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You know your project is successful when other people lose their job because they were made redundant by your project. A project that I ended up not being proud of.

When I joined this MNC back in '96 there were a lot of duplicate work happening. Staff from other countries would enter information in Excel, print it, then fax it to HQ where the 12 staff there (3 shifts, 4 staff per shift) splits the pages among themselves and enters the info into the system. A few months in I implemented something I did for my school project ( https://devrant.com/rants/783197/... ) - a lite version where staff from other countries could enter the info and send them to the BBS located at the HQ. Management said they like it and asked me to deploy, telling the 12 staff that they will be moved to a different role.

I spent the next 30weeks travelling, deploying and training. At the same time I was trying learn to learn how to do automated installs using Rar for DOS and their SFX module (I think it was v2) onto 1.44Mb disks so that we can ship them to the rest of the countries and anyone can do the deployment, then train them via PC Anywhere.
When I came back to HQ all but 1 of the staff were gone. I finished the automated installs and documentation then left the company after 3months. Needless to say I made more than a few enemies there. Oh and they managed to deploy to the rest of the countries using my packaged installers

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  • 5
    Sorry I meant 1
  • 2
    @Lahsen2016 I don't think they are evil, if that software existed back when they started the company then they would't hire extra people just to have them employed.

    What happens with automation is that people can move to more interesting jobs that machines can't do.
  • 2
    @Lahsen2016

    Brings up thoughts about whether that should be the case.

    If large structures, out of individual control, motivated purely by exponential economic growth, are making decisions that impact large numbers of lives in negative ways - should we encourage them?

    If automation could lead to less work for everyone but instead leads to unemployment, what should we do societally?

    Don’t have an answer of course, but your comments resonated with thoughts that have been bouncing around in my head for awhile. It is* no one persons fault, but it also seems to impact the world negatively and I’m grappling with that.
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    @Lahsen2016 most probably I misread you, it makes more sense after rereading (I'm not that good with english)
  • 1
    At some point big diesel powered tractors started harvesting wheat and we all got to work on computers and play Xbox...

    The future waits for no one.
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