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Comment by jstanley | Hacker News Reader

Neither he nor the company would be better off if he were still doing it manually.

I don't know whether I think it's ethical or not overall, but it's at least a more optimal situation than if he had continued spending 8 hours a day updating spreadsheets by hand.

He's doing a better job than he was before, for the same price, and he gets more free time. Everyone's a winner. Admittedly, he is a winner by quite a bit more than they are, but he would have been perfectly within his rights to continue doing the work manually. Then they'd be paying the same price as they are paying now but getting work with more mistakes in it. Why would they want that?

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> free time

The employer is paying for that time, so... he should be doing something for the company.

Ideally, he'd tell them of his accomplishment and get a raise and a job helping other people automate their jobs, or something like that.

> Ideally, he'd tell them of his accomplishment and get a raise and a job helping other people

realistically he'll get fired because they don't need him anymore. his wages are booked as profit and distributed among shareholders ,-)

No. He is working remotely and the employer is paying for getting the job done.

There is no way of something ideally happening in this case.

The amount of taking the higher moral ground on Stack and here (in only a few minutes) is laughable. He is a single parent trying to get things working for him and his son. He is even questioning himself about this. This puts him into 5% of the honest population. I am old enough to know that internet warriors of higher moral in real life are mostly, I say mostly scumbags who would do much worse than this guy.

>> No. He is working remotely and the employer is paying for getting the job done.

To me, the test of whether he is being paid for results or time is whether he is paid more if the work required more than the 40 hours.

Agreed. Assuming he's salaried and not hourly there's no argument in my mind that he should feel required to tell them. If he's hourly I'd say it might be a gray area.

> If he's hourly I'd say it might be a gray area

If you're on contract to work X hours and you're doing 20% of that, it's a "gray area"?

That really depends. I've seen a lot of contract engagements where part of "the work" is just being there (or available) during standard business hours (e.g., 40h) regardless of whether you're doing anything. So depending on the situation, it is a "gray area".

Well than he should get payed more for being so productive and just bill the two hours for the same amount.

Initiating this however would include involuntary, unpaid consultancy about what part of the company can be automated.

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