The Automator
A story akin to the American Dream, where a redditor, hired to manually type numbers into a computer, decides to create a program to do it for him. And thus, he manages to rake in bonuses while doing no work at all for 8 hours a day.
Part 1[edit]
Hired full time, and I make a good living. My work involves a lot of "data entry", verification, blah blah. I am a programmer at heart and figured out how to make a script do all my work for me. Between co workers, they have a 90% accuracy rating and 60-100 transactions a day completed. I have 99,6% accuracy and over 1.000 records a day. No one knows I do this because everyone's monthly accuracy and transaction count are tallied at the end of the month, which is how we earn our bonus. The scum part is, I get 85-95% of the entire bonus pool, which is a HUGE some of money. Most people are fine with their bonuses because they don't even know how much they would bonus regularly. I'm guessing they get €100-200 bonus a month. They would get a lot more if I didnt bot.
So reddit, am I a scumbag? I work about 8 hours a week doing real work, the rest is spent playing games on my phone or reading reddit...
Edit: A lot of people are posting that I'm asking for a pat on the back... Nope, I'm asking for the moral delima if my ~90% bonus share is unethical for me to take...
Part 2[edit]
Okay, the past month and a half has been insane. Like I said in my last post, the code was originally signed to only run on the desktop that I was assigned, and also required a password upon starting. I felt secure in that they couldn't steal and rip the code and fire everyone. I then went to my manager and told him what I was doing. He asked me (In Dutch...) "Is the program still on the work desktop, and did you do it on company time?" I replied yes, and yes. I was promptly fired and expelled from the building. Once I left, I called my bosses superior (? or inferior?? the one higher...) and left him a voice mail saying what happened and that my boss fired me for it, but I thought he was being close minded and not open to advancing the company. I also got a call from my manager, telling me I have to give him the password... I told him I am no longer employed and am not required to any longer.
I get a call from my bosses boss, and he asks to have a meeting with me to discuss what actually happened and if it is true that it could save money, he would listen. but I was hellbent on refusing to give out the password. Not to be mean/defensive, but the code was not designed for anyone to use, it was very primitive in the way it had to be setup. I didn't want to be liable for someone using it incorrectly.
I met with him a week later, we discussed over tea about the program. I asked if I was doing anything wrong or immoral, and he said that the only issue was that I coded it on company time when I wasn't supposed too, and that the app not only was fine (no requirement to have it done by a person), but also saved the money lots and lots of money and they never even realized it. (They would have had to hire more people to handle the load, but didn't because everything was getting done.)
Once we talked about it, he said I was very talented and asked why I worked in the line of work I do instead of software engineering, I replied that I found this job first and was making such great money-- which he didn't expect, and asked me how much I was making, me telling him the true amount. He was floored and cracked up laughing, I made more than my boss (but not the guy I was talking too). He told me he would love to give me a job doing software engineering for the entire companies systems. I agreed only if that the current employees wouldn't be fired and would be put into different places in the company. We came to a compromise that some of the useless people (There were a few...) would be let go (these people are morons beyond belief), but that he could find jobs for the rest (Translation was a big one, since us Dutch people have a culture of learning others languages, sales, HR and other departments, and a few of them were offered training for the jobs. A handful was kept on the original team but their job was changed from manual input to now they work with the tool I built. As far as I know, the bonus program was slashed a lot, but they're still making more bonus than before I bet since I was taking it all)
So now I am a lead software engineer over my own department, making the same base pay as I was making base+bonus previously. (No bonus, unfortunately haha) Most other workers moved departments or changed jobs in their department, so most people got a good deal.
Except my boss. They were upset with him before this, and were even more upset after him. He was notoriously a bad manager and he was fired over this. Oh well. They hired one of the previous people on my team to take over his job :)
TL;DR IT WORKED OUT FOR 99% OF THE PEOPLE.
EDIT: one thing is worse: my new desk chair sucks
