.
The highlight was when I gave notice and during my exit planning meeting my supervisor said that one of the old staff would train my replacement on how to do this task, rather than me show someone the system I hacked up which was an order of magnitude more efficient.
If I were a member of management, and I found out that he was doing this, I would be furious. Not because he gamed the system and received the bonuses, but because he didn't share his innovation with the rest of the team and improve everyones' efficiency. If he had done that, I would recognize his talent and initiative and promote him, allowing him to do more rewarding, higher-level work.
Unless you have nothing to offer him, which is often the case for many layers of management. In which case, he's screwed.
There are reasons people do not take initiative in certain very bureaucratic positions and organizations. Sometimes, it is not rewarded -- in fact, it is punished.
Any decision (e.g. whether to tell management) needs to be made with a good deal of contextual awareness.
I hate to sound like a party-pooper, but speaking from experience...
P.S. I'll add: He's already found the built-in reward. It sounds like it's a significant amount of bonus money, plus effectively a very light workload. What are they going to offer him that improves upon that? How high up in management would one need to go to find authority for such a decision/spend? How many layers of management do you think separate his data entry position from a manager with that authority?
P.P.S. OTOH, if they are not entirely brain dead (and who knows?), metrics will eventually cause them to investigate. So, enjoy it while it lasts, and maybe consider whether he can turn eventual exposure to his advantage. (And if metrics don't attract attention, that's a pretty good sign he is indeed dealing with a brain dead organization.)
He probably rightly senses that his boss wouldn't feel the way you hope you would. In fact I don't think most people would offer him a rational incentive at all.
If he saves the company $1 million a year are you actually going to cut him a $200k+ bonus? I'd be very doubtful of anyone who says they would.
Most people would give him $20k if they're especially generous and a pat on the head.
> If I were a member of management, and I found out that he was doing this, I would be furious.
And this is why you're not management. He hasn't shared it yet, why assume he would not ever? You could show some understanding and realize there are many reasons an employee might be uncomfortable showing a radically advantageous method immediately to management.
You realize that his "manager" is probably some kid just out of college, or another career grunt just clocking in the hours, right? This is data entry. There's no rewarding of initiative in that world: not at the bottom nor in the middle. You have to get to low level executives before you start seeing people with an interest in "changing" or "improving" the system.
I thought the same thing at first, but then I read how he's got this whole thing tied together.
>We download PDF batches, not paper...
>I wrote the script from scratch. It is a combination of reading the screen for data, a screen font reader, mouse automation/keyboard automation.
>It's part C++ and part "Game Maker", I did it for prototyping but got lazy and never rewrote it.
>Plus the script is pretty frustrating to setup in the morning, so they would get frustrated figuring it out. :P (requires a certain monitor arrangement at certain resolutions, windows in the right place, etc.
Management would be furious if it was a simple script that you just hit "Go" and it does everything, but it sounds like it's finicky enough that management would be too confused to be angry.
Absolutely. Maybe office politics works differently in the states (where I presume he's from), but it sounds like he's keeping it quite so he can screw around at work.
If I made a script that deals with 98% of all of my work I could not imagine not sharing that with my bosses. To me (and I'm sure lots of people don't share this sentiment) it would feel morally wrong not to.
This is why I'm skeptical about "Results Only Work Environments". (Not that the person in the article has one, but..)
It seems to me that a Results Oriented Work Environment doesn't (or might not) really reward the super performers (just gives them more work to do), while still punishing the poorer performing members of the team.
You: "Boss, can I go home after I finish my daily quota of 200 reports?"
Them: "Well, we're a results only work environment"
You: "Ok, it's 10:30AM and my script just finished 200 reports. Seeya!"
Them: "Wait just a minute..."
Meanwhile, in an alternative reality....
You: "Boss, it's 6PM, I'm still working on my daily quota of 200 reports, but my productivity is starting to suffer and I'm going slowly" (maybe not because you're a slow data entry person, but you were pairing with Bob, helping him with his work at the cost of your own)
Them: "Well, we're a results only work environment"
You: (Sad Yao)
It's possible that I'm wrong here, and would love to hear of other people's experience working under these conditions.
I don't believe this story is true. This employee is claiming to be 1000% more efficient and 110% more accurate than every other employee on his entire floor, and yet not a single supervisor has approached him to find out what he is doing differently. Color me unconvinced.
I was a programmer and sysadmin at a company that had lots of people doing data entry.
