There are reasons people do not take initiative in certain very bureaucratic positions and organizations. Sometimes, it is not rewarded -- in fact, it is punished.
Any decision (e.g. whether to tell management) needs to be made with a good deal of contextual awareness.
I hate to sound like a party-pooper, but speaking from experience...
P.S. I'll add: He's already found the built-in reward. It sounds like it's a significant amount of bonus money, plus effectively a very light workload. What are they going to offer him that improves upon that? How high up in management would one need to go to find authority for such a decision/spend? How many layers of management do you think separate his data entry position from a manager with that authority?
P.P.S. OTOH, if they are not entirely brain dead (and who knows?), metrics will eventually cause them to investigate. So, enjoy it while it lasts, and maybe consider whether he can turn eventual exposure to his advantage. (And if metrics don't attract attention, that's a pretty good sign he is indeed dealing with a brain dead organization.)
/cynicism
If he saves the company $1 million a year are you actually going to cut him a $200k+ bonus? I'd be very doubtful of anyone who says they would.
Most people would give him $20k if they're especially generous and a pat on the head.
Oh, you've automated it? Thanks. Bye.
I'd suggest he say this: "hey boss, I think I can automate this process, increasing accuracy and productivity. Would you give me salary X if I can do it?"
If the boss says "awesome, yes!", then he's got a better job.
If the boss says no or is lukewarm, he could keep doing what he's doing, but actually study programming in the time he's goofing off and start a job search.
Either way, he's on a path to getting to program, not having to hide it, and getting properly compensated.
The more difficult question is: what if they lay off his coworkers because of his innovation? How should he feel then?
That's a question of how to deal with a broken system. Automation is by definition the destruction of manual work. Most of the time, of boring manual work. This is great. We should automate as much as we can. Oh, but it happens right now: hourly productivity, according to my source[1], more than tripled since the fifties.
But, as you point out, sudden increase of productivity mechanically creates unemployment, if you don't have a massive consumption growth to absorb it —not a good idea in the long term, and doesn't happen anyway.
There are several solutions out of this dilemma, which you can apply in parallel. The most powerful one is: work less (at the national level). Get nearly everyone to work 32 hours per week (typically 4 days a week) instead of the usual 40. (You can use incentives instead of force if you don't want to appear too communist) If Productivity grows again too much in the next decades, get down to 28, 24, or even less.
There. I'm happy to be a programmer, whose main job is to destroy others'. Except the system is broken, and shows no sign of being fixed. Getting back to your difficult question, I don't know what I'd actually do. I'd probably tell no one, given the risks, both for me and my coworkers. I'd feel bad about reaping all the bonuses, though —but I would save them to buy a house or whatever.
[1] http://www.roosevelt2012.fr/propdetails?propid=13 (French, see 3rd chart. Watch out, it seems Wikipedia disagrees —maybe they're not measuring the same thing?)
He's saying he gets 90% of the bonus pool and expects many other people only get 100-200.
So 5 others, 500-1000 for them, his take home would be 4500-9500 bonus.
If there are 10 others, 1000-2000 for them, his take home would be 9500-19500 bonus.
We're potentially talking 6 figure bonuses per year. Whose salary level do you think that would put him on? Do you think they will accept the data entry guy becoming as compensated? I doubt it would work politically and financially off some basic napkin math.
It would be very interesting to analyze if indeed higher monetary incentives do rise the level of innovation within a company.
And this is why you're not management. He hasn't shared it yet, why assume he would not ever? You could show some understanding and realize there are many reasons an employee might be uncomfortable showing a radically advantageous method immediately to management.
>We download PDF batches, not paper...
>I wrote the script from scratch. It is a combination of reading the screen for data, a screen font reader, mouse automation/keyboard automation.
>It's part C++ and part "Game Maker", I did it for prototyping but got lazy and never rewrote it.
>Plus the script is pretty frustrating to setup in the morning, so they would get frustrated figuring it out. :P (requires a certain monitor arrangement at certain resolutions, windows in the right place, etc.
Management would be furious if it was a simple script that you just hit "Go" and it does everything, but it sounds like it's finicky enough that management would be too confused to be angry.
If it's worth it for his company to overcome them, he has his bargaining chip right there.
So though management might be furious, they should re-consider they should turn some of that fury on themselves(this never happens).
If I made a script that deals with 98% of all of my work I could not imagine not sharing that with my bosses. To me (and I'm sure lots of people don't share this sentiment) it would feel morally wrong not to.
Would you punish him?
Team work is everybody working to achieve something. Not one person making up for everybody.
I work hard because I want to be rich, I can't share my work and money just because somebody won't work hard for whatever reason.
I earn my money, they earn theirs.
Furious? Would you punish him then?