Programmers automate their work and only have to work 2 hours a week but dare not disclose to their boss

The anonymous programmer said that he felt guilty when he turned his work almost into automation, thanks to the script, he only had to work 2 hours a week. He works from a distance and doesn't tell his boss about this. Most of the day, he only takes care of his son and worries that if he disclose this, he will have to quit his job, not because of a violation of professional ethics but because the company will use these scripts without him.

Is it wrong to not tell my boss that I automated the job? Everyone guessed that this was boring work. But it is full-time and good remuneration. I work from a distance so I can stay at home with my son. I worked for 18 months and during that time, I learned everything and wrote a program whereby it did everything for me for the past 6 months. It should take a month now I only need 10 minutes to run the program.

The problem now is, should I tell them? If they say it, they might just take this program and fire me. '

Should it be said to automate the work?

The programmer also confessed that he was hiding what he did by deliberately putting some mistakes into it to look more like a doer. This question is also posted on Hacker News, another site where developers discuss work. Many people commented and the fact that they also divided into two camps for the answer.

Secrets and deception

On Stack Overflow, many people tend to consider this to be unethical. Magisch users also think that doing so is deceptive. Another person, Joe Strazzere, summed up a few ideas:

1. He spends 1-2 hours per week working from home and receiving $ 40.
2. He wrote the program 6 months ago without telling the boss.
3. Every week he lied about what he did.
4. He intentionally added a bug to cover up.
5. He made the analyst take the time to verify his work.
6. He admitted that 'I don't see myself doing the right thing'.

The answer to me is clear, maybe I personally think this is okay. But I think you know the truth .

Another programmer on Stack Overflow admits that he used to automate his work but said it was not unethical because he told his boss.

The wrong motive

Many people on Hacker News think differently. They argue that as long as the company receives what they have spent to buy, it doesn't matter how long he does, however, they also think it is wrong to put the bug in it.

One said: 'I don't think this is a moral problem. It is just a trading relationship, the value of the work paid by the salary. When companies get what they want to be cheaper in other ways, they will fire employees. Employees create value for the company '.

One pointed out that in many IT fields, automation becomes a rule rather than an exception, such as system administration. 'I know many sysadmin automate most of their work and mainly monitor and maintain work. No one criticized them for that. ' Another person agrees with this idea 'I'm a sysadmin, 90% of my work is automatic. I must be available 24/7 if the system is wrong. Thanks to automation, I can do errands, watch movies, play games. Most sysadmin I know are like that '.

Automation helps significantly reduce working time

Other members said that his career was due to automating the work and he never concealed it. Thanks to it, he was rewarded, promoted and now his job is to tell people how to automate their work.

A programmer summarized Hacker News's view: 'The only thing he did wrong was not to use his talent and performance, the optimal solution is to find a better job'. A programmer also quit his job when automating everything, even an automatic coffee maker.

The interesting thing is that while programming is said to be a boring, time-consuming job (and this is still true for many people in the industry) there are people who make the work run without them.