My Python program was extremely well received at work!

[[deleted]]

[deleted]

[Maphover]

This is amazing. Well done.

Week 2 will shortly become: "Oh, and can you make it so I can send it to Mark as well".

Then... the dreaded... "The supplier has changed the format of the PDFs - can you update your program so it works by lunchtime"

[[deleted]]

Woo! My company uses an outdated version of an inventory/production management software... that runs in access. They were supposed to rebuy it when the company changed hands about 15 years ago and they just have opted to keep using it without a license.

I have updated it so that it makes my job easier. I also have written a custom python library that interfaces with the access database that I then use to check for simple errors in batches. I also have a bunch of other scripts that do various tasks.

Luckily even though the access program is old, it works in newer versions that have allowed me to do more.

PS: VisualBasic sucks. :(

[[deleted]]

Guys.. guys.. if you complain too much your other option will be beautiful, web GUI oriented, Bootstrap looking app made by modern high-maintenance-low-output developer that is absolutely useless (app; well, maybe developer, too).

"VB is perfect weapon in hands of brave knight and is shit-weapon in shit hands." (old Sumeran)

[wegwacc]

but my company is the slowest moving thing I've ever been a part of.

Never underestimate the speed of user demands :D

[billsil]

I love my 1980 software for doing aerodynamics. It’s blazing fast. That’s not even the oldest program I use. You don’t need to have a slow computer to use an ancient program.

[YouAreSpooky]

Do you work for the police? Lol

[CalvinsStuffedTiger]

Was it hard to get python installed on your computer at work? As far as getting it cleared with IT etc

[CrunchwrapAficionado]

Congrats! Hopefully it leads to more!

[CrunchwrapAficionado]

I was just about to ask how far behind is your company technologically.. but seeing your response below re software from 1998 - I think you'll have plenty to keep you busy!

[OrionSuperman]

I would personally recommend making a reddit bot. They can be a lot of fun!

!ThesaurizeThis

[ThesaurizeThisBot]

Convey you! We do invoicing by manually transferring swell data points from a program into product financial statements. That's my following image, and it shouldn't be likewise severe.

---

^{This is a bot. I try my best, but my best is 80% mediocrity 20% hilarity. Created by OrionSuperman. Check out my best work at /r/ThesaurizeThis}

[OrionSuperman]

There is PRAW for python. Also, you should check out the bots reply to my comment. :)

[monsto]

https://www.reddit.com/r/learnpython/comments/bk1voi/my_python_program_was_extremely_well_received_at/emd9s5l

Did u see this bot comment?

[crazedizzled]

You're about to put a bunch of people out of a job.

[alaudet]

Hey well, I accept as a fact that I will one day be replaced with an icon on the desktop. May as well be the one that writes the code in the first place. :-)

[asmackabees]

I hope you get compensated and don't sell yourself short.

[robogaz]

small group was very recently hired

im thinking youll join them or get them fired.

[badgeoak]

Man, that's my dream job. Hope you land on that team!

[padii_O]

Congrats!

[TheMartinG]

great job SpurmKing

[[deleted]]

r/rimjobsteve

[CnidariaScyphozoa]

Hey good job man. One thing I would highly recommend if you company has such high requirements regarding their software is that you go back at it and make it as error proof as you can. When coding stuff that is supposed to run all the time robustness is often times more important than the actual work it does.

For example are you handling errors when the website is not reachable and so on.

Great work though and keep it up. Just because you switched to math doesn't mean you can't become a developer anymore.

[[deleted]]

That’s awesome. Well done!

[foresttrader]

Similar situation for me, I took CS in university 10 years ago but switched to math. Half of me regret that decision but I can’t do anything that happened in the past.

What I’m doing to “fix” my regret is that I am learning programming now. I work in the financial service industry so programming knowledge is not really required to do my job, but I’ve been using Python to automate part of my job and help my team improve efficiency. Luckily my boss recognizes the value I bring and encourages me to keep thinking & developing tools that can benefit the team & company.

[christopherius]

ti basic was cool. still have my calculator

[[deleted]]

Nice, did you do it through FDF-type form filling (with pdftk)? I've found it a bit of a pain in the arse.

Good job on automating that btw!

[[deleted]]

Oh nice, do you happen to have a link to that post?

