[YeGoblynQueenne]

It's not always that straightforward. I automated my job once, as a junior dev. My "job" (if you can call it that) was copying a web app's configuration off an Excel file, pasting it into a text file, converting it into XML by hand, feeding it into a program that converted it to SQL and finally running the SQL to create a database. Normally, I'd then have to tear it down again and start all over- because hand-crafted XML.

Obviously I got pretty annoyed at doing all this and wrote a bit of code to automate it. This cut down the time I needed to setup a project from a day and a half to ~30 minutes. The result? Nothing. The company did not adopt my project into its workflow. Instead, a more senior dev who heard about it started a project of his own, to do what mine did but online, so our clients could access it and configure their sites without sending us that miserable Excel file. So instead of benefiting me, my automation work almost ended up benefiting someone else (the senior dev's project was shot down in flames a few months later when it failed to deliver).

Morale of the story: you may think that this is a fair world where engineering talent is rewarded, but the truth is that most companies are not run by engineers and decisions are made by people who don't care one jot whether your everyday work is mind-numbingly boring drudgery.

[echelon]

> you may think that this is a fair world where engineering talent is rewarded, but the truth is that most companies are not run by engineers and decisions are made by people who don't care

Perhaps you should find a new place to work. There are engineering firms that value talent and capability. While it's still important to be aware of business needs and deadlines, that doesn't mean you can't have a solid engineering culture coupled to the business vision.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

>> Perhaps you should find a new place to work.

Oh, that's a few years now. I definitely did find a new place and the culture in that next place was fantastic :)

It's just that not all teams I worked with encouraged, or even recognised, time-saving automation. Some did, some didn't- it was a mixed bag. Maybe I'm wrong to say that "most" didn't. If I think about it, out of five teams in six years, two clearly didn't care, two definitely cared a lot, one I don't know.

I think the difference in culture had something to do with the way hierarchy worked in different companies. It just happened that in every one of those jobs I was the most junior member of the team (in the last one because despite having some experience, I worked with mainframe engineers with 30+ years on me :). But, some places appreciated the fact that I did my best to keep up and pull my weight, while others- it just didn't make any difference. I was the least experienced so I was expected to trudge through endless tedious until I had tenure (by which time I was expected to delegate all the tedious to contractors or juniors, I bet).

The effect was that in the teams that encouraged putting in the extra bit, everyone did. In the other teams, not so much.