One of the typists found out that the client did not check the data at all. (It was all just packaged and resold.) She just hit OK for every single OCR scan that she was supposed to correct/verify. She was doing ten times as much as anyone else and doubling her salary with her bonus.
When made aware, management went along with it. I think it bordered on fraud.
On the flip side, I automated most of my sysadmin (and a lot of other co-workers) work and freed half of my work week. What did they want me to do? Data entry...
1) Go to offices and learn their goals and systems
2) Automate them with software
3) Get paid lots of money for selling them the software
While one result of automation is lost jobs, the other is that businesses have more operating capital to grow, expand, hire more, etc.
He's not a scumbag, but he's missing the opportunity. Why isn't this guy selling the software/process to the company he works for, and making far more money in the process than he gets from his bonuses?
Why isn't this guy selling the software/process to the company he works for, and making far more money in the process than he gets from his bonuses?
Interalised self-hatred? (You'll see they are asking the internet if what they are doing is unethical.) Also they might be very shy and not used to thinking they can get the world.
I would guess because he developed his solution while at work and his employment terms require all inventions are assigned to the company. Hence it's not his to license.
Big companies are built to fail. The variety of departments and personal empires built by managers of those departments create an environment where innovation (or even the ability to ask "is there a better way?") gets crushed because "that's not the way we do things." Departmental managers don't optimize for company success. They optimize for personal success. A bigger staff and bigger budget is a promotion. Saving money means a smaller budget means a de facto demotion.
Smart people move on and the big companies are left to wonder why it's so hard to find good talent.
This trend is not going away, it's only going to increase. The ones with technical knowledge will continue to disproportionately receive money over those who don't.
I think this person would really enjoy reading Race Against the Machine, written by two MIT researchers and economists. I have a guest post going up tomorrow on VentureBeat about this, but it's interesting to see people call him a scumbag because he has a technological edge on them.
This is a pretty good example of people working against the machine instead of with it. Those people will probably soon be out of jobs, but there's nothing to stop them from learning a scripting language that would make them more productive in their work. They now know there's a script that can cause them to increase their productivity. The bonus pool is still up for grabs if they spent a few weekends trying to learn Ruby or Python.
Was I a scumbag for automating manual work and eliminating a ton of jobs when I was only a new grad? In fact, was my entire team? That's a question I struggle to answer more, though we all already know what the reality of the situation is. Did reality excuse me?
This kind of thing has been going on for a while. In Sir Arthur Clarke's autobiography "Astounding Days", he talks about holding a boring civil service job doing some sort of financial auditing (he scored well on the math test, so they thought this was just the place for him). It turned out that what he was doing only had to be accurate to within a couple of percent, so he started using his slide rule to crank out his day's quota before noon, then taking the rest of the day off.
Like others are saying, he should (gradually) reduce the output of his automation system to something more believable/less noticeable. Instead of going after the meager bonus, he should put his time into doing some kind of side work. Of course, that would be highly unethical and possibly grounds for firing, but I think his employer might angrily react with the latter if they found out what he was doing already.
Incidentally, back when I worked in Arizona, I was told that a previous employee of the company had been running a side business during working hours. His coworkers ratted him out, and it went up to management. It was decided that it was okay, so long as his assigned tasks were being completed. Of course, one wonders why he was ratted out if he was completing his tasks... :-)
It was decided that it was okay, so long as his assigned tasks were being completed. Of course, one wonders why he was ratted out if he was completing his tasks... :-)
Jealousy. You never need to put a cover on a bucket full of crabs because anytime one crab tries to climb out the others will pull it back in. Sadly, people (even friends) often act in this same manner when someone they know is excelling in some way.
[+] [-] patio11|14 years ago|reply
There's a common mindset on Reddit that I struggle to find a name for but I know it when I see it: "You're not a scumbag, but the gravy train will have to end eventually. Your company will likely catch on and make changes to the data entry process." The size of the pie is fixed, the allocations of the pie are controlled by other people, and a mouse who successfully steals a few crumbs from the pie is a) stealing and b) must guard his stolen crumbs against the predations of other mice.
That is a mindset I do not associate with rich people. I'd expect them to think something closer to "Now would be an excellent time to contact the decisionmaker at my client and propose restructuring their business process for a 20% discount to the total cost of everything right now."
[+] [-] hkmurakami|14 years ago|reply
His high hopes for his fellow coworkers and his own future would be dashed though. The employee was branded as a "hacker" (in the Hollywood movie sense), and was ostracized. He eventually developed clinical depression, and resigned from the company.
