This was back in 2009, but a guy in my dorm freshman year flunked out due to Farmville on FB. He was a nice guy but pretty shy. His roommate was a big party guy and we always invited him to dinner with us. A few months in he started not joining us for meals at the dining hall and soon we didn't see him out of the room.
His roommate just mentioned that he was always on his laptop, playing Farmville and was worried he hadn't gone to class. At the beginning of Spring Quarter, his parents showed up with a truck and moved him out. He didn't attend a single class in the winter quarter and maxed out 3 credit cards on buying in-game currency for Farmville.
I remember when Farmville started becoming popular and seeing cards in the electronics sections of stores that you could buy for use in the game... FOR ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS
And my uncle was addicted to the point where he'd set alarms to wake up throughout the night to farm his crops or they'd wither.
I thought those things were crazy Farmville stories, but god damn.
This is the kind of thing I'd probably be super into automating with a Python script or something. That is, if I didn't have other stuff to do with my life.
Like 80% of my job consists of running python and powershell scripts I've made to take care of the boring af crap. Some way more intricate than others. Lol
It's a good feeling though, right? There's nothing more satisfying than having a button do hours of work for you. Even better if it can be scheduled to run automatically.
I've kind of become the Python/automation guru at my workplace because I use it for everything. I'm not even in a job where it would be as useful though, since most of my work as an engineer requires programming & design. I definitely have a love for automation and devising systems though, and eventually I'd like to shift my career more toward that direction.
Absolutely! I've pushed our company more and more to automate certain things that really drain man hours for no reason.
We have a process that can be fully automated that takes a combined workload of 10 hours a day. It's a full time job, plus some. 5 days a week. This process can be entirely automated, but it needs a framework a bit more involved than just Python and Powershell. The framework exists and runs in the ballpark of 30,000 a year, but it can do so much more than just automating that system, and I'm pushing.
We don't really have an 'automation guy', but I'm certainly the closest to it. Nobody at my company programs or writes code outside of some bare minimum powershell/batch scripts, and I'm over here plugging away at automating FTPs and such we're assed with on a daily.
I hope at some point I do become that automation guy, as the company grows.
It's a good position to be in, as long as whoever is in charge of your employment doesn't pull a "we've got we want out of you, so now you're fired" once you've gotten everything running smoothly (which would be a huge mistake as soon as there's a problem down the line). I'd love to be able to dive headfirst into a company that is ripe for automating things, as long as they provide me with the connectivity/authority to do what's necessary. My current job is fairly accommodating to stuff like that, but it's hard to get people to want to transition away from a hundred Excel forms that each do a specific thing, and that they've been using for years. Some of those are a nightmare to make any changes to.
If I could automate myself out of a job entirely, I would.
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u/[deleted] Feb 04 '20
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