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/ObiOneKenobae]

The files are company property. If they're that big a deal the company could easily go after OP, and there would be a clear paper trail.

[u/BufferUnderpants → u/ObiOneKenobae]

Just introduce a few honest mistakes that will be way over their head to fix, at the last minute ;)

[u/CoolDiscussion1020 → u/BufferUnderpants]

Guys he wrote an excel macro. If they have a remotely competent IT person, they could easily recover the previous versions of his personal.xlsb if he deletes or modifies it.

Not to mention that now that the boss knows it's possible, this would be a 1-2 hours job for anyone who is an intermediate or above excel user, or even just some back and forth with a LLM.

Document the automation, get the check, and learn the lesson for the future.

[u/BufferUnderpants → u/CoolDiscussion1020]

IT won't touch this with a 10 foot pole

There's a reason why the Excel macro was made by the OP: upper management doesn't think this department is worth spending IT budget on, otherwise there'd be an online system or a batch job of some sort already

And once they "fix" it for the manager, IT now "owns" it and is on the hook for what it does and to keep it working, they won't agree to even look at this

[u/Beautiful_Remote_859 → u/BufferUnderpants]

Assum8ng the company even has a real IT department anymore at all. Every where I have worked in the last 6-7 years has been systematically stripping down their IT departments to less than bare bones.

[u/whatsreallygoingon → u/BufferUnderpants]

Stupid question, but is there a way to make a macro that uses exponentially more processing power to do the equations?