This is blogspam of a Reddit post. Original post: <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/4km3yc/finally_fired_after_6_years/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/4km3yc/f...</a>
They fired the only guy who automated all his tasks, and did it so well nobody noticed for 6 years. They are idiots. They should have assigned him to automate the hell out of everybody else's tasks and gain tons of additional work-hours for free. This reminds me of that guy several years back who outsourced all his tasks to China and was employee of the month again and again. They also found out via IT dept, checking his strange VPN traffic. And again, fired the one guy who would be a perfect Outsource Lead. Oh well, the bots are coming, automation will rule them all, and those companies who are devoted to lines of code and employee keystrokes... Well, they will become obsolete.
Instead of asking what else he can do, or provide more value or grow into more responsibility, he sat on his hands and played League all day?<p>I'm disappointed it took them 6 years to act on it.
I feel mostly sorry, not jealous for this guy. Even though he plays it cool, I'm sure he lived in constant fear of being discovered for six years and being speechless any questioning.
Why the hell didn't he freelance or try to start a small business on the side. He could have made double or triple the money!<p>Also, I wonder how IT eventually found out.
if he did nothing but play league of legends for 6 years how good is he at it?<p><a href="https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-ways-to-earn-money-playing-League-of-Legends" rel="nofollow">https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-ways-to-earn-money-p...</a>
Dude has 200k in the bank. If he's found motivation, he can just do a masters course. That will teach him a few things and get him back in the coding saddle, and give a plausible reason for why he's looking for work afterwards.<p>What's scary is the people who actually have been coding for several years and still don't know how to do it. No version control, no idea what common patterns are, ridiculously complex spaghetti code. We all know them.
I find it hard to be sympathetic. Why is he sad? 6 years of playing video games on someone else's dollar is fantastic. Be glad it lasted more than 3 months. People who slog away for 50-60 hours a week on drudge work still find time for self-improvement. If you want to get kudos for automating your job away, tell your boss and their boss. That's how you get promoted.
I'm not sure if I should ask this - but any guesses on which company OP was working for?<p>"I got a job at a company in the Bay Area, CA that was completely unknown 7 years ago but is now incredibly well known. It is actually quite hard to get a job here now, from what I hear."<p>I'm not from the Bay Area, so I can't think of a company (other than Facebook) that fits that profile.
I consider myself smart and lazy as well. Cut down the time required by predecessor to do the work from 8hrs to 2hrs. But was lucky my boss realized that as well gave me more responsibilities and a promotion few months into the job. Though we have regular arguments about me streamlining other peoples work as she does want to change herself.
I guess the biggest question here is - does OP even want to be a programmer? Maybe they'd rather do something else in life.. but e.g. for me, it's been my goal of the past two years (which I'm finally s/realizing/achieving/)
If he can automate his work, milk it for the weekly paycheck, and do it well enough to stay around for six years, more power to him. He made his laziness pay off.<p>Least amount of non-automated work for the most amount of pay off, I respect it.