Yes, tell them. IMHO it's unethical to pretend you are working when you aren't. see: workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/77055/…

Do you really need to ask whether this is unethical??!?

"Is lying about what I do all day in order to get paid for 20-40x more work than I actually do unethical?" I don't think your question is "is this unethical" as much as "can I live with this", which is not something we can answer.

"I even insert a few bugs here and there to make it look like it’s been generated by a human." - I would say, that sentence should ring a bell.

@Dukeling - I was hired to do a specific task - the task is completed and at a high quality. Why is this unethical?

@CaptainEmacs - oh please, they're harmless bugs and they're just in the draft phase of the work. The final product is always bug free

@Etherable What does your contract say? If you're contracted to provide a specific service, then this is very different than if you're contracted to be a software developer or equivalent.

@Etherable I do not understand your comment: are these unintentional bugs - then it is normal, as you say, in the draft phase of the work and perfectly acceptable. However, if you introduce them intentionally to make the code look human-generated, then talking about them being harmless is not the point - your question was about ethics.

@Etherable Were you hired to do a specific task though? Don't you have a full-time job where your employer is paying for your time (to use however they see fit, which you're not currently giving them)? If you're a freelancer tasked with doing this specific task over an agreed-upon period, it's a different story, because there you're being paid for the task more than for your time. If you feel this is all fine, why do you feel the need to intentionally add bugs?

@Dukeling - Well the contract would be a fairly generic full time contract. But I was told at the job interview that my role would be to maintain this system. And since I work remotely and they aren't an IT company, they literally would not have any other role for me to do.

@CaptainEmacs - I give the analysts something to find, they find it - even if they don't, I'll still fix it. Therefore, no harm is done. How can an action that produce no harm be automatically unethical?

@Etherable You're letting your employer believe they're paying for 40 hours of your best effort when they're actually paying for 2. This might even be grounds for them to sue you and recover damages.

@Magisch - oh please. What damage? And technically I've never actually lied to them. I've never disclosed my hours because I don't do a time sheet. So it's their assumption that I'm working full time to get the work done.

@Etherable Depending on the laws of your jurisdiction, all the wage beyond the 2 hours you've actually been working. Maybe a criminal fraud charge. Maybe industrial sabotage for adding the errors. Don't assume that it's ok because you feel it is. Consult a lawyer.

@Etherable I am beginning to wonder why you ask this question. You are paid to do a certain job. Now you found a way to make it much more efficient. So far, so good. As others say: If you work as a contractor, and get paid by the throughput, good on you. You can sell your remaining time otherwise. However, if you are employed, with all benefits, the situation changes. Now, you could just do your job super-efficiently and that's that. But that's not what you do: you introduce bugs, as it seems, just to maintain the illusion that you do manual work. Clearly, you are trying to fool your employer.

@Magisch - oh and i might also add that even at the interview, they said that whilst it was a 40 hour week job, there would be busy periods where i'd have to do more, and some non-busy periods where I could do less hours which was why they valued flexibility as important. So no, there's no strict requirement I have to do 40 hours exactly.

I'm going to go against the grain here and tell you to not do anything. There's no reason to stir the shit if it doesn't smell. Both parties are happy. You're getting what they want done, and you're getting an easy job where you can work remotely. Yes it's unethical; but this world doesn't run on ethics. Do whatever makes your life easier.

@CaptainEmacs - so what you're saying is, the only unethical part is the introducing of the bugs? Don't do that and everything else is fine? Cause I could easily not do that and in a way, I kind of do it for the analyst's sake because the first time I gave it to the analysts, he just got really confused cause he thought there was something wrong with his testing.

@Etherable The unethical part is lying to the company. If you every find yourself hiding the truth, or falsifying data, or injecting bugs into your code - guess what? It's unethical.

@Etherable I think (and that's my personal opinion, not your employer's) the "superefficiency" per se is ethically and morally ambiguous. Some people think it's unethical, I think it is much more complicated than that and depends on many factors. The fact that you introduced bugs, however, is a strong indication that you yourself do not want to be found out - that taints the whole package in my eyes, I am afraid. Even if you now decide to take this feature out, the context remains. The whole thing smells shifty now, and wiping the bugs off doesn't take take that smell away anymore.

It sounds like you know what you are doing is wrong and you came here in hopes people would tell you it is ok. Set an example for your son and do the right thing. Tell your employer that you have found a way to automate the process. After that, you can decide if you want to tell them how the last 6 months went. I would say you have an obligation to tell them. They have a right to know what they are paying for. Also, no one touched on this yet, if they ever find out you lied to this extent you will be fired.