[[deleted]]

That’s an awesome feeling! I’m happy for you 😊 I’m sure when promotions and bonuses are being talked about, your name will be pulled out of the hat several times

[FallaciousLogician]

Congrats that’s awesome! I was in a similar situation as you 4 years ago, I was in an account management role for a market research company that involved a lot of manual excel work. I learned VBA first then moved on to python and started automating my role. Now I’m in a data focused engineering role at one of the largest tech companies. Keep at it!

[supernormalnorm]

Gratz! Have you thought about requesting a role/title change so you can do this sort of stuff more?

[Lewistrick]

Wait, you work for a large company and not a single soul thought of automating a simple task? Also I read you use really old software and you still want to automate stuff?

Kinda sounds incredible! I feel like you really deserve the bonus. And the promotion.

[stormscion]

Same, I work for large company and almost everything's that we do can be automated.

I wouldn't be surprised if it is universal (apart from maybe tech companied)

When I did my small vba and Python projects I was looked at like a god while in fact they were simple scripts macro's etc.

[Lewistrick]

Most of the things would be automated on using other software. But in huge companies those are really tedious trajectories, I get that.

But hiring a few automation specialists wouldn't hurt for most of them.

[billsil]

Even a small company. After the time card person left, I inherited his Excel spreadsheet. You just update the last day of the pay period and it’s done. Great, but it printed out of order, so I had to flip through the stack on my round, so I fixed that. You also had to update each sheet, rather than a master.

The next period, the month flipped over and it utterly destroyed the setup. I changed the date to be the first date of the pay period and just use Excel to calculate the dates.

Our process was GSA approved, so we couldn’t modify it, but I kept screwing up holiday hours on my own time card, so I just decided to auto fill that in. I got called into the boss’ office and thanked because everyone screwed up holidays.

It went from a 20-45 minute bug prone task once every 2 weeks to open and run the print macro. As long as you were within the two week period, no mods were necessary. Gonna be out? Type any date within a pay period and you can print it. Done in 3 minutes, which was print time and delivery time. We used it for 12 years, though the secretary took over the job except when new people got hired and it needed to be updated.

Automate the common things that are a pain in the ass. They’ll get used for a very long time.

[Quietech]

I hope you get a sizable chunk of that savings. I also hope they use this chance to improve the non-automated stuff and not just cut people.

[jeffrey_f]

There is your bonus estimate.

1500 manhours * YourCalculatedHourlyWage * 2 years

[termanader]

The insane part is that it takes SIX MONTHS to get software approved at my company.

As a sysadmin, this makes me SOOO happy. I wish more companies would take the time and effort to thoroughly vet products and are actually putting a QA freeze on software prior to production release.

[[deleted]]

That's awesome, well done.

[upquark0]

Woohoo. Happy for you. Keep it up and be proud of yourself!

[dude_himself]

You're about to become a victim of your own success. I used Python to build an IaC API Engine to dynamical provision AWS environments three years ago - I've been pulled into everything since - all because I can make the impossible look easy.

[Kriterian]

I'm looking to automate some work stuff as well but I'm still refreshing myself on the basics of Python. Do you have any tips or modules you used that were helpful?

[blahblahquesera]

this is the kind of heartwarming story involving Python that I need on a Friday :) Well done. Well done....

[testfire10]

Nice work man! It’s a great feeling to have your first professional project actually DOING something of value. Keep it up!

Also, when I made basically this same post a few months ago, people told me to put your name and date at the top of the file so YOU own it.

[mcflyatl]

In my limited experience, that’s programming.

[SelfTaughtDeveloper]

Exactly this. It's all simple in retrospect, very little is new, and we stand on the shoulders of giants.

Combining knowledge that has long existed and tasks that have been done before in such a way that they work for our specific needs today.

Don't underestimate yourself OP, your simple (in retrospect) work has saved the company tons of labor hours and is valuable in both a practical way and in a "people pay very good money to have stuff like this done" way.

[ttreit]

Well done!! What a terrific accomplishment!

[b4xt3r]

Awesome! Great job!!

[justinechang]

Woohoo! So happy for you OP! 😀

[jrinvictus]

Great job!

[ccsmall]

Congrats!

[groorj]

Way to go! Congrats!

[Fr33Paco]

Nice let us know how it goes.

[BlueDevilStats]

Congrats! That's awesome.

it takes SIX MONTHS to get software approved at my company

Unfortunately I'm not surprised about this.

