Yeah, several years ago, our corporate overlords sold off a database we created to a competitor and leased it back from them. Now, we're trying to recreate that database to avoid the financial overhead. I'm sure at the time it made sense to some bean counter but it was penny-wise, pound-foolish in the long term.
I think now it's impossible to think long term financially. Thanks, Wall Street.
They won't put that in the end user facing presentation, but you can count on it being part of the executive pitch.
If I build a tool and make a person irrelevent, then I didn't increase productivity of the laid-off worker. I merely increased my own productivity.
What OP said was his tool specifically increased the productivity of all other users, which means his team can churn out features faster.
Show me a management team that says no to it
It's naive and boneheaded to insist that productivity increases never result in layoffs.
Maybe in some imaginary world with spherical cows, infinite demand, and no friction (physical or transactional).
In the real world, increasing productivity so that one person can do the job that ten used to do very often results in layoffs. 70 years ago there were hundreds of thousands of telephone switchboard operators in the US. Productivity increased and they got laid off.