Programmer Automates his job, gets fired for forgetting how to code - Polidicks

[quote] Reddit user FiletOfFish1066 just got fired from his programming job. The reason and circumstances will completely blow your mind, though. FiletOfFish1066 (FOF) worked at a well-known tech company in the Bay Area and for six full years did nothing except play League of Legends, browse Reddit, work out in a gym, and basically do whatever he felt like doing. Guess how much his company paid him to basically do nothing for a full six years? $95,000 per year on average. When he first got his software testing quality assurance job, he spent eight months automating all of the programming tasks. FOF is pretty despondent in tone after he posted about getting fired from his job. He’s upset because he has completely forgotten how to code, having relegated all that work to the computer, and now possesses no marketable skills. [/quote] [url]http://interestingengineering.com/programmer-automates-job-6-years-boss-fires-finds/[/url] sounded hilarious enough to post here

Reminds me of the guy that did nothing at work but browse reddit and outsourced his job to some Indian for 1/8 of his paycheck.

I've thought about making an auto-programmer myself.

Pretty much screwed himself by first, fully automating his work, making having him around unnecessary and second, not keeping on programming, programming is something you will forget if you stop doing for too long.

[QUOTE=Electrocuter;50515589]Pretty much screwed himself by first, fully automating his work, making having him around unnecessary and second, not keeping on programming, programming is something you will forget if you stop doing for too long.[/QUOTE] ikr, what he should have done was say "hey guys, i automated my entire position, so what else can i do?" i mean thats the kind of stuff that might get you a promotion and he could have moved up in the world in those 6 years. Still at his paycheck i can't believe he doesn't have any marketable skills

I'm sorry but if you're good enough to automate your own programming, you're not going to forget everything about coding in just 6 years.

[QUOTE=Sableye;50515599]ikr, what he should have done was say "hey guys, i automated my entire position, so what else can i do?" i mean thats the kind of stuff that might get you a promotion and he could have moved up in the world in those 6 years. Still at his paycheck i can't believe he doesn't have any marketable skills[/QUOTE] That would have required admitting to your superiors that you were too lazy to do your job by hand, though...and $95k/year is plenty

[QUOTE=Electrocuter;50515589]Pretty much screwed himself by first, fully automating his work, making having him around unnecessary and second, not keeping on programming, programming is something you will forget if you stop doing for too long.[/QUOTE] Heh, in the worst case he'll feel a bit rusty but he should be able to easily pick it all up. This pretty much applies to anything. Learning how to program isn't that hard, nor does take that long, it mostly comes down to how dedicated you are to it, but this again seriously applies to pretty much anything you'd want to do.

[QUOTE=Sableye;50515599]idk, what he should have done was say "hey guys, i automated my entire position, so what else can i do?" i mean thats the kind of stuff that might get you a promotion[/QUOTE] Well that depends on whether or not they do have more work for you or if they hired you for just that one job, I don't know how programming jobs are though. I guess them finding out they've been paying him to do nothing for years probably didn't help his case much either. Regardless he did screw himself by completely stopping programming, you stop doing and forget your only marketable skill you're gonna have a bad time.

[QUOTE=MasterKade;50515621]That would have required admitting to your superiors that you were too lazy to do your job by hand, though...and $95k/year is plenty[/QUOTE] not really, i've seen articles by network tech guys who have disks that pretty much do their job for them with the amount of tools and automation they can whip up. the weird thing is how he was essentially in a dead end job at that level of pay. its kind of irresponsible for that company to have been paying 1 guy so much and never bothered to check in on him at all

he should have checked up at least once a week so he wouldn't be to rusty

Well he was in testing/ QA. That sort of shit can be mostly automated pretty simply today. Shitloads of automatic testing frameworks out there that generate pretty good reports. He'd be a fool to not automate really.

[QUOTE=Sableye;50515599]ikr, what he should have done was say "hey guys, i automated my entire position, so what else can i do?" i mean thats the kind of stuff that might get you a promotion and he could have moved up in the world in those 6 years. Still at his paycheck i can't believe he doesn't have any marketable skills[/QUOTE] $95,000 is not very much in the Bay Area as far as I'm aware.. In fact I'm pretty sure he would basically be considered poor there lol

[QUOTE=srobins;50515691]$95,000 is not very much in the Bay Area as far as I'm aware.. In fact I'm pretty sure he would basically be considered poor there lol[/QUOTE] 95k is pretty decent here

[QUOTE=srobins;50515691]$95,000 is not very much in the Bay Area as far as I'm aware.. In fact I'm pretty sure he would basically be considered poor there lol[/QUOTE] He certainly would not be considered poor making 95k in the Bay area. He'd be doing about normal or a bit better than the average iirc.

Wtf 95k is hella in the bay area, even for a tech job

[QUOTE=pyschomc;50515718]95k is pretty decent here[/QUOTE] Maybe just specifically San Francisco then? I probably should have prefaced my post by saying I really don't know what I'm talking about and I'm just going off of things I've read on the internet lol.

