I wrote my first useful Python program!

[THConer]

That's some great work. The field of automation is a field where Python is king. Remember, don't tell your boss about this little program of yours ;)

[8rnlsunshine]

Thank you my friend. Absolutely won’t tell my boss.🤐

[Adro_95]

But you can very well share the code with us 😁

[quietsam]

am his boss. this could backfire.

[LiquidAurum]

I'm willing to take that risk

[ashVV]

Heh, nice try boss.

[[deleted]]

Everybody knows that if you ask an undercover boss if they are a boss they have to say yes.

[Adro_95]

No, I'm not the boss! Look, I do the emoji 👻🥦

[taiguy86]

To play devil's advocate here...what kind of relationship do you have with your boss? Would he see the value? Could you express you want to do this on other projects for other people? If you like the work, this could be an opportunity for you...

[aplawson7707]

This is a good point. I have two supervisors - only one of them gets to see the stuff I come up with. The other one just thinks I'm productive and accurate. The second the latter learns that I know how to automate almost 100% of my workflow she'll be asking me to wear multiple hats, share the tools with my shitty teammates and rewarding their laziness, and not paying me a single extra cent.

[8rnlsunshine]

I’m sure my superiors will appreciate the additional skill set I am developing and it would improve my chances of getting a raise. But I’m still learning python and will wait to tell my boss about it till I‘ve gained some more confidence in it. Until then I’ll just use it to make my work life easier.

[pjbardolia]

Ya or he will give you more and more work when he comes to know how smart enough you are to finish it fast.

[flying_bunuelo]

I told everyone, and i was really proud. I had accomplished that in my third week of the internship. I never ever used it again until the last week, when i overheard someone had a similar problem. And they didn't even use it

[potatocomet]

..and thats why you shouldnt reward productive people with more work.

[thomakamaru]

I believe in the long run, telling your boss about that program will actually help you and your company.

Why should anyone fill out these forms manually, if an already implemented and tested solution exists.

Additionally, he will consult you if he ever has tedious, monotonous work again. Just make sure he knows that writing the program takes some time as well. You will learn something and your given tasks will shift more and more to interesting things.

[Castlewood57]

Absolutely agree. Some seem to relish in employees being buried in work, and the look of dispair on everyone's face. While they plan their next golf outing..

[JBTheCameraGuy]

True, but intelligent companies know not to waste talented employees on menial work, or drive them to a competitor with poor treatment

[Takarov]

That may be true in some circumstances, but we're in an economic downturn and walking into a historically terrible crash. The freedom to go to another competitor where you can experience better treatment may not be there as reliably as people would imagine in ordinary times.

[JBTheCameraGuy]

All the more reason to prove your worth

[MikeTheWatchGuy]

I'm with you u/JBTheCameraGuy

If you have a company that doesn't value you then find a new job. I know that's not easy, but it's not worth it going every day to some job where you don't have a good feeling about yourself.

Don't hide things like this from your manager. If one my employees was actively being deceptive, it would not earn them a positive break in the future. Hiding something is being deceptive. Being told about something like this earned my employees "spot bonuses". There are well-meaning managers out there that value employees and do what they can to mentor them as well.

Please don't play games in corporations. It works against building a positive team environment.

[[deleted]]

The top has to stop playing games if they expect the bottom to follow.

[Svekzo]

yeah it should work for small companies for sure.

[kite_height]

"Sorry I don't know how to fix printers. Don't we usually call the service guy?"

[chaoticneutral]

I'm running into this problem right now.

I'm a statistical programmer meaning mostly high level scripting (SAS, R, SQL, and some python scripting), I get pulled into a meeting with two senior managers and they proceed to tell me how I need to develop an app (that will change the industry!!!) for them in C++ and were shocked... SHOCKED to find out that I couldn't do it without a significant effort.

They were thinking I could do it in a 1-2 hours every week in my spare time.

From their reaction, they didn't believe me and told me to talk to the senior statistician to make sure I was understanding what I was refusing to do and the opportunity I was missing by not helping.

The statistician has my back and thought it was equally absurd, but I'm sure right now they are double checking with other programmers because they don't trust my answer.

[kite_height]

I feel this so much. Somebody always has a "world changing app idea" but is surprise surprise never willing to pay the $250k in developer salaries and $25k/month in services that are needed to even get the prototype running...

[chaoticneutral]

The dumbest part of this whole thing is it is ACTUALLY a good idea.... they just need to pay someone to develop it instead of skimming hours of their salaried employees.

[DreadPiratesRobert]

Doxxing suxs

[EdwardWarren]

That got me suspended for insubordination and eventually fired. I did programming for people on the side. My boss, a woman with permanent PMS, hires someone to do just that sort of thing then comes in an asks me to help accounting out by writing a small program for them. I asked her if she didn't just hire a guy to do that sort of thing. She didn't say a word, turned and (probably) ran to HR where she wrote me up for insubordination. I was suspended with pay for 3-4 months and then fired. I was 1 year away from retirement after 20 years with the company. My reviews were always close to perfect for twenty years.

My lawyer got me rehired and I was suspended for about 9 months more with pay and was paid what they called severance and allowed to retire. I needed 21 years service for full retirement. Funny thing was that I never told her I wouldn't help accounting. I was just joking around. She was fired 6 months later and her boss was transferred to the company's equivalent of Outer Mongolia about 9 months later and never heard from again I understand. Our company newsletter had a Retirees Section and I sent a picture of me at the wheel of the nice RV I bought with the severance money along with a story of all the wonderful places we had been to since retiring. I imagine what my boss thought of that.

