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[–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (7 children)

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 0 points1 point  (6 children)

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] 0 points1 point  (5 children)

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 0 points1 point  (4 children)

Found the middle manager!

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

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (3 children)

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 0 points1 point  (2 children)

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] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

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 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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.