The trick is to not let anyone know you're being too efficient. Automate an 8-hour job down to a minute, say you finished it in 7.

you must'a made the mistake of finishing something early or showing-off your 'optimizations'

The trick is to tell absolutely nobody then poke your mouse every few mins to make Teams think you're still online while playing games or reading. Or so I'm told.

If both guys are smart, the hard working guy will find a better way to do the tasks and use the extra time to do other work.

The hard working guy will likely spend more time validating that the automation works correctly while the lazy guy won't. Checking every detail, tracking down the source of any issues and fixing them so they won't occur again is a lot of work. The lazy guy doesn't do that.

What the lazy guy does could be done by an LLM, what the hard working guy does can't be.

I've automated my self out of most the work on Windows installs. More time to doom scroll youtube or do a lap around the office if I'm feeling ambitious.

Shit gets fixed and users are set up fast so I can go back to doing nothing.

Can confirm. I hate doing things twice, or in some job aspects 50 times.

We had a software and the next step in workflow was outputting the various files to the departments, often same file but multiple output formats.

My coworkers would run the translations manually, set the parameters manually each time, and sit and watch/wait.

I'd be at the coffee machine or chatting to a coworker.

The president stops by "do we need to get you more work, because you are never at your desk"

Me, "My computer is running multiple file translations, it should be done in 20 minutes"

Him: "Oh, OK, maybe we can get these other people setup like that."

Isn't that Gates? It's a solid take and one I've kept in mind for years as a lazy man 😆