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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.

23 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 AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Funny

      Learn how best to automate that task so you can browse Slashdot all day.

      FTFY.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    2. 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.
    3. Re:Automate it by jafiwam · · Score: 3, Interesting

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

      Yup. But do it in secret and don't share the automation with the employer. Use your spare time to look for a new job.

      IF you come to the point where know your job is going to evaporate, it's better not to make a lot of waves (and that includes positive ones) until you are ready to go anyway. Your employer is already NOT paying attention and may not have a full understanding of what you do already. You'll be facing "the Bob's" in no time.

      There is a reason they call it "work." Boring and repetitive comes with that. Brush up on your Zen skills and deal with it. And FIND ANOTHER JOB.

    4. 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.

    5. 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.

    6. 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+
    7. 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).

    8. 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

    9. Re:Automate it by digsbo · · Score: 3, Interesting

      And, if the worker wants to, he should ask for a raise and more work. This would benefit him and the business financially; whether it would happen depends on the wisdom of his managers. Less efficient firms would be forced to innovate in kind or suffer competitive disadvantages.

    10. Re:Automate it by plopez · · Score: 4, Funny

      Good Lord. Next time I will explicitly set the 'sarcasm' tags. There are too many things wrong with my argument to even begin to suspend disbelief.

      --
      putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
  3. Automate them by Errol+backfiring · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Well, automate them, off course. That is how I started my programming career. I started as a technical draftsman using AutoCAD, and I was "actively lazy": when I had to type something 10 times, I wrote a little program to do that for me. When my bosses noticed that my computer was better configured than that of my colleagues, I started getting programming assignments as well.

    --
    Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
    1. 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.

  4. And who the fuck will maintain it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    I always hear managers and programmers say, "We'll just automate it!"

    But that's usually the easiest part of the whole process. They rarely look beyond it, to the maintenance phase.

    The maintenance phase, of course, often lasts far longer than the implementation phase. It often outlasts the people who pushed for the automation in the first place, and the people who initially implemented it.

    No automation is perfect, and no surrounding environment is static. Things will break, or change will eventually be needed. And this is where automation can often fall flat on its face.

    I can't count the number of times I've seen companies with scripts or apps that perform some simple operation, but it only saves a few minutes each day. Yet at some point something with the automation breaks or needs to be changed, but the original developers are long gone, and now some other developer has to investigate.

    This poor developer will end up needing hours, days, weeks, or even months in some cases in order to find out where the fuck the script or app is running, where the hell the most recent version of the source code is, how to get it running on a development system, and how it works, all before being able to make the fix or the change. Then it takes time to fix it or make the change, plus some time for testing, and then it needs to be redeployed, and finally it needs to be monitored for some time.

    So the automation saved maybe a few dollars a day. Yet just a single fix or change to the automation can end up costing hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of dollars once all is said and done. Merely one small fix or change can literally wipe out any cost savings that the automation has ever brought in the past, and then wipe it out for the next few years!

    It's all rainbows and roses to claim that "documentation" or "training" or "best practices" will solve these problems, but even when those are in place and actually working, they rarely reduce the actual cost of maintenance.

    So do some real analysis before screaming, "JUST AUTOMATE IT!" The cost of even simple or minor automation can quite often far, far exceed the benefits it'll ever bring. Maybe it's better to have the intern or low-paid employee just do the work manually for a few minutes each day.

    1. Re:And who the fuck will maintain it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      Please mod parent up! There are some decent points in this posting, regardless of it coming from an AC.

      I've spent a good 15+ years doing process automation. And process automation itself is indeed a process. It's significantly more than some server monkey slapping together a script together during lunch to do something. Don't get me wrong; such an approach is fine if it's going to sit on an admin's machine and be used every once in a while. But once enshrined in day-to-day operations, the game changes.

      What are the specifics that the script is going to do?
      What is the "Happy Path" operation of the script?
      How will common / uncommon errors / exceptions be handled?
      How will the script handle unknown or unexpected errors (ie. is it written to be resiliant)?
      How will the script be monitoried (e.g. snmp stuff) to ensure it hasn't choked?
      Where are these scripts being maintained and managed (ie, groupings of P.A. scripts in version control)
      WHERE IS THE DOCUMENTATION ABOUT THE SCRIPT?

      Stuff like that.

      Do some planning. Be a software developer about it. Just because it's a [Perl | Python | Groovy | Bash | DOS ] script does not mean it should be treated differently than compiled source or a more complex app.

      Do you need to turn this into a full-blown project, with 8x the overhead of just writing the damn script and sticking it in place? No.
      Do you just write the damn script and hope for the best? No, not if you want the system to die a horrible, disfiguring death.

      So, put a bit of planning into what's being done. Prove the script out first. Test it (remember that?). Manage it.

    2. 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.

    3. Re:And who the fuck will maintain it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      It's all rainbows and roses to claim that "documentation" or "training" or "best practices" will solve these problems, but even when those are in place and actually working, they rarely reduce the actual cost of maintenance.

      Oh, enough weasel words. You start off with a strawman of "it saves a few minutes a day" when in fact nobody automates systems that actually only take a few minutes a day - and it's probably your "few minutes a day" that's off, if they do (you're ignoring the costs of errors - the few minutes a day can often cost half a day if it's done wrong). Then you quote "documentation" as if it's some kind of mythical being and again maybe in your experience it is, but get real. Documentation solves all the problems you cite. Documenting your automated systems does reduce the actual cost of maintaining them. And I suspect if you'd ever seen it in place and actually working, you wouldn't be giving us this luddite anti-automation rant on the basis of a woeful misunderstanding of what constitutes a business case.

  5. Let's not forget by oodaloop · · Score: 4, Funny

    Homer once automated his job with a plastic dipping bird, with disastrous results.

    --
    Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
  6. 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
  7. 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.
  8. Non-Tech Bosses Hate Automation by anmre · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I've found myself in this exact situation.

    If you have the desire and/or ability to use your computer properly and automate tasks, and your job title is "______ Assistant", your boss will likely not respect you enough to permit automating anything. Therefore, you should do it as quietly as possible, and do not expect any pats on the back for mysteriously having perfect reports in your boss's inbox every morning at 8:31AM, or data requests completed before he/she even has time to walk back to his/her desk. Your boss may "expect" perfection, but will not actually know what to do about a subordinate who is actually capable of delivering it.

    Expect to have only Microsoft VBA at your disposal. And amuse yourself daily with this image which sums up your situation perfectly!

    Also, smile often! :)

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

    As so often XKCD says this much shorter:

    http://xkcd.com/1319/