[QUOTE=srobins;50516121]Maybe just specifically San Francisco then? I probably should have prefaced my post by saying I really don't know what I'm talking about and I'm just going off of things I've read on the internet lol.[/QUOTE] 95k is a huge amount of money. I mean, the story is very likely bullshit, but by no means is 95k/year poor anywhere.

[url]https://sites.google.com/site/forgottenemployee/[/url] the original lost employee is still the best

The man's done the impossible: [IMG]https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/automation.png[/IMG]

[QUOTE=discodude;50516268]95k is a huge amount of money. I mean, the story is very likely bullshit, but by no means is 95k/year poor anywhere.[/QUOTE] It's about cost of living.. 95k in Phoenix is going to take you much further than 95k in New York City or San Francisco.

This is such bullshit, oh my god this is like saying "oh I haven't written anything in cursive in 6 years other than my signature, I [B][I]literally [/I][/B]can not write a single word in it now." You would still be able to read it, and most likely write a good amount of it still. If 6 years ago he could automate his job, he either never could code and automated it with some other means somehow, or more likely this story is entirely made up because it makes people who don't program or understand how learning skills works, entertained. Also, $95k might sound like a shit load of money, and its great compared to a lot of positions in some other cities but in SF that is not above average, it is below if you're a software engineer or in any tech position of consequence.

Yeah $95k is not good in SF

No one is going to hire him now, though. Even if he gets good at programming again everyone will ask him during interviews "Hey wait aren't you that guy that automated his job and spent 5 years raking in a near six figure salary doing literally nothing?" and he will probably never get hired because that is the EPITOME of time theft. TBH I'm surprised his company hasn't sued him to pay back wages.

[QUOTE=Snoberry Tea;50517845]No one is going to hire him now, though. Even if he gets good at programming again everyone will ask him during interviews "Hey wait aren't you that guy that automated his job and spent 5 years raking in a near six figure salary doing literally nothing?" and he will probably never get hired because that is the EPITOME of time theft. TBH I'm surprised his company hasn't sued him to pay back wages.[/QUOTE] I mean, in the end he was still getting his job done even if he was having the computer do it for him.

[QUOTE=srobins;50516663]It's about cost of living.. 95k in Phoenix is going to take you much further than 95k in New York City or San Francisco.[/QUOTE] Of course, but you guys are being absolutely insane about it. [url]http://www.businessinsider.com/how-expensive-is-san-francisco-2015-9#[/url] This was a guy living with his parents. This article says 95k can feed a family of four. On his own, or even paying for a partner, he would definitely not be anywhere near poor. You can walk around the streets of SF and count dozens, hundreds of homeless. Those are the poor.

[QUOTE=Anderan;50517895]I mean, in the end he was still getting his job done even if he was having the computer do it for him.[/QUOTE] Yes but how much do you want to bet if he'd told his supervisors what he'd done, they'd have reassigned him or let him go? There's no way in hell they would have kept paying him $95,000/yr for 5 years of no work. It's still time theft.

[QUOTE=Llamalord;50515606]I'm sorry but if you're good enough to automate your own programming, you're not going to forget everything about coding in just 6 years.[/QUOTE] Yeah this story smells kinda fishy, there is something not being told here. I've automated a lot of my job at work but I still keep up with doing medial work time to time. Sounds to me like he either was caught doing dumbshit at work or the position and things he programmed for were never updated on time. Seeing how he said he had become "addicted to LoL and beer", by guess is he was missing project deadlines and such. Not "fired because I was too awesome at my job for automating it". [editline]14th June 2016[/editline] [QUOTE=LoneWolf_Recon;50516659]The man's done the impossible: [IMG]https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/automation.png[/IMG][/QUOTE] My guess is more likely he worked his ass off to run a bunch of code for some legacy systems using cheap tricks, and failed to keep up the code with changes to an infrastructure going through upgrades

[QUOTE=Snoberry Tea;50517845]No one is going to hire him now, though. Even if he gets good at programming again everyone will ask him during interviews "Hey wait aren't you that guy that automated his job and spent 5 years raking in a near six figure salary doing literally nothing?" and he will probably never get hired because that is the EPITOME of time theft. TBH I'm surprised his company hasn't sued him to pay back wages.[/QUOTE] What you do, is you hire him. Give him a mundane job that can be automated. Have him automate it, then move him to the next. Once he's automated half your company and has exceeded his worth, you fire him. For the price of a temporary employee you get a handful of automated bots replacing other mundane positions.

[QUOTE=Snoberry Tea;50517974]Yes but how much do you want to bet if he'd told his supervisors what he'd done, they'd have reassigned him or let him go? There's no way in hell they would have kept paying him $95,000/yr for 5 years of no work. It's still time theft.[/QUOTE] They hired him to get a job done, what does it matter the amount of effort he put into it as long as the final product was up to standard?