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$90,000 for twiddling your thumb: Man automates his job – and nobody has noticed for a year
The home office changes many habits (symbol image)
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When a worker is replaced by automation, it usually happens because companies want to cut costs. An employee in the US has now turned the tables. And he prefers to put his feet up instead of working himself.
Digitization is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it offers many employees opportunities, such as working from home and more flexible office hours. On the other hand, automation by computers or robots also costs numerous employees their jobs. An employee in the USA has now combined the advantages of both developments for himself – and has fully automated his own job without the knowledge of his employer.
“I work in a medium-sized law firm and was hired as an IT specialist to manage the digital evidence for trials,” the person reports on Reddit. Instead of a real name, she just changed “Throwaway59724“, one of the side’s common practices for not being recognized. The reason for this is easy to understand, because instead of doing the job he’s paid to do, he “prefers to play video games and stuff like that”.
New opportunity through Covid
Shortly after he was hired, he noticed that he couldn’t fill a whole working day with his workload, reports the employee. He was to oversee a cloud server where the firm’s attorneys could access their thousands of pieces of evidence and documents for proceedings. Previously, this had to be done laboriously by others on the side, which is why his position was created. “That sounded good. But I quickly realized that this is never an eight-hour job.” That’s why he used to loiter around in the office at work early on to pass the time. “Then came Covid.” And with the home office, the opportunity to stop working altogether.
“I was asked if I could work from home,” he explains the change. “Then the fun really started.” He set up a work computer with a direct connection. And started to automate everything completely. “Within a week I was able to develop and get a script running that did my entire job.” It automatically checks whether new files are arriving and uploads them. His only work of the day is to check at the end whether everything went well. “I sit at my desk for maybe 10 minutes a day.”
The effort involved was surprisingly limited. With two Google searches, he found out how the corresponding script should work in principle, the main part of the work consisted of adapting it to the peculiarities of the company system. That was quite complicated in detail – and is also the main reason why he cannot make his automation available to others.
No bad conscience
He doesn’t have a bad conscience – despite the $90,000 he collects a year. “At first I felt a bit guilty that I was ripping off the law firm. But then I convinced myself that it was okay. As long as everyone gets what they want, there is no harm,” he explains how he deals with the pangs of conscience. He also cannot understand the accusation that he would waste his life. “I have a passion to focus on during the day.” Because it doesn’t contribute anything to the topic and he might be identifiable from it, he doesn’t want to go into it.
He is not afraid that his employer might fire him for his actions. He runs the automation on hardware that he bought himself, and his employment contract does not provide for any transfer of rights to his work. “If they want to throw me out, I’ll take the script with me,” he explains. “With me, they also lose the work I do. I am my own worker protection.” As long as everything works, nobody would suspect anything anyway. After all, he hasn’t worked for over a year.
While some Reddit readers are skeptical of the post, most applaud the poster for his clever way of getting the job done. The top comment supports it accordingly. “Just think of your salary as a subscription fee paid for your automation program. After all, big companies love subscription services.”
Source:Reddit