Here's how conversations typically go -- Dev: "Why are you using this? Why don't you use X?" Business: "Are you willing to write interface code to {legacy system}?" Dev: {crickets} Business: "Well, RPA it is then."
To dang's point, apologies for the insinuation, which doesn't seem to be borne out by the submitters' post histories anyway.
A more supported hypothesis is as you said: "This isn't something that a lot of HN-type devs care about or see."
In the same way we don't get many posts about Oracle, VMware, or SAP here, relative to their actual deployments.
- If there's some boring business process (that usually involves copy-and-pasting)
- Which you just know could be automated easily if only there was an API, but there isn't
- And everyone who's ever asked about an API has been told it's too difficult/expensive/etc to create an API (e.g., for an ancient legacy system)
... then there's the RPA opportunity.
In my opinion, it's not popular on HN for the same reason that legacy systems aren't popular on HN.
1. swivel chair work is any work that requires someone sitting in front of a computer to do.
2. swivel chair work is when you’re having to swivel your chair from one screen to another. This requires swiveling between applications to complete your work.
3. swiveling the monitor between customer and retail sales associate to collect inputs.
When you’re referring to replacing manual tasks with an automated process, are you referring to 2 above?