IT Guy Gets Paid 90K For A Job That He Does For Only 10 Minutes After Writing A Script That Automated His Entire Work

One of Reddit's most popular subs is r/antiwork. It's a forum dedicated to discussing quitting your job, how to do it, and venting work-related struggles.

A post from user u/Throwaway59724 recently went viral. The IT professional titled the post, "I automated my job over a year ago and haven't told anyone."

In it, the original poster (OP) discussed how he wrote a script to handle all the heavy lifting of his job. The post has since amassed more than 80 thousand upvotes and over 5 thousand comments.

According to OP, he saw a similar post in the subreddit and decided to share his own experience. OP works for a mid-sized law firm as an IT specialist who manages all the evidence the firm needs for trials.

They were migrating all of their evidence into a cloud-based system, and they decided that OP would be the only one with admin access while others would be limited to viewing capacity.

The job sounded fine to OP, but it didn't take him long to realize that this was the only task they expected him to perform for his entire workday. This forced OP to pretend to be busy with his work while in the office.

Then the pandemic hit.

They asked if it was possible for OP to securely work from home. OP agreed and set up his remote workstation at home, and that's when he began tinkering with a script to automate his work.

In about a week, OP wrote, debugged, and perfected a script that performed all of his tasks for him. According to OP, the script did the following:

"It essentially scans the on-site drive for any new files, generates hash values for them, transfers them to the cloud, then generates hash values again for fidelity (in court, you have to prove that digital evidence hasn't been tampered with)."

This is how OP's workday looks — he clocks in for his 8-hour shift, then plays video games or does whatever he wants. At the end of the day, he checks if everything ran smoothly and then clocks out. He's only actively at the desk for about 10 minutes, and he's been doing this for a year.

OP makes $90k a year.

Throwaway59724

He shared that he felt guilty for a while for making his job easier.

At first, he felt as if he was ripping off the law firm. But after a while, he realized that as long as everyone was happy with the quality of his work, there was truly no harm done.

OP is doing what he's hired to do; he completes the job in a timely manner, and he gets to enjoy his life. According to OP, he is also running the script using his own device, and if the firm decides to fire him, he will also get rid of the script.

This secures his job; if they fire him, they lose the script and the job it automates. OP's full post can be read below.

Throwaway59724 Throwaway59724 Throwaway59724 Throwaway59724

OP posted additional information for all the questions he was receiving

Throwaway59724

OP made a tedious task that the law firm was struggling with much more efficient

Throwaway59724

To be clear, OP is not a lazy person; imagine doing this while working in a law firm.

Throwaway59724

For those interested, here are the basics of what OP did. Nothing too specific.

Throwaway59724

OP said his code is worth nothing in other situations. It's only valuable specific to his job.

Throwaway59724

Another edit for clarification

Throwaway59724 Throwaway59724

OP made it sound easy, but he's only able to find a "shortcut" to his job because of his expertise in his field.

Throwaway59724

As for the risk of being featured in a publication, OP is not worried.

Throwaway59724

This is the way

BlobTheBuilderz

A lawyer tried to ease OP's guilt by saying this:

Maluja Maluja Maluja

Technically, OP is doing everything in his job description excellently.

precsenz

OP needs to reframe his thinking because they are paying for his expertise.

Barbed_Dildo

Our hero is very candid about his hard work.

Throwaway59724

The comment below hit the nail right on the head.

Atxfuntime4444

OP is paid the big bucks because he is the only one who can do what he does and with such finesse.

Wrecksomething Wrecksomething

It's capitalism's fault that people are expected to work this much.

Wrecksomething

Other Redditors wanted in on OP's secret recipe.

PresidentsBlack

While others are already doing it or about to do it in their own jobs. Honestly, good for you!

GingerGiantz1992

This is what technology was supposed to accomplish.

mustsurvivecapitlism

I think we all are.

From_Adam

If you're highly skilled and can make your work more efficient, then that's to your benefit.

februarytide-

We're all proud and a little envious of OP for having the know-how to do this. OP made it sound so easy, but unless you have the intelligence or experience, it's not so easy to recognize what can be done better to make your job easier.

Aside from all that, hats off to OP and to other professionals who are outsmarting their jobs. "Work smart, not hard" has never been this relevant or true.