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I have been working as a temporary worker at a large ($13+ billion/yr) company for some time now. My job is a typical $15/hr office job where I do paperwork, place orders and bill people. At some point, I automated half my job and the higher ups found out. Recently, I figured out how to completely automate my job and I let it slip in the presence of the vice president of our division that I could do so. Moral of the story, they want me to completely automate the ordering process and billing processes for our division of the company, which would effectively replace my job... as a temp worker... who's not supposed to be doing this (outside my job description)... for $15 an hour.

Now I'm no expert, but that doesn't seem to be a smart move. I have raised my concerns and stated that I wish to have a more permanent position in the company before doing this, to which they basically told me to look around the company and maybe I'll get something somewhere and I can continue working on this on the side.

I need advice here. As someone new to the workplace, I do not know the proper way to handle something like this. Do I complete the program as a temp, take some random job here and complete it, or let my time expire here and not look back? Or some fourth option I'm not thinking of? Any help/opinions would be greatly appreciated!

I was hired for a 2.5 month contract. I was warned by friends and family not to throw myself into the work and not finish too quickly.

I ignored them, and did the job in 3 weeks. My employer had me budgeted for the full 2.5 months (I did not know this when I did the job). When I finished early, I was asked to assist with a process that was taking 10 hours to run, I sped it up considerably. (about 100 times faster). I did this knowing my contract was ending, but I still did my best.

End result: They asked me to come to work full-time perm.

No, you may not end up in the same place that I did, but dragging your heels, complaining about your pay rate, and saying that things are out of scope of your job are certainly not going to get you a perm job offer.

TLDR:

1. Do your best


2. Do what is asked of you


3. Express interest in the company


4. Apply to any openings


5. Update your resume


6. Apply outside the company.

Demonstrating that you are a good, hard, and ethical worker will either get you hired full time by this company, or give you bragging points at your next interview where you can ask for more money

The problem here is you already proved to them you can an will do it for $15/hr, you already did part of it.

Unfortunately, we often don't get to pick and choose our tasks.

If you decline doing this, you will more than likely be terminated for not doing what was asked of you and they will just hire someone who is willing to do it got $15/hr (trust me there is also someone who will). Then, instead of working yourself out of a job (which you can plan for), you will just find yourself jobless quicker.

Being terminated will look worse on your CV than saying you were able to save a company so much time and money that they longer needed you.

You have an opportunity here.

Let's say you don't do what you've been tasked with: They will fire you. You don't have a job and you were fired, which is a bad mark for someone who is searching for a new job.

Let's say you do what you've been tasked with: Either they lay you off or you get hired permanently. If you get laid off it's not as bad as being fired, and while it sucks, at least you didn't get fired. If you get hired then great!

Additionally, you:

1. Performed requirements discovery about a new position


2. Developed a system of some kind to automate 1/2 of the job, saving the company $15k/y, doubling your own productivity, reducing error introduced by manual processing


3. Continued developing this system until you were able to completely automate the job, saving an additional 15k/y, reducing errors further and allowing the company to focus on their bottom line and big picture.

What sounds better on the resume then that?

Great first question. You are right, there is a phenomena of "automating yourself out of the job". I think first time I read about it in Tom Limoncelli's @tomontime blog, he's is extremely bright sysadmin who used to run operations of Google servers, and now works for Stack Exchange (this website).

On practical note, @SaggingRufus writes right things about what might happen. You should do your job, and do what's been asked. Refusing to do so is not going to work well for you.

You have the right though to re-negotiate your position. You say yourself:

as a temp worker... who's not supposed to be doing this (outside my job description)... for $15 an hour.

Each of these points can be used for negotiation:

• this is outside of my job description, I am not comfortable to take more responsibility


• this project might take longer to finish, and I need job stability to fully commit to it


• at that pay rate you won't be able to find someone like me

There is another thing working to your advantage:

I have been working as a temporary worker at a large ($13+ billion/yr) company

Large company means large bureaucracy. There is a risk that they don't care about firing you, but I bet management would rather promote you within the company than to work with outside org to hire somebody to replace you. Any company has infinite amount of problems and finite amount of smart/good workers who know how to solve them.

Quoting Tom:

There's another way to think about it: This is totally different than the auto industry where the introduction of robots resulted in layoffs. In IT, you are the robot!

I love hiring people who have this attitude. I've had many interviews with people where they mentioned that they were in a fairly boring job, and found ways to automate it; those people were much more likely to be hired than people who didn't.

Even when I was working in retail management, I was much more interested in hiring people who had this attitude and competency than weren't. I want people with initiative and the ability to do things like this, rather than people who just push buttons. (Well, sometimes we want button-pushers too, but you probably don't want to be in that role, so, better to avoid it.)

Keep automating, automate your job away, and look for other work. If you're in a temp agency, let your temp agency know to be looking early; if you're doing it on your own, look in the company and elsewhere.