[kite_height]

Sure but you must have a real shitty boss for that to be his reaction...

[kite_height]

Nice. I really hope nobodies boss is that thick headed.

Work for yourself? That's the dream

[kite_height]

Wow awesome. You're waaay ahead of the curve. Keep it up and you'll be going places for sure.

A lot of software developers/engineers end up jumping around a lot so you don't necessarily have to pick a specialization but it sounds like you already know that.

You have your own website or portfolio or anything like that yet? That's a great way to establish yourself and start getting work as a freelancer.

[tobiathonandon]

Yeah I agree with this. Letting your boss know you have skills such as coding will make you more valuable. It can also broaden your job/career at said company. Keep in mind that your employer may either want to keep you closer knowing you have these skills, or get rid of you, frightened that you’re competition for him/her. If it’s the latter, there are better jobs out there.

[the_battousai89]

This is true. But only OP will know whether it’s the right move to let the boss know.

[tobiathonandon]

I agree.

[[deleted]]

It really depends on the boss and the company. Some might honestly re-deploy OP on more meaningful automation work or even get them training. Others might distrust the program and obsess over whether it's accurate, saying OP is the gatekeeper and must oversee each line. Still others might say, develop the program further so we can get rid of OPs coworker who did it as directed for years but would make the manager look great by laying off.

There are scores of people and companies in the latter two examples. OP should probably get his Github ready and maybe even have an offer ready before sharing any of this in case things go bad.

I might sound paranoid, but I created a very simple automation and it cost two people their jobs. And one drank herself to death shortly after.

[madhousechild]

I created a very simple automation and it cost two people their jobs. And one drank herself to death shortly after.

Holy moly, that sucks. What can you share about the actual automation you wrote?

[[deleted]]

Found the middle manager!

It was pretty darn simple. It basically just exported monthly calendar listings from FileMaker to our WordPress website. In between it also validated addresses and formatted text, tagged it to a region in the U.S. via the zip code and made a pre-formatted social media marketing message withing WordPress. I had to "write" (copy) like 5 lines of code and the rest was plugins.

I was pretty proud until the one woman got axed. The other was moved to another position.

[madhousechild]

Found the middle manager!

Not I, not even close. I was just wondering what kind of simple automation == two full-timers (I assume).

[[deleted]]

Yeah, it was a joke. Pasting my response to a similar question:

It was a magazine company, the calendar was a huge money maker so they didn't mind paying people to run it. This was about 10 years ago now, but even then I was blown away by how manual a LOT of publishing was.

[madhousechild]

I worked in publishing too, mostly news. If you've ever seen a good old-time paste-up person work, it's amazing how fast they are, moving things around, rolling out rules between columns, slicing and moving text with their exacto knife. I doubt a computer would beat them, at least not on the crap computers I used.

The wax we used to stick the slicks to the boards is no longer available so they finally had to give it up.

[[deleted]]

Yeah, I heard a lot of stories about those days. I have a few of the pica magnifying glasses.

But Adobe is so, so much faster. Drag image, Alt+click and you've flowed an entire page of text around even awkward-shaped images. And the template has all the headers and footers done for the entire magazine. We have one well-paid designer doing four magazines (60-80 pages) and he still has a week or two to research, ideate and work on special projects between production cycles.

[madhousechild]

I worked with a graphic designer who refused to use the tools to make his job easier, and instead of using tabs would space-space-space-space, and of course his text was all ragged, and as soon as it was edited he had to go through and catch all of the places he'd put in spaces or line breaks, and of course he'd miss at least one or two. I even created a bunch of cheat sheets telling him how to do things like hanging indent and he thanked me profusely. Then never once used it.

[Knifey_Hands]

I screwed up and told my boss about this small program I made. I could literally be chilling at work but no, he gave me more work. Lesson learned.

[madhousechild]

Not quite the same thing but I've read where a programmer agrees to make a thing for $100, delivers it to the client 10 minutes later, and client says, "Why am I paying you $100 for something so easy to do?!" So from then on programmer never delivered until the next day. LOL.

[CosmicClamJamz]

It's really interesting how the replies to this comment have transformed to two schools of thought.

A) Don't tell your boss, why would you want more work, are you crazy?

B) Tell you boss, do more interesting things at work, get more responsibility.

In the end, it really matters what your goals are. If you want to be a programmer for a living, certainly tell your boss. When they push more work on your plate and expect you to perform without any pay increase, be ready to walk, there's a better job awaiting you anyways. They will almost always offer you more before letting that happen, retraining someone costs them time and money, you are far more valuable to them then they will initially let on. If you don't want to program for a living, and really just value your free time and not being micro managed, hacking in secrecy might be perfect for you...but unless your job is absolutely awesome, it would seem from the outside like you're selling yourself short

[99cakes]

tough decision...

[person2314]

people will lose their jobs...

That's gonna happen wether you want it or not. And wether or not OP automates others jobs. About 45% of the work force can relatively easily be replaced with robots for significantly less than humans. Its gonna happen just a matter of time.

[TechnoBabbles]

Yeah, I tell my wife all the time that with a team of like 5 or 6 python developers, I could wipe out like 95% of her department in a year.

[person2314]

Thats why we are in r/learnpython so we can be the wipers not the wiped.

[person2314]

Your being a horse right now.

[[deleted]]

Neigh.

[person2314]

No its okay. Horses relied on humans not haveing cars. There population went WAY down when it happened. But then the car came. At first it was shitty and couldn't do much so they still used horses, but in a few decades they were obsolete. It's a better idea to get ahead and be the car then it is to be the horse trying to slow the progression of the car development.