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/Chambahz]

Can you modify the code so that each week/month it adds some small error, getting worse and worse as time goes by?

[u/Poultrymancer → u/Chambahz]

Don't do this. 

You don't have to give them work product, but intentionally sabotaging their operations in a clearly documented fashion (it's not like the code is going to self-destruct after fucking over the employer; it will be examined in discovery) is going to create possible civil and/or criminal liability 

[u/Salt-Cattle-5314 → u/Poultrymancer]

This. They can't actually legally keep any money owed to you for not providing the handoff doc. Be unhelpful not criminal.

[u/mathimati → u/Poultrymancer]

They would have to prove it was malicious and not careless. And damn, I just lost my job, I just couldn’t focus and clearly made a careless error while I thought I was fixing something I discovered while working on the documentation. Whoops!

[u/Imaginary_Office1749 → u/Poultrymancer]

Not to mention it’s just bad jujitsu.

[u/The_Endless_ → u/Imaginary_Office1749]

Whether or not this was intentional joke, it got me good

[u/Development-Feisty → u/Poultrymancer]

And that’s why they shouldn’t be giving it to them at all because if they did make a mistake, they can be blamed saying it was malicious. Since this was not part of their job description and they are no longer working for the company it is a bad idea to give them the process or show them how to use it since that was not part of their original job description and any mistakes they make when trying to show how to use it can be blamed on them as malicious

[u/-_-______-_-___8 → u/Poultrymancer]

Only if it’s intentional

[u/No_Gas4560 → u/Poultrymancer]

mistakes happen. woops did i delete the whole line, not just the comment?

hmm can't recall, i'm thinking about finding a job

[u/SirGeremiah → u/Chambahz]

It’s easier to incorporate one or two manual input points in the code. Explain those inputs in the documentation in a way that makes perfect sense, but only if you already know what is needed. Do the same with all descriptions of what has to be done. If a column is labeled one way, but could be called something different, use that alternate description in the documentation.