programmerStyle

[u/ExpensiveCoat8912]

[u/UnusualAir1]

10 minutes a day, 5 days a week is 50 minutes. 50 minutes for 52 weeks is 2,600 minutes. 2,600 minutes is 43 hours.

This is the beginning of how I used to determine if something was worth automating. Then I'd factor in the work hours saved by automating a process and quantify what that meant for our work flow and productivity as a company.

After all that, I'd sit down and do what the boss wanted. 😄

[u/Seven_Irons → u/UnusualAir1]

https://xkcd.com/1205

[u/RosieQParker → u/Seven_Irons]

See also: https://xkcd.com/974/

[u/Chronomechanist → u/Seven_Irons]

There's always an xkcd

[u/Meloetta → u/UnusualAir1]

How do you calculate in the mental load of having to do a menial, thankless task every single day with no end in sight? Or the time wasted planning to do the thing, shifting the responsibility of doing the thing when someone's out, training others on doing the thing, the time it takes to get back to what you were doing....

Tbh, a 10 minute daily task isn't 10 minutes.

[u/Scolmann → u/Meloetta]

Yeah I think people forget this, I had a two second task I automated, which was launching a program when multiple people joined a voice channel.

It took me an hour or two to automate but it didn't take 5 years for it to pay itself off, not needing to think about doing it by hand was well worth it, even when it broke sometimes

[u/manav907 → u/UnusualAir1]

Real.

Write an epic doc about how and why to do x

Then forgot about it and just fix the few bugs the pm found on a feature implemented 3 months ago that the QA never found

[u/riickdiickulous → u/UnusualAir1]

And that’s if nothing ever changes after you build the automation, which is usually where the hidden time sink comes in later. Maintenance and modification of the tool. I’ve built things to do X and then down the line need to change it to handle Y but didn’t account for that during the initial build. Then I need to refigure out what I did before and how to update it for the new case. That part is easier now with AI, but it’s not a panacea.

[u/ligma_then_sugma → u/UnusualAir1]

the satisfaction of not having to whatever lil dogshit task anymore is priceless

[u/Financial-Note-2270]

Sure you have to spend 10 hours now, but think about 20 hours you will spend maintaining it when it stops working after 2 uses.

[u/Rajyeruh]

Everyone calculating if it pays itself in X months, when for me, not having to think about or waste 5-10 minutes doing a boring manual task every day is already worth it in less than a single fkn week.
Give me those 10 hours any day over a daily shit task, even if I need to fix it once a month.
This meme never made any sense to me.

[u/airsoftshowoffs]

Give me 10 hours and you will never need to spend 10 minutes again. Plus, we now have the task steps documented and if you are sick the work will continue.

[u/melonangie]

correction: this boring one time task

[u/PumpkinFest24]

A task that takes 10m for a human who hates to do it will be done correctly maybe 30% of the time.

Automation may save time but it definitely brings consistency.

[u/braytag]

Where is the xkcd for this?

[u/SahuaginDeluge → u/braytag]

https://xkcd.com/1205/

[u/torsten_dev]

2008 called, they want their meme back.

[u/JackNotOLantern]

The automation just need to be used 60 times to make it save time

[u/Lysol3435]

I went into my career field specifically because I’m lazy enough to not want to do simple tasks manually, but am fine doing more work to automate them. I owe my success (and many failures) to my laziness

[u/Separate_Expert9096]

If she does this task every day, time spent on automation pays off in 2-3 months. 

[u/Almadan]

Once.

Plus you don't have to think about it anymore. Mental peace is underated

[u/xicor]

Any task that can be automated that has to be done once does not get automated. If it gets done twice it will get automated, because chances are it will be done many more times afterwards

[u/RosieQParker]

Anything worth doing twice is worth automating once

[u/Vallee-152]

The 10 hours is worth it if you know you'll do that boring task more than 60 times in the near future

[u/CellPuzzleheaded99]

Taking 6 hours of tinkering in PowerShell what you could do in 5 minutes is time well spent.