this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2023
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Setting up a couple of spreadsheets at my job has basically been the entire grounds for me receiving bonuses last year, and it looks to be the same this year too. I don't even know that much, I just Google "excel xlookup" or whatever half the time, but people think it's black magic.
My main one last year turned a 30 minute daily task into something it do once a week in about 10 minutes on a busy week, and just print off the daily sheet each night to post. This year, I just added drop-down menus and some conditional checks to someone else's sheet.
I'm just amazed nobody else did this before, because I was sick of doing the old way everyday after my first week.
It may have not been done before because some people don't trust even the most basic of automation. I once cut a 2+ hour task to 5 minutes using count and vlookup (I'm not even good at excel it was just stupid easy to do). I was reprimanded and told to do it manually because they "don't trust excel will do it correctly". But you do trust I will manually count hundreds of lines correctly without making a mistake? Me using a calculator (handheld calculator) to count cells in excel is the most accurate way to do this? This was a global company BTW, not some podunk mom and pop. Make it make sense...
Here’s a trick. Don’t tell anyone when you automate something, especially if you are working for a huge corporation. Check that your automation works by doing it by hand a few times, and then begin to take just as much time to do it, but automate it.
In the meantime, level up other skills, take longer walks around the office, whatever you can get away with to enhance your wellbeing. And if they ask for more from you, take 10% less time. Tell them you’ve been focusing on learning keyboard shortcuts, better document organization, whatever.
A big corp will not compensate you for your efficiency. At best they will expect it to now be automated from you and give you more work to make up for the time difference with a minimal impact in compensation. At worst, they will ask how you automated it, work it into a new hire’s routine, and then let you go as you are now obsolete.
This is the way. Time yourself by hand. Automate. Use the saved time to automate further. Meet deadlines as if you were doing it by hand. Then during the inevitable crunch time you can miraculously come through. Each quarter, cut about 10% off the time you "need" to do automated tasks, showing constant improvement.
Lastly, always guard source code closely and be aware if coding on company time means they own that code. You can bring up that you think something can be automated, but this is a job they're gonna have to pay you extra for. Show a demo if you need to, but remember that coding automations isn't your job, so don't hand that over for free (payment in social capital depends on your job).