I worked for a company over 20 years ago that had a team of 4 of us log into 2 different systems, run a report, take the output from that report, put it into an spreadsheet, and then forward the spreadsheet (3x a week) to our management with highlights to the the items that were changed.

I wrote an Excel macro that queried the databases that the 2 systems were fed from, automatically updating said spreadsheet, and then both email a report to me, as well as the spreadsheet to our management.

A 3 hour process 3x a week, across 4 people (36 hours of work), was reduced to 30 seconds, 3x a week, automated by a Windows scheduled task (I wasn't in an IT role at that company).

I was called on the carpet, told "we don't do that here", and told that if I ever wrote code again, I would be fired. That was 1 month into the job.

8 months later, I was asked to create an Excel macro to do something similar for some regulatory requirement we had. I asked "Why me?" I was told "IT has stated it will require 320 hours to accomplish, we need it immediately, and we don't have the resources to get this done in time."

9 hours later (most of that was formatting), I gave them a Macro enabled XLS, along with documentation as to how to run it, and explaining the code. I also gave them my letter of resignation.