Management is cutting my job after I automated 15 hours of weekly work, do I have to document it for them?

[u/Claptrap_5Z]

When I took this coordinator job, our team was losing fifteen to twenty hours every week just updating client logs and manually formatting spreadsheets.

I built a few simple macros and formula templates that cut all that data entry down to an hour. I thought saving twenty hours a week would free me up for higher-level projects.

instead, my manager called me into a meeting last Friday. She told me that because our administrative workload dropped, they are merging my role with a part-time position and letting me go. To get my severance check, they want me to write step-by-step documentation for every macro I set up.

I literally worked myself out of a salary. I should of just kept doing the data entry by hand like the last person.

Do I ACTUALLY have to document processes I created that were not in my original job description?

[u/jjinrva]

Always put in a date “bug”. So it will work until a month after you are gone. If they need you to document it, they can’t fix it

[u/daneato → u/jjinrva]

Ah, “monthly maintenance checkpoint”.

[u/vr0202 → u/daneato]

Awesome idea. Also gets credits for your diligence in wanting to maintain the product you created. The date would be a derived from a named range in a hidden spreadsheet with font color white.

[u/Cainga → u/jjinrva]

For example I have one that copies some data and pasted it into another sheet but it breaks if column A is missing the date or the date you run isn’t matching. I then only add a months worth of dates into Column A so someone else could run but then it will break because they don’t know how it works.

[u/Whataboutneutrons → u/Cainga]

Do you use your own ai? What about security concerns? Like, do companies let you paste stuff into AI?

[u/Saneless → u/jjinrva]

Yeah I have lookup tables and formuals based on dates but it only works for this year

To change it takes me maybe 5 minutes a year, not a big deal. For someone clueless it might be days

[u/missmgrrl → u/jjinrva]

Diabolical! Love it!

[u/LonelyNMissouri → u/missmgrrl]

I once wrote a macro that closed the file on open after a certain date. You had to know how to open the file in maintenance or safe mode to edit the code after that date.

[u/vr0202 → u/LonelyNMissouri]

You’re one mean son of a …….

[u/JohnHazardWandering → u/jjinrva]

Some guy got sued for doing something like that. 

[u/Lehk → u/JohnHazardWandering]

people have gone to prison for it

[u/Coriolanuscangetit → u/jjinrva]

I was thinking tie it to the calendar year

[u/skydreamer303 → u/jjinrva]

Ya this. Date bugs are so easy to fake.

[u/drrevo74 → u/jjinrva]

That's a lawsuit waiting to happen.

[u/infinitycraftdigital → u/drrevo74]

You think they are incapable of writing simple scripts but are going to prove that a date inside the script was added maliciously? Yeah ok, good luck buddy

[u/drrevo74 → u/infinitycraftdigital]

No. I think they will hire a contractor to fix the scripts. That person will tell them why they broke. Buddy.

[u/MishterJ → u/drrevo74]

And proving this in court or arbitration to claw back a severance would be next to impossible. 

[u/Sizanllikew → u/MishterJ]

small solace when they blacklist you for malicious code

[u/Weaselpuss → u/drrevo74]

Yeah and they gonna go through the trouble of court, smd lol

[u/Jonnie_Rocket → u/drrevo74]

Do you add salt to your boot or you just lick it raw?

[u/drrevo74 → u/Jonnie_Rocket]

I'm the boss. I'm the one who would sue you.

[u/Jonnie_Rocket → u/drrevo74]

As the boss you should already know that you didn't pay us enough to have anything worth suing us for.

[u/drrevo74 → u/Jonnie_Rocket]

Sometimes money is not the point. Also, speak for yourself. My people are paid very well.

[u/MadeThisUpToComment → u/drrevo74]

Deoends how its done.

It would be dumb to add a kine of code that says "stop working after X date." Make it look like there is a good reason to validate current date against something and a creative way for it to break eventually.

Having people in non-technical roles writing macros, its not uncommon for them to break because of reasons like this.

[u/Opening_Shame8258 → u/MadeThisUpToComment]

And in the documentation: all macros require regular maintenance and monitoring.

[u/APartyInMyPants → u/drrevo74]

Says who?

It seems prudent to build a process and have a monthly checkup on the process to make sure everything is working. If you set up a process and just led it run forever without any sort of check or upkeep, you could totally forget your steps three years later when something actually breaks in it.

[u/Generico300 → u/jjinrva]

More than a month. 6 months to a year. It'll be obvious if it happens too soon. Plus you want give them time to "trim the fat" around that process so they can't operate without the more efficient tools.

[u/wafflepancakewaffle → u/jjinrva]

How!?😭😭

[u/dreamrpg → u/jjinrva]

Date bug is silly urban legend. Anyone with a half a brain can fix excel macro with just date condition.

Or just put macro code into chatgpt, it is simple enough fix, so LLMs would not mess it up.

[u/Illustrious-Bee9056 → u/jjinrva]

date bugs are trivial when claude code is a thing

a technic that still works is the same used fro droppers encrypted code is decrypted by a combination of environment variables, then executes — failing to decrypt, nothing happens — variables can be author username + one or two process names only the author uses

[u/sithelephant → u/jjinrva]

This is how you escalate leaving with a disgruntled employer to an actual criminal conviction.

[u/HopeADMKidsLoseLimbs → u/sithelephant]

Being an incompetent coder can land you in jail?

Sheesh good thing I didn’t take that line of work.

[u/sithelephant → u/HopeADMKidsLoseLimbs]

Intentionally making the software fail after you leave is criminal. It's generally going to be fairly easy to work out you've done this, because your software is going to either need to check your continued employment in some manner, rely on you updating a file, or continually adding different date related bugs as time goes on.

One bug, for example, sure, that might be reasonable that happens to fire in the next month, and you happen to fix it before it fires, sure.

Twelve in a row, yeah, that's not going to fly.

[u/HopeADMKidsLoseLimbs → u/sithelephant]

I like how that’s criminal but “show us the thing you did which will simultaneously save us time and money while giving us the opportunity to fire you” isn’t.

Businesses get wayyy too much leeway in this country

[u/smokeabowlofbud → u/sithelephant]

What crime?

[u/Away-Ad-4444 → u/sithelephant]

I did the never fininish the script so it requires 2 or 3 simple tweeks to run .. it takes 2 or 3 min to run a big batch but unless your me it doesnt work.. they can own the code all they want its not button click work