Blog of Rob Galanakis (@robgalanakis)

Decisions, decisions

Some people can find me a bit over-earnest in my quest for automation. I’ve finally figured out how to know whether something is worthwhile to automate.

Are you making any decisions when you do this?

And if someone is making decisions that may be unnecessary:

Can we get from A to B without making any decisions?

I value the people I work with and I want them to be more effective. Sometimes people are afraid I’ll automate them out of a job, or they like a manual part of their workflow. More often they take pride in being the manual bottleneck behind a tricky or brittle process.

Humans are valuable because we can make complex decisions very quickly. When I automate an area someone isn’t immediately comfortable with, it’s not because I don’t value what he or she does. On the contrary: because I value their skills and time, I want to see them doing something that requires their unique abilities.

4 thoughts on “Decisions, decisions

  1. Dmitry says:

    Another excellent essence of my messy everyday thoughts =) Great job, thanks for sharing and making everything simple & clear

  2. Denis says:

    I found myself on the other side of that… What happens when I automated everything? Will they not need me anymore? Do I get to do art again?

    The answer to anyone’s “But what if I am automated out of a job?” has been successfully summed in Russel Crow’s “pump-up” speech from Gladiator.

    “If you find yourself alone, riding in the green fields with the sun on your face [obvious effect of absolute automation], do not be troubled. For you are in Elysium, and you’re already dead!”

  3. Joe says:

    I’m going to go a step further and state:

    “Anything which can be automated, should be.”

    There’s always more projects and not enough time to handle them all. The less work we have to do on tasks that can be automated, the more time we have for the rest of it.

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