New hire automates 100% of his job after one month at the company: 'What am I supposed to do now?'

This programmer may have lacked the experience of some of his coworkers, who had been doing their jobs a specific way for over 25 years. And yet, he was the one who managed to figure out how to automate nearly 100% of his job within one month of employment at the company.

There are a few contributing factors to what happened here. First, it’s clear that what this new hire may lack in so-called “professional work experience,” he makes up for in natural intelligence and technological capabilities. Sure, the coworkers on his team can boast and brag all they want about how many years of work they have put into the company, but it took just one month for this guy to figure out how to make everyone’s jobs exponentially simpler. 

Second, one gets the sense that this company utilizes wildly outdated technology. It’s not like this programmer had to invest his own resources to automate his repetitive tasks. Therefore, one cannot argue that the company is trying to save money by forcing this team of programmers to do their jobs manually. It just seems like no one has considered figuring out ways to update the process by which this team fulfills its responsibilities.

Now that the new guy has quickly figured out how to automate his job, he has found himself in a bit of predicament. Should he sit back, relax, and let the system do his job for him? Should he demonstrate what he has done to his coworkers and to upper management? Perhaps he could even seek promotional opportunities through this display of technical competence. As you’ll see from several members of this online community, the reactions regarding what this guy should do next are a bit split.