Where did this happen? The story is probably not unfamiliar to patio11, who lives in the country where this occurred: Japan.
P.S.: I wish I had been a Hacker News reader back when I lived in Nagoya from 2009-2010. It would have been nice to talk to you in person :).
[+] [-] redthrowaway|14 years ago|reply
Are you thinking of Harrison Bergeron?
[+] [-] EricDeb|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] msutherl|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacalata|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] irunbackwards|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] nknight|14 years ago|reply
The mindset may be useful for climbing out of the data entry grunt "class", but probably not for "fixing" his existing employer's practices. Someone on that level in a company of any substantial size is going to be ignored, disciplined, or outright fired for rocking the boat.
[+] [-] iamben|14 years ago|reply
They (obviously) thought something was wrong so examined what he'd done. When he explained about the program, they told him if he left the temp firm he was employed through and knocked on their door in the morning, they'd give him a job and pay him £2 more an hour. This he (naively) did, and with him came his software.
They fired 10 of the other temps the day he 'started' and kept his piece of software when he went back to university after the summer. In this case, the scumbag was most definitely the employer. When he told me the story I wept into my pint glass at what could have been.
[+] [-] paulhauggis|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pan69|14 years ago|reply
Your friend just turned out to be a lousy business person and his employer was not.
[+] [-] Fuzzwah|14 years ago|reply
When I first started in the position and had this explained to me I pointed out that anyone could just plug a machine into the network and use trial and error to find an IP address to manually enter and get them onto the network. IE: the process wasn't securing anything.
My point was pushed aside because "this is just the way we do things".
The 1st time I had to input 20+ new PCs into the system I whipped up an autoit script (I had to insert via a terrible GUI interface as the DBAs wouldn't grant me direct access to the database) which grabbed the data required from the xls the supplier gave us and automagically inserted the info. My scripting didn't get noticed until one day when I input 200 machines in the space of an hour, the task had taken the previous person in the role a whole day or more.
I was rewarded with a higher workload and grudges from all my co-workers, who had all previously done the task before moving up the totem pole and dumping this ridiculous job onto the next new sucker.
The highlight was when I gave notice and during my exit planning meeting my supervisor said that one of the old staff would train my replacement on how to do this task, rather than me show someone the system I hacked up which was an order of magnitude more efficient.
[+] [-] feverishaaron|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pasbesoin|14 years ago|reply
There are reasons people do not take initiative in certain very bureaucratic positions and organizations. Sometimes, it is not rewarded -- in fact, it is punished.
Any decision (e.g. whether to tell management) needs to be made with a good deal of contextual awareness.
I hate to sound like a party-pooper, but speaking from experience...
P.S. I'll add: He's already found the built-in reward. It sounds like it's a significant amount of bonus money, plus effectively a very light workload. What are they going to offer him that improves upon that? How high up in management would one need to go to find authority for such a decision/spend? How many layers of management do you think separate his data entry position from a manager with that authority?
P.P.S. OTOH, if they are not entirely brain dead (and who knows?), metrics will eventually cause them to investigate. So, enjoy it while it lasts, and maybe consider whether he can turn eventual exposure to his advantage. (And if metrics don't attract attention, that's a pretty good sign he is indeed dealing with a brain dead organization.)
/cynicism
[+] [-] staunch|14 years ago|reply
If he saves the company $1 million a year are you actually going to cut him a $200k+ bonus? I'd be very doubtful of anyone who says they would.
Most people would give him $20k if they're especially generous and a pat on the head.
[+] [-] starpilot|14 years ago|reply
And this is why you're not management. He hasn't shared it yet, why assume he would not ever? You could show some understanding and realize there are many reasons an employee might be uncomfortable showing a radically advantageous method immediately to management.
[+] [-] ajross|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seanalltogether|14 years ago|reply
>We download PDF batches, not paper...
>I wrote the script from scratch. It is a combination of reading the screen for data, a screen font reader, mouse automation/keyboard automation.
>It's part C++ and part "Game Maker", I did it for prototyping but got lazy and never rewrote it.
>Plus the script is pretty frustrating to setup in the morning, so they would get frustrated figuring it out. :P (requires a certain monitor arrangement at certain resolutions, windows in the right place, etc.
Management would be furious if it was a simple script that you just hit "Go" and it does everything, but it sounds like it's finicky enough that management would be too confused to be angry.
