Is it a punishable mistake to automate your work (of parts which can be done so) and chill out the rest of the day? Now this question is in the realms of professionalism and fiddles with company and management expectations.
I have come across multiple posts here, here where the person has automated their work and generally slacks through the rest of the day. Or he/she has automated his/her work fully but deliberately introduced bugs to emulate human error. Also, the common theme in these posts has been that they are not the ones to inform the management of such a facility. But they have been informed upon to the management. And they have been doing so for a few months now if not years.
disclaimer: I am no lawyer
The scenario can generally be described by answering the following questions:
- Has he/she informed the management about this?
- Did he/she have to do anything illegal/immoral because of it?
- Did he/she have to lie to the employer about the number of hours he is putting into work?
- Did he/she have to lie about the deadlines?
- Did he/she introduce deliberate bugs to emulate human error? etc.
- If such automation is directly against the company expectations. What if he has automated out a work that has to be done by hand and the company advertises the work as “hand-crafted”. I.e. Such work automation is directly in conflict with the company’s interests & policies
The way around
We can all agree that the following guidelines are apparent:
To employees:
- To seek permission from management before automating work and which might lead to a lot of idle time
- If you are already done with such automation, inform the management (immediately). Now the most important question is what are the implications of doing so? This is the thing most employees in such a situation dread. The company might decide on firing you for any of the reasons they have. But I have also read about cases where the employee has received multiple promotions. But still doing so is better than somebody else informing on you about this.
To companies:
- How about preparing a company policy on this? (I can’t imagine how you could have a policy like “We don’t like software work automation, so bend your back” if you really want to go that way.). But, having a company policy helps people come out with the automation they have done and helps you in deploying it across the company.
Have I mentioned that I am not a lawyer?