Working 1 hour a day after automating most of my job
So, I've basically automated several key aspects of my job (with well-made excel models, AI, etc) and the parts of it that aren't automated, I've become very efficient in. I've now been working on average 1 hour a day for the past few months now that I've built all this out and gotten better at my job in general. But there's a few major catches:
- I make $85,000/year and my next raise is going to be max $5,000. Career progression at this company is not great for my role. I'm also 28 so I need to start making more money.
- I have to be in the office 4 days a week, Monday through Thursday
- My desk is situated in a way that everyone in the office can see my monitors/what I'm working on
- I have multiple people in the office come to my desk and chat with me and they ask what I'm working on out of curiosity
I'm in a difficult spot. For 7 hours a day in the office I'm stuck acting busy. If I ask for more work, I won't get paid more for it. If I work on things other than work (I have a tech startup on the side), people will ask what I'm doing and it'll raise some flags.
What would you do in this situation?
- I can start applying to other jobs to make more money but I'm pretty much guaranteed to have to work much more than I do now, which I'm not excited about.
- Or do I just say F it and start working on other things (my startup) on my personal computer at work regardless of the questions that will potentially be raised.
Start making work for yourself to present while having your automations do the work for you. Then you'll look like your generating value while you're actually just having the automation do that for you. You've in essence, became your own boss.
I would start looking at other roles just to see whats out there. On the other side you can spend time working on other projects outside your own work. If anyone asks just say youre working on "work", just to the side
Demand to work from home 3-4x per week for mental health issues, start building a start up on the side
I know you’re saying you won’t get paid for taking on more work and this is true in the immediate sense but I would still go down that road with the hope of the right people realizing you are a top performer and rewarding you for it. I’ve been there and it has worked out in the long run even if it took me 6-12 months for me to actually be rewarded for it. This also comes down to office politics and I was fortunate enough to be reporting to actual decision makers who had influence. If it’s a big corporate bureaucracy or they are assholes just trying to grind you as much as possible for as little as possible, then this probably won’t work out. But in my experience, smart business leaders usually try to keep their top performers happy and push them up the ranks.
When I started my first real estate job I was making way below market but consistently going above expectations, taking on responsibilities that weren’t in my job description (or even being addressed at this company), and navigating office politics turned those 5-10% pay increases into 50-100% pay increases pretty quickly.
You know your office dynamics better than me but this isn't necessarily true, especially when it comes to something like this. I basically built my career (albeit accounting) around automating tasks which then opened things up to other aspects of the business I would have never dealt with or it would have taken years to get there.
I would at least bring it up to your boss and see what their reaction is. If they just don't care at all then it's probably time to start looking.
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