[codingdave]

I once took a temp job to get some quick spare cash after a failed startup attempt that wiped out my savings, when I still wanted a bit more time before getting another coding job. I ended up helping with some general office work in a mortgage bank, in a department where some accountants would look at all the applications that fell in the grey areas where it wasn't automatically accepted or rejected. They entered the data in a spreadsheet, then looked at other pages of the spreadsheet to see if it was OK to approve or not. Ultimately, there was no grey area... just humans in the middle when it was close.

So I wrote a button (VBA, in Excel) for them that would just do the lookups, and send the correct email response back to the original loan officer. It worked well. They sent my button to all the loan officers, and that department was no longer needed, at least not for anything other than some basic communications asking applicants for more info once in a while.

I had a fun conversation with their IT department, too, when they found out that a temp had automated a department.

[x2f10]

Was there a job offer / spot bonus?

[codingdave]

Yep. I got a job offer. It was nowhere near competitive with other opportunities, though, so the talks didn't go far.

[serpix]

This checks out. Banks have no problem spending millions on poor solutions but zero interest in rewarding optimisations.

[shyn3]

That's because you are a threat to the manager if you implement something like this without approval.