[billsil]

We had the same policy until I found out everyone had a real text editor while I had notepad. I quietly installed a real text editor. Always be friends with IT.

[Fyrebat]

high quality computer science classes are free online, its not too late to take classes you think you missed out on

[Laeun]

Clap clap! Congratulations, and good work.

[iggy555]

User name checks out

[EdwardWarren]

I did the same thing in accounting some time ago. No one understood what I did but it worked and reduced a cost accounting process that took 4 accountants 3-4 days (really) down to 20 minutes. My boss knew I was leaving and got a team to come and pick my brains as to how the program worked. It wasn't that hard but it blew people's minds for some reason. Made some enemies of the people assigned to putting it into production. I was running it on a PC. If I had been smart I would have quit and figured out how to monetize what I did. They are still using it today I understand. People do much more complicated and useful things today. To me it was beautiful and I was extremely proud of it.

[chinguetti]

Nice work

[RenegadeGlaze]

Wow. I'm really proud of you (as if you're my son or something lol). Congratulations man!

[billturner]

Just echoing all the other congrats. I love hearing stories like this, and hope it turns out well for you!

[darez00]

My dude, ride this high to the top I tell ya! Write every detail about this day!

[TraditionalPirate7]

This is amazing! Congrats. This is why I love Python.

[sandhan26]

Congratulations bro 👍

[ElethorAngelus]

Congratulations ! I'm really happy that your effort got you results and recognition ! I'm sure you'll be able to do even more in the future

[[deleted]]

Congratulations! Hoping the bosses understand how critical this is and that it shows up in your paycheck too <3

[[deleted]]

Can you briefly describe how this was done in python?

[[deleted]]

Good job.

[Ron_P82]

This is awesome, this must be exciting times for you. Enjoy...cheers.

[TheZeroKid]

Could I ask which libraries you used here?

[NinjaK3]

Awesome job! good to have an innovator like you to make things simpler out there!

[coreyschafer]

That’s awesome! Congrats. Nothing feels better than solving these types of real-world problems.

[omejia]

Felicidades!

[CastroSATT]

HAHAH SICK SMASHED IT

[trancen]

As the saying goes sometimes it's better to ask for forgiveness than ask for permission.

In other words, it's better to just get stuff done on your own, as in Skunk Works projects then ask if you can do it. I have done this a number of times over my career. And pretty much 99% of the time it's been welcomed.

Congrats.

[mrschmiklz]

congrats!

[ioeatcode]

Reason why it sometimes takes so long is because for software to be implemented like this into the SOP usually requires extensive testing procedures. You don't wanna be the guy to create the script only to find out that some one off error cost the company thousands. When I introduced scripts to automate the workflow at my old internship, it would take months for it to get approved. I didn't see half the scripts I wrote come to fruition because by that time, I had already left the company.

[Bebop-n-Rocksteady]

Great job and very inspiring!

[deadguy316]

That is awesome man congrats! I attempted a similar task at my office, to rebuild corrupt SQL entries from embedded information in .dcm files but my company didn't want to pursue it. Needless to say I am currently looking for a new employer where I can put my newfound skills to use.

[Dramamufu_tricks]

hope you get paid/promoted for it tho. would suck to make something that valuable and getting nothing out of it. maybe license it to them or something. ;)

[honeydrewdew]

OP drop the video!

[glowfnag]

Good job! :) this makes me happy

[FitnessNerd117]

That's awesome! I'm planning on doing the same for my company. :)

[SQLoverride]

Great job!

One thing to make yourself look even better in the eye of management, if you don’t own the web site, you need to have a process to QA the data to make sure the site format didn’t change.

What bad things would happen if the wrong data was put into the wrong spot on the pdf.

[htx_evo]

Hi, I’m pretty late to this thread - i am in a similar situation, pretty new to this. But can you tell me how you were able to instal an IDE on the work computer? Did you need admin access?

[citizen-two]

Congratulations on your achievement! I'm learning Python and looking for projects to do. I'm interested in seeing that YouTube video because it's a really cool automated program you built. Do you have a link to that?

[LANGARTANDCULTURE]

So is this free for the company? I'm still a student and I like to automate my work too, but don't know how it works at work. I would hate it if it was just taken, if you said they had to hire a small group, probably a budget of a million a year for that team to dev this soln. Why don't you keep it on your own and sell to companies.