Guy secretly automates his $90k a year job during lockdown and people love him for it

Poke Staff. Updated January 18th, 2022

If you ever find yourself asked about your future career preferences, why not answer: ‘One that I could automate without my bosses ever finding out about it’.

We only mention it after this story just went wildly viral on Reddit, a tale of a guy who used his time working from home profitably. Very profitably indeed.

By automating his job without his employers knowing about it, leaving him free to do, well, pretty much whatever he wants. And it’s already been a year …

An extraordinary tale was shared by Throwaway59724 over on the subReddit ‘anti-work’ and here are just a few of the many things people said in response.

‘Think of your wages as a subscription service to your automation program lol.

‘Big companies love subscription services right.’
BlobTheBuilderz

‘Legend. This is true anti-work. You’re providing the exact services as required, and they’re paying for said services. Well done, I clap for you.’
precsenz

‘I just took a job at a power company. They explained what they need, and how many hours they expect a week.
Its gonna take about a month to automate.

‘Then 30 seconds a month mobile depositing my check. Cant wait.’
GingerGiantz1992

‘If it helps you justify it, they’re not paying you for the 10 minutes a day it takes you to do that, they’re paying the work to be done reliably and an expert on standby full time, ready to jump in and address any issues as they happen.

‘If you leave, even if you leave the script, if they don’t replace you and something goes wrong, they’re up shit creek.’
Barbed_D

‘The reality is that a LOT of jobs are like this. What they really need is someone effectively “on call.” No one else in your office has the knowledge to operate or troubleshoot those scripts if something goes wrong, and it’s an essential function that must work. Even if they knew you automated it, they might not want to fill your plate with 40 hours of makework because this function is critical if it ever needs your attention.

‘The problems are (1) that being “on call” for this one task probably wouldn’t provide the compensation you need to survive, (2) being on call would prevent you from getting other FT work you’d need, (3) we have a Puritanical cult telling us everyone must work 40 hour weeks to justify existing, and (4) there are caring professions and other productive workers who unfairly are kept working 40 hours a week for virtually no pay while we soak in administrative bliss.

‘I’ve worked in places where the entire office quietly whispers about how no one works anywhere near 40 hours. They’re just expected to be polite about it. You can’t do anything to challenge it because it’s unfair to the blue collar workers that our economy relentlessly screws already, and because it’s a sin to the Puritans who think we live to work.

‘This is why skyrocketing productivity hasn’t resulted in less work for all of us. Secretly, it has, but we don’t want to acknowledge that or distribute the free time fairly because it would loosen the grip of capitalism squeezing our hearts.’
Wrecksomething

To conclude …

‘I feel like all these type of posts teach me is I need to 1.) learn how to code and 2) find a laid back office job.’
StrugglingStressBall

Source Reddit u/Throwaway59724 Image Unsplash