Back in January, I wrote about the story of a developer who automated his job with some scripts and then spent the next few years pursuing his own interests at work while letting his scripts do his job.
Many people have an immediate reaction that this isn’t right, that the developer was somehow cheating his employer. That idea is deeply ingrained in us but consider: the job that the employer was paying for was getting done and probably with fewer errors than before. The total benefit to all concerned was increased so why was it dishonorable? Yet the feeling of unease persists.
In 2018 The Atlantic published an article—since resurrected by Pocket that explores this issue. Surprisingly, even among the developer community the reaction was pretty much equally divided with half feeling that such action was cheating and half failing to see the problem.
It turns out that such automation is surprisingly frequent. Unsurprisingly, most of the developers who have done so have kept their actions to themselves feeling that far from being rewarded, they would be punished for their initiative. They may have a point. There are several stories of those who automated their jobs being fired because, after all, there was nothing left for them to do.
When you hear stories like that, it’s harder to be on the “it’s cheating” side. Take a look at the article and see what you think.