Programmer Automates His Job For 6 Years, Finally Gets Fired, Forgets How To Code

[Collegeguy]

So he got fired for not telling them to fire him?

[Revik]

Wow. To think that if had leveraged what he done in automating his job he could have shown that to his boss and asked for a raise. Then moved on to bigger and better things. Had he done that no only which is body of knowledge and experience have been increased he could be earning well into 6 figures.

But I guess at the end of the day if you are OK with the person you see in the mirror that is what matters.

[Ravenblade]

There are two kinds of testing, generally speaking. What we call black box and white box testings. The black-box testing, testing without checking the actual code, can be automated if the input and output of a particular piece of software has patterns. White box testing is harder to automate as it's simply testing the code. He either ignored the kind of tests which automation is not possible, which mostly corresponds to white-box tests and just conducted simple black-box tests or actually automated whole process. If it's latter, they should be happy as Software Testing is all about automation.

You can't forget programming. The ability to program is just a manifestation of problem solving skills. Can you forget how to solve problems?

ps: Software Test Engineering is one of the least enjoyable positions out there. Although paid really well, it's boring, very boring.

Data testing is even more boring. Fortunately I have in one case written a tool for that.

That said it is possible to forget "coding" although that's like a two-step process, first you forget the syntax and after that you lose that creativity you've had. I can honestly say that I've been programming for a good 27 years now and I used to be a lot more creative. Until I took a job in data engineering. However I broke the shackles of that few years ago and fortunately you can retrain everything you've lost as long as you've got the skills. Although I am definitely not going to read machine code anymore

On-topic, he should have quit his job when he felt bored with it. If you're a programmer you shouldn't touch the black box ever.

When I started people called people dabbling in assembly being decadent, few years later assembly became cool and C programmers were rolled eyes over, then came C++ and C programmers thought themselves to be the better people, then came Java and C# and guess who felt supreme. Although I have to admit C/C++ is fun but quite hardcore these days.

[Daedius]

How do you automate programming in itself?

It's not as simple as macros.

[Polyxo]

So he's not really a programmer so much as a test automation engineer. We have a number of those at our company.

[akris15]

I am going to be honest but this was a poor decision by management and some other company is gonna make bank picking him up. First off it's his managers fault, not his, that if he got fired for not doing anything. It's middle management job to keep an employee engaged and if he created a system where he can do nothing because he automated it give him a raise and assign him to a special project with another area of concern in the company that needs a similar automation. People like this, Brilliant but lazy, are the type of people I would look for when trying to improve efficiency.

Wait that's crazy why would you pay all that money to a lazy person? Well it's well know Bill Gates love doing this because lazy people will try to find the most efficient way to do something with the least energy so they can be lazy. You would be suprised how hard people work so they can be lazy later. This company messed up something awful

[Kuntantee]

How do you automate programming in itself?

It's not as simple as macros.

There isn't automated programming, yet. It's mostly code generation.

[Dug]

You would be suprised how hard people work so they can be lazy later.

My life in a nutshell

[Bapestar]

I wonder how they found out.

[Daedius]

You would be suprised how hard people work so they can be lazy later.

Ain't that what a Pension is?