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What Do You Do When Your Mind-Numbing IT Job Should Be Automated?

Posted by samzenpus on from the with-my-eyes-closed dept.

jfruh writes Not everyone has a job like Homer Simpson, who's been replaced at various times by a brick tied to a lever and a chicken named Queenie. But many IT workers have come up against mind-numbing, repetitive tasks that probably could be automated. So: what do you do about it? Well, the answer depends on how much power you have in an organization and how much your bosses respect your opinion.

13 of 228 comments (clear)

  1. QUIT by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    QUIT

  2. Automate it by Lennie · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Learn how best to automate that task so you can start on other projects to automating other tasks.

    --
    New things are always on the horizon
    1. Re:Automate it by Lumpy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Absolutely, but DO NOT TELL ANYONE. honestly automation will not get you a raise or a promotion, it will just get you extra work. for the same pay.
      Automate all of it and keep your frigging mouth shut.
      Hell I used to automate emails to be sent at 2am so that management though I was working 24/7.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    2. Re:Automate it by Sobrique · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If you pull out the all the stops occasionally, you're a hero. If you do it routinely, you're taken for granted. It's hard enough to measure 'productivity' in IT anyway. Far better to automate your job, and 'pay yourself' to support it on an ongoing basis.

    3. Re:Automate it by Corbets · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Absolutely, but DO NOT TELL ANYONE. honestly automation will not get you a raise or a promotion, it will just get you extra work. for the same pay.
      Automate all of it and keep your frigging mouth shut.
      Hell I used to automate emails to be sent at 2am so that management though I was working 24/7.

      If you've automated your job, *shouldn't* you get new tasks to do? You're being paid to do the job to the best of your ability. You've done that by automating - but that leaves you on-the-clock time to do other productive tasks.

    4. Re:Automate it by plopez · · Score: 5, Insightful

      No. That would be wrong. A worker should maximize efficiency by discovering the best way to achieve maximum pay with minimal work. That is what economists say the company should be doing and since companies are now people and workers are people that's what workers should do. In fact doing it any other way flies in the face of the "Free Market" and therefore maximizing efficiency is both an ethical and moral imperative.

      --
      putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
    5. Re:Automate it by pla · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If you've automated your job, *shouldn't* you get new tasks to do? You're being paid to do the job to the best of your ability. You've done that by automating - but that leaves you on-the-clock time to do other productive tasks.

      If they want to pay me hourly, then yes, absolutely. As long as employers do their damnedest to push the limits of "exempt", however, then very much no. I get paid to perform certain tasks to the best of my ability. As long as my employer doesn't care whether that takes me 40 or 60 hours a week, then I don't care if it only takes me 20.

      Note that I mean this somewhat in the abstract, in the sense that I refuse to work for someone who expects me to work more than 40 a week regulary. My current employer actually treats me pretty well, and as a result, yes, if I automate task X, I'll spend my newly-found time doing the rest of my work somewhat better (I wouldn't specifically say "picking up new tasks", because we all know that what we can do in 40 hours doesn't mean we should to produce the optimal result).

    6. Re:Automate it by mrchaotica · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Well, it would be okay for you to get additional tasks to do as long as the pay increased in proportion (which of course, would not actually happen). So the GP was not necessarily wrong, just unrealistic.

      --

      "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

  3. So any net savings by Kjella · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I've ended up creating a few solutions where I think I'd rather spend three hours doing something creative than one hour doing it mindnumbingly dumb and repetitive. Often the maintenance of tweaking it eats up the savings.

    Relevant XKCDs:
    Automation
    Is it worth the time?

    --
    Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  4. Re:Automate them by RabidReindeer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I always automate.

    Then I get laid off because "I'm not doing anything."

    People who don't automate, and get paid by the hour to do the same thing over and over again stay on.

  5. Automate it by msobkow · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Automate it and find something else to work on. At no place I've ever been has there been a shortage of work.

    Only the lazy and incompetent fear automating themselves out of a job. If worst comes to worst, you'll end up maintaining all those scripts you created, fighting fires, and dealing with the "one off" situations that the scripts can't handle.

    --
    I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
  6. Re:And who the fuck will maintain it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That is what documentation is for.

    Not just user documentation, but also system documentation. Good commenting of the procedure can also help.

    Without the documentation you can't pass on the procedure (or support).

    Now, even without documentation, it becomes just your baby... Maybe it helps you do your job, but you better have SOME documentation so you will know what it does, and how to change it when you HAVE to change it in the future.

  7. Obligatory XKCD comic by joh · · Score: 4, Insightful

    As so often XKCD says this much shorter:

    http://xkcd.com/1319/