What Do You Do When Your Mind-Numbing IT Job Should Be Automated?

jfruh writes Not everyone has a job like Homer Simpson, who's been replaced at various times by a brick tied to a lever and a chicken named Queenie. But many IT workers have come up against mind-numbing, repetitive tasks that probably could be automated. So: what do you do about it? Well, the answer depends on how much power you have in an organization and how much your bosses respect your opinion.

Automate them

[Errol backfiring]

Well, automate them, off course. That is how I started my programming career. I started as a technical draftsman using AutoCAD, and I was "actively lazy": when I had to type something 10 times, I wrote a little program to do that for me. When my bosses noticed that my computer was better configured than that of my colleagues, I started getting programming assignments as well.

Re:Automate it

[jafiwam]

Learn how best to automate that task so you can start on other projects to automating other tasks.

Yup. But do it in secret and don't share the automation with the employer. Use your spare time to look for a new job.

IF you come to the point where know your job is going to evaporate, it's better not to make a lot of waves (and that includes positive ones) until you are ready to go anyway. Your employer is already NOT paying attention and may not have a full understanding of what you do already. You'll be facing "the Bob's" in no time.

There is a reason they call it "work." Boring and repetitive comes with that. Brush up on your Zen skills and deal with it. And FIND ANOTHER JOB.

Re:And who the fuck will maintain it?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's all rainbows and roses to claim that "documentation" or "training" or "best practices" will solve these problems, but even when those are in place and actually working, they rarely reduce the actual cost of maintenance.

Oh, enough weasel words. You start off with a strawman of "it saves a few minutes a day" when in fact nobody automates systems that actually only take a few minutes a day - and it's probably your "few minutes a day" that's off, if they do (you're ignoring the costs of errors - the few minutes a day can often cost half a day if it's done wrong). Then you quote "documentation" as if it's some kind of mythical being and again maybe in your experience it is, but get real. Documentation solves all the problems you cite. Documenting your automated systems does reduce the actual cost of maintaining them. And I suspect if you'd ever seen it in place and actually working, you wouldn't be giving us this luddite anti-automation rant on the basis of a woeful misunderstanding of what constitutes a business case.

Non-Tech Bosses Hate Automation

[anmre]

I've found myself in this exact situation.

If you have the desire and/or ability to use your computer properly and automate tasks, and your job title is "______ Assistant", your boss will likely not respect you enough to permit automating anything. Therefore, you should do it as quietly as possible, and do not expect any pats on the back for mysteriously having perfect reports in your boss's inbox every morning at 8:31AM, or data requests completed before he/she even has time to walk back to his/her desk. Your boss may "expect" perfection, but will not actually know what to do about a subordinate who is actually capable of delivering it.

Expect to have only Microsoft VBA at your disposal. And amuse yourself daily with this image [imgur.com] which sums up your situation perfectly!

Also, smile often! :)

Re:Automate it

[digsbo]

And, if the worker wants to, he should ask for a raise and more work. This would benefit him and the business financially; whether it would happen depends on the wisdom of his managers. Less efficient firms would be forced to innovate in kind or suffer competitive disadvantages.