The confession that 'I fully automated my work over a year ago, but I haven't told anyone' became a hot topic.

Everyone wants to automate as much as possible what they don't have to do manually. An IT specialist at a law firm has confessed to the fact that he has achieved full automation of his work for over a year, but hasn't told anyone about it.

I automated my job over a year ago and haven't told anyone.: Antiwork

The confession was made by Throwaway 59724 (T), a user of the bulletin board site Reddit, who is hired by a medium-sized law firm as an IT specialist dealing with digital evidence for trial.

The law firm where Mr. T works is replacing the evidence management system with a cloud-based one, and only Mr. T has access to the cloud as an administrator, and others can only view it. Is limited to.

Mr. T realized that during the eight hours of work, the only job required by the law firm was to 'monitor whether the digital evidence he was dealing with had been tampered with' as a 'cloud administrator.' It's not a job to do anything all the time, so he started to 'pretend to be working' in the office.

When the pandemic started working from home, Mr. T said in the first week, 'scanning onsite drives to detect new files, generate hash values and transfer them to the cloud, re-hash values to check fidelity. I have completed a simple script called 'Generate'.

As a result, Mr. T succeeded in automating the work he was doing in the office. I spend my days at work playing games and doing various things, and at the end of the day I check the logs to see if everything is stuck and leave the office. At first, Mr. T said he felt guilty as if he was plucking money from a law firm, but in the end he convinced himself that 'if everyone is happy, there is no harm.' However, he says that if he is kicked out of the law firm for his own employment security, he will also erase the scripts running on his machine.

Mr. T also answers the questions gathered on the bulletin board. Some messages and opinions addressed to Mr. T are included instead of questions / questions.

Q: Q:
How much is your salary?

A: A:
It's just under $ 90,000 (about 10 million yen), and I think it's OK.

Q: Q:
What kind of work do you do?

A: A:
Thousands of digital documents and photos come to this law firm every day and are all stored on your local drive. I'm transferring it to the cloud and verifying fidelity. (Note: the court needs to prove that the digital evidence has not been altered)

Q: Q:
Why do law firms think this is an '8 hour job'?

A: A:
They had a lot of trouble until I was hired. At the end of the day, employees submitted a spreadsheet of all the files on their local drive, the admin checked the sheets, and manually dragged and dropped folders and files into the cloud. I still receive spreadsheets every day and use them to check my logs.

Q: Q:
Why is Mr. T lazy? Why are you wasting your life?

A: A:
I don't feel that way. There is a passionate project that we are working on during the day, which has nothing to do with this discussion. That's why there is a 'various' part of 'playing games and doing various things'.

Q: Q:
Did you feel guilty because you were a lawyer? (Lol)

A: A:
I don't hate my boss, though it doesn't fit a lot of writing. Technically not good, but he is a very nice person. I don't meet or work with a lawyer in person, and I belong to the management side because there is no 'IT department' in the office.

Q: Q:
What language does Mr. T use? How can other people do it?

A: A:
The script is a batch using some PowerShell. The base code is very simple, most of which I found by googled '.bat transfer files', '.bat how to only transfer certain file types' and so on. The trick is to know where to scan for new files added and where to not scan to avoid processing delays, depending on your office. (Seriously, a folder with as many as 200,000 text files will slow down the scan significantly. It's a good idea to manually do that file and change the script so that it doesn't search that folder anymore. )

Q: Q:
How about selling and making a profit?

A: A:
This isn't a very valuable program, it's just a few lines of code written in Notepad. It's worth it because the office doesn't have the technical skills. It is a script like that posted on GitHub with '$ 5 (about 580 yen)' and a link to PayPal.

Q: Q:
For legal reasons, do not delete the script.

A: A:
I agree. When I checked the employment contract, I think it's okay because there is no mention of IP, but it seems better not to try your luck.

Q: Q:
How do you use your equipment?

A: A:
Simply put, local drives belong to law firms, clouds belong to law firms, and VPNs belong to law firms. The PC I purchased is running only this script and does not store any working files or digital evidence. This is literally the only script that goes outside the OS. Carpenters say they buy tools because they know what they need and what they can do for them, but I bought a PC for the same reason.

Q: Q:
Isn't it that simple? / You are actually lying without doing anything, etc.

A: A:
Sure, it's not that simple. The script has many more steps and performs features not described. Explaining these features is likely to lead to my own baldness. The core of the script, 'forwarding' and 'hash', is as explained. I've omitted the steps specific to the law firm I work for.

In addition, this post also reported NewsWeek, and although there were people who told Mr. T about it at Reddit, Mr. T replied, 'I do not care.'