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A comment on Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I've automated my job?. Parent comment

Re:Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I've autom... by ruricolist on Wednesday June 28, 2017 @06:24PM (#14659056)
The problem with piece work (in an agricultural context, at least) is that is reveals a wide discrepancy in productivity between workers. The most productive workers are usually about 8x as productive as the average. Employers balk at the prospect of paying that much extra, so they create various kinds of mixed schemes that cap the worker's pay regardless of how much actual work they do. So the practical result of piece work is simply to punish below-average workers, without actually doing anything to incentivize above-average work.
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Re:Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I've autom... by LeifCarrotson on Wednesday June 28, 2017 @06:40PM (#14659182)
Do you have a source for that 8x figure? I have heard the term tossed about in the context of engineering, but agriculture is a surprise!

When I picked blueberries as a summer job there certainly wasn't an 8x difference between workers. Perhaps between us and the you-pick people?

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Re:Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I've autom... by sidek on Wednesday June 28, 2017 @10:29PM (#14660332)
I've worked jobs with such a disparity. For a govt census job, the top two workers out of 20 visited 3x the dwellings per hour and had a ~4x success rate per dwelling compared to the average, so they were literally doing as much as the other 18 employees.
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Re:Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I've autom... by LeifCarrotson on Thursday June 29, 2017 @07:27AM (#14662314)
What were they doing differently? And why were the other workers not trained to do the same?
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Re:Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I've autom... by anovikov on Thursday June 29, 2017 @07:42AM (#14662389)
They've almost certainly been just nicer people who people liked to communicate better. Like, young pretty girls with pleasant voice. And they knew how to build right approach to people. That's it, and it can't be trained.
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Re:Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I've autom... by ruricolist on Sunday July 02, 2017 @03:02AM (#14681271)
I do have a source, and I finally tracked it down:

https://nature.berkeley.edu/ucce50/ag-labor/7research/7calag...

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Re:Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I've autom... by taneq on Wednesday June 28, 2017 @08:01PM (#14659662)
I'd guess no matter the original context, once you're being 8x more effective than your colleagues, it's due to some kind of engineering. So in agriculture, your 8x hay mower is the one who's built himself a scythe instead of using a hand knife.
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Re:Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I've autom... by frostymarvelous on Thursday June 29, 2017 @05:34AM (#14661880)
In that case, should he tell his employer he mechanized his work?
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Re:Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I've autom... by timthelion on Wednesday June 28, 2017 @06:43PM (#14659202)
Why is it bad for the employer to get 8x as much out of some workers?
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Re:Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I've autom... by _0ffh on Wednesday June 28, 2017 @06:57PM (#14659308)
I think the point of the comment was: Nothing, as long as she's prepared to pay 8x as well, which she usually wasn't.
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Re:Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I've autom... by Retra on Wednesday June 28, 2017 @07:14PM (#14659412)
It's bad for the same reason all short-sighted goals are bad. You can't repeatedly institutionalize short term goals over long term goals without suffering long term failure.

Sometimes people produce less for reasons that are actually very important. This should be doubly clear in software, where "line of code" are not an accurate measure of successful work.

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Re:Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I've autom... by hinkley on Wednesday June 28, 2017 @08:01PM (#14659661)
In both, the bullies end up with more stuff in their basket.
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Re:Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I've autom... by ourmandave on Wednesday June 28, 2017 @09:12PM (#14659988)
I don't understand the down votes and all these answers.

If I'm paying strictly for pieces produced (e.g. apples picked, widgets assembled) why would I balk at paying you for all of them if you're capable of 8X the average. I'm not losing anything.

Hell, I should be studying you to see how you're so efficient and apply that to my production (assuming you're not Superman hiding out).

Of course, that's not the same as cranking up the line speed at a dangerous job to crank out more widgets at the cost of more injuries.

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Re:Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I've autom... by OJFord on Thursday June 29, 2017 @07:45AM (#14662411)
Exactly - you pay more over a shorter period, or, in the case of a continuous widget assembly line, you pay fewer people more.
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Re:Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I've autom... by incatalyst on Saturday July 01, 2017 @02:19AM (#14675687)
You SHOULD be but the reality of capital is that it is rarely willing to pay that much if it can help it.
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Re:Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I've autom... by barrkel on Wednesday June 28, 2017 @07:00PM (#14659325)
It's not bad for the employer to get 8x as much out; it's bad for the employer to pay 8x as much, when they could pay (say) 3x as much and keep the other 5x as profit.
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Re:Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I've autom... by usrusr on Thursday June 29, 2017 @02:26AM (#14661190)
Doubly so if the easily measurable increase in quantity could be achieved at the expense of other qualities that are much more difficult to put in indisputable numbers.

That guy who closes tickets faster than anybody else at the company, but does so by crapping all over the code, he's being discussed all the time here on hacker news.

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Re:Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I've autom... by dredmorbius on Thursday June 29, 2017 @05:15AM (#14661798)
What is the source of the additional output?

To whom should that surplus flow? The labourer? Or the employer of that labourer?

Defend your answer.

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