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A comment on Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have been working on?. Parent comment

Re:Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have been wo... by doctor_eval on Saturday April 06, 2024 @09:43PM (#39957411)
Right. I’ve spent weeks creating automations in a business I knew very well, that would most likely save a few minutes per month for a low salary employee.

But the RFP said I had to do it, and the customer insisted that I follow the letter of the RFP, rather than hit the high value parts of the project.

The two problems with this are that the cost of automation far exceeded the possible future cost of the manual process, and working on this automation took oxygen away from the stuff that would help people.

Needless to say, it was a disaster.

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Re:Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have been wo... by whstl on Sunday April 07, 2024 @04:23PM (#39963567)
That’s a great point. Very often the cost of automating something in those large systems is larger than the cost of a minimum wage person spending a couple hours a day clicking stuff…
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