[+] [-] tbatterii|14 years ago|reply
So though management might be furious, they should re-consider they should turn some of that fury on themselves(this never happens).
[+] [-] SCdF|14 years ago|reply
If I made a script that deals with 98% of all of my work I could not imagine not sharing that with my bosses. To me (and I'm sure lots of people don't share this sentiment) it would feel morally wrong not to.
[+] [-] kamaal|14 years ago|reply
Team work is everybody working to achieve something. Not one person making up for everybody.
I work hard because I want to be rich, I can't share my work and money just because somebody won't work hard for whatever reason.
I earn my money, they earn theirs.
[+] [-] droithomme|14 years ago|reply
Furious? Would you punish him then?
[+] [-] SCdF|14 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] qq66|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dctoedt|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] christiangenco|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rpwilcox|14 years ago|reply
It seems to me that a Results Oriented Work Environment doesn't (or might not) really reward the super performers (just gives them more work to do), while still punishing the poorer performing members of the team.
You: "Boss, can I go home after I finish my daily quota of 200 reports?"
Them: "Well, we're a results only work environment"
You: "Ok, it's 10:30AM and my script just finished 200 reports. Seeya!"
Them: "Wait just a minute..."
Meanwhile, in an alternative reality....
You: "Boss, it's 6PM, I'm still working on my daily quota of 200 reports, but my productivity is starting to suffer and I'm going slowly" (maybe not because you're a slow data entry person, but you were pairing with Bob, helping him with his work at the cost of your own)
Them: "Well, we're a results only work environment"
You: (Sad Yao)
It's possible that I'm wrong here, and would love to hear of other people's experience working under these conditions.
[+] [-] anthuswilliams|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ezl|14 years ago|reply
I don't understand why people post these things though. Are they really looking for validation?
[+] [-] orbitingpluto|14 years ago|reply
One of the typists found out that the client did not check the data at all. (It was all just packaged and resold.) She just hit OK for every single OCR scan that she was supposed to correct/verify. She was doing ten times as much as anyone else and doubling her salary with her bonus.
When made aware, management went along with it. I think it bordered on fraud.
On the flip side, I automated most of my sysadmin (and a lot of other co-workers) work and freed half of my work week. What did they want me to do? Data entry...
[+] [-] LaaT|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gotrythis|14 years ago|reply
1) Go to offices and learn their goals and systems 2) Automate them with software 3) Get paid lots of money for selling them the software
While one result of automation is lost jobs, the other is that businesses have more operating capital to grow, expand, hire more, etc.
He's not a scumbag, but he's missing the opportunity. Why isn't this guy selling the software/process to the company he works for, and making far more money in the process than he gets from his bonuses?
[+] [-] rmc|14 years ago|reply
Interalised self-hatred? (You'll see they are asking the internet if what they are doing is unethical.) Also they might be very shy and not used to thinking they can get the world.
[+] [-] thespin|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stretchwithme|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nwenzel|14 years ago|reply
Smart people move on and the big companies are left to wonder why it's so hard to find good talent.
[+] [-] jmtame|14 years ago|reply
I think this person would really enjoy reading Race Against the Machine, written by two MIT researchers and economists. I have a guest post going up tomorrow on VentureBeat about this, but it's interesting to see people call him a scumbag because he has a technological edge on them.
This is a pretty good example of people working against the machine instead of with it. Those people will probably soon be out of jobs, but there's nothing to stop them from learning a scripting language that would make them more productive in their work. They now know there's a script that can cause them to increase their productivity. The bonus pool is still up for grabs if they spent a few weekends trying to learn Ruby or Python.
[+] [-] PakG1|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Turing_Machine|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kamaal|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cullen|14 years ago|reply
I agree with Laat, sounds like he should make it into a business/product.
[+] [-] SpaceDragon|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sp332|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] georgieporgie|14 years ago|reply
Incidentally, back when I worked in Arizona, I was told that a previous employee of the company had been running a side business during working hours. His coworkers ratted him out, and it went up to management. It was decided that it was okay, so long as his assigned tasks were being completed. Of course, one wonders why he was ratted out if he was completing his tasks... :-)
[+] [-] matwood|14 years ago|reply
Jealousy. You never need to put a cover on a bucket full of crabs because anytime one crab tries to climb out the others will pull it back in. Sadly, people (even friends) often act in this same manner when someone they know is excelling in some way.