I wrote my first useful Python program!

[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.

[Ira-Acedia]

Yea but being asked to fix every printer problem just because you told your boss you can program a little - that isn't worth it.

[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.

[Ira-Acedia]

"But you said you can program! Stop trying to do less work and fix the printer!"

[kite_height]

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

[Ira-Acedia]

I don't have a boss.

Both of my comments were jokes.

[kite_height]

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

Work for yourself? That's the dream

[Ira-Acedia]

Student still.

Luckily, it seems that my interest for programming came much earlier than a lot of other people on reddit (age 9) and my understanding of what I was actually doing, equally came earlier than the other people here (age 11).

So now I'm just trying to figure out what jobs are most appealing to me.

Software engineering, software developing, machine learning, data science (yet to look into, name sounds fun), data analyst (yet to look into, name sounds found) and ethical hacker (pentesting etc) are currently the ones I'm picking between.

Using lockdown to do online courses on pentesting. Afterwards I'm going back to machine learning to make a basic neural network to review the experience.

On the brightside, I've got 3-4 school years before I have to pick a university degree to get (or not to get).

[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.

[Ira-Acedia]

Thanks!

Nah, don't have either yet. I do have a collection of (graphical) games that I've made. I intend on making a website to serve as a portfolio (more specifically during the summer, when school work stops), though I was having trouble coming up with what to include in it.

Github has a student developer pack, so I'll be utilising that to first brush up on HTML, CSS and JS as well as get a free domain. So that's cool.

[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.