@SaggingRufus Fired is the mildest possible outcome. Depending on the laws and contract, this may involve felony level criminal charges with jail time as a prospect.

@Magisch you are correct. That part was already vocalised down below and OP didn't seem to agree. I just wanted to put it into terms maybe OP could accept. Being fire is 100%, being sued depends on the if the company has the resources to do so, or maybe they will just cut their loses.

@Magisch - you keep mentioning criminal charges / jail time etc. can you please provide a link to a case where this has actually happened. In fact, even a link to where part of the law I would be breaking.

If you are introducing bugs or falsifying data to create the illusion of long hours of manual work, that's where I'd have a problem with what you're doing. If you're doing that; stop doing that at once. Otherwise, I don't see a real ethical issue here. You receive a salary in exchange for doing a certain amount of work. Work doesn't mean "expending effort". It means achieving results. If you can do the same amount of work in 10 minutes that used to take a month to do, good for you. You're still doing the work.

@JonathonCowley-Thom so it's ok to be paid for 40 hours of work as long as you do it in 10 minutes? There are SOOO many questions on this site about "I finished all my work and the day is only half over what do I do" The answer is never "just relax". OP should bring this to the attention of the employer and get more work assigned to him. If he does have a contract, I doubt they can just dump him for automating a process. They can fire him for lying about this though.

@SaggingRufus That ignores the universal truth that the employer:employee relationship is a fundamentally adversarial one.

This is completely normal if you're extremely senior and particularly if you're hired on a contract. In those cases you just brag about what you've done, and get a bigger bonus. If you're just starting out, no, you have to fess up to what you've done.

@Etherable what country is this?

"... so it's ok to be paid for 40 hours of work as long as you do it in 10 minutes?" To begin with, very little programming is, actually, paid per hour. Freelance jobs are usually "$45,000 to make such and such app" sort of thing. So, it's a tricky question!!!

@Fattie I guess it depends on the contract, I get paid by the hour and when I complete my work I am expected to look for and suggest enhancements or work on documentation. If I am really short on work, I would be loaned out to another team in the office to do work for them until my team has more work for me.

@SaggingRufus difference being the OP is really employed just to do this one specific task and there isnt much else to do even if he asked for it(which by any means he should ask, if they say they dont need something else then its not his issue how he spends his time afterwards).

@Leon agreed, but until he takes the step to ask, he is shorting the company

Have you asked for more work?

@saggingRufus he owes them nothing other than fulfilling his employment contract

@user1450877 "Well the contract would be a fairly generic full time contract" OP says in the comment above. Most full time contracts don't say: "if you do the work faster than intended just slack off and continue to receive your pay check". He was assigned to work on this system, now that work is complete and he should find his next piece of work

"An engineer can do for a dollar what any fool can do for two." Either they give you more work and pay commensurate, or you go somewhere else and get paid to put yourself out of work intentionally.

@SaggingRufus as i said, unless he is in breach of his contract, which i suspect he is not, then he should do whatever he wants.

In any case, this is a hell of a good question/issue to examine.

I had a friend in a similar situation a couple years back. It took him 2 months to automate his job because he had to learn Visual Basic first (because Excel macros was the only thing he could use). His boss ended up telling him not to use it or his boss couldn't justify his entire department (my friend, three other data entry folks, and himself) to his boss.

Possible duplicate of I'm about to automate myself out of a job. How do I approach my boss to discuss this?

I don't think this is as cut and dry as everyone else seems to. If , for example, it took you more than 40 hours for you to get your work done for the week, would they give you shit about that or expect you to work overtime to complete the work? If so that seems pretty indicative of the fact that what matters is the end result, not how long it takes. If they are happy, then they are receiving their expected value out of you. Do nothing.

It is still not fully automated. It still takes him a couple hours a week to do the required work. Honestly what I would do is communicate what happened and suggest contracting myself out for 2 hours a week at a high rate to continue performing my job, leaving me free to take another full time job. Now I have full employment and I am making more money than before.

There are really 2 parts to this question: 1) Is it ethical to not tell your employer you've automated you job? 2) Is it OK to deliberately try to hide it from them in the ways you've specified. #1 is an interesting and valid question, most of the responses seem to focus on #2, which should be obvious but doesn't mean #1 is wrong.

I think you have achieved the highest success. I will agree with others that you should stop inserting bugs intentionally but you should continue what you are doing. If anyone asks why you are so good at your job, just tell them you have created a program that you use to complete your tasks (do not lie). At the very very worst, you are a bad employee for not asking for more work which is not the worst crime in the world... Besides, most people commenting here are probably at work right now wasting those '40 hours' of precious work time, making them guilty of the same crime they accuse you of.