Ethics: Building skills at a non-demanding job

July 25, 2019 8:58 AM

I ostensibly work as a database programmer for a nonprofit project, and I have for nearly 4 years. My work has, over the last 16 months, gradually shifted from regular programming to occasionally programming while mostly helping with the administration of our one regular project: Doing mailings (unto stuffing envelopes), documentation, occasional meetings, that sort of thing. This is due to a couple of changes: 1) due to the development of new technology, most of the people who would have requested database reports from me in the past, now solve that problem another way. 2)Until a couple of months ago, we had a person whose position involved managing the administrative paperwork. That person has moved on to a promotion, and not been replaced. I don't have a lot of free time away from work, and I feel ethically bound to do the needed work. I am paid generously. But I definitely need to maintain or grow my tech skills for my career. What to do?

I am still being paid as a programmer, but not building my skills and not being challenged. It's a nice work environment, but I'm bored as heck.

I love the benefits and pay that I get in this role, but it's obvious that this project will either end or continue in this half-life for years.

I feel ethically bound to work at work. But at the same time, I'd really like to build my skills, update my portfolio, and find a project where I am really needed.

How much 'self-training' is ethical for me to do while on this non-demanding job? I am imagining periods of rotating the administrative work with periods of focusing on certifications for my career.

Am I wrong to want to do this? Must I spend 40 hours working completely? Is it okay to devote, say, 10 hours a week to additional training (for career certifications) and 30 to actual work? Or is an even higher ratio like 20 hours to 20 hours, ethical? Does it make a difference if the admin work is perfectly completed, or no?

I'm especially interested in hearing from people who faced a similar situation and overcame it.

posted by anonymous to Work & Money (10 answers total)

Is your boss a reasonable person? I think, if I were trying to do this ethically, I would want to discuss a plan with them. It's reasonable for you to want to keep up your skills and continue to build them, and many employers offer benefits related to skill building (paying for classes, etc), so I think having a set number of hours each week that you can work on this officially might be feasible. Is there something else that the nonprofit needs that you could potentially do or learn to do? I don't work in tech, so this may be too unrelated to your work, but maybe some new features for their website?
posted by pinochiette at 9:06 AM on July 25, 2019 [1 favorite]

You are salaried, and they need you to do a certain set of tasks. You are paid to complete the tasks. An inefficient person would get paid to complete those tasks in 48 hours per week and an efficient person would get paid the same amount to complete those tasks in 30 hours a week and do other stuff for the other ten. It is not unethical to complete your work in the time it takes you to complete it, and use the hours left in the week to better yourself. Unless it costs money or puts you in a conflict of interest, I don't see a reason why you need to involve your boss. After all, irresponsible/unethical people in your position would just dick around on the internet for ten hours a week secretly and not talk to their boss about it. Find things to buff up your skills and do them. Don't think more about it.
posted by juniperesque at 9:52 AM on July 25, 2019 [8 favorites]

I'd be careful about unofficially transitioning into the administrative paperwork person. I agree with pinochiette. Time to create a new project for yourself, one that involves some skills that you'd like to learn. Migrate the old database to a new format/structure/whatever, coordinate your database with those of allied organizations and create a consortium, etc. If you frame it to your boss as "I need a new project, what needs to be done?" I'm sure they will come up with a bunch of stuff.
posted by Rock Steady at 10:25 AM on July 25, 2019 [2 favorites]

I didn't even know this was an ethical question. If I had, I wouldn't have developed about 90% of the job skills I have now.
posted by clawsoon at 10:59 AM on July 25, 2019 [7 favorites]

I empathize with you on finding it mildly unethical to (implicitly or explicitly) deceive your employer about how much work you are doing at work. (I say, as I post to Metafilter from the office.) Some suggestions I might try in your situation:

1. If you talk to your boss, they might make it clear that they are OK with whatever you do as long as you keep fulfilling all of the responsibilities they care about you fulfilling. If you're a programmer who is good at your job, you should have a lot of leverage here, so they should be inclined to accommodate you somewhat.

2. Perhaps your boss would also be open to only employing you part-time, if it's easy for you to do all the work in only part of your work week.

3. Or perhaps if they knew how frustrated you were, they would try harder to find someone else who is willing to work on the simple administrative tasks that occupy your time.

4. Depending on the size and culture of the non-profit, you might be able to find valuable things to do that exercise your skills and teach you something new, but which nobody is currently doing, and make a case to your boss that it's worth it for you to work on those things. It's very common in my experience that non-programmers find painful ways to do things that a programmer would find easy to do more efficiently, because they don't notice that it's automatable -- a common example is transferring data between two random things. If you spend some of your spare time talking to your coworkers about their work, you might find some interesting problems you can help them with.

5. You can do things in ways that are a compromise between what's best for the company and what's best for your motivation and personal development. For example, take the time to learn more about your development environment and improve how efficiently you work, or become a deeper expert on the languages and tools that you are using to write the software you are writing.

I'm especially interested in hearing from people who faced a similar situation and overcame it.

In general, I overcame these situations by deciding it was time to look for a new job.
posted by value of information at 5:24 PM on July 25, 2019 [1 favorite]

Chiming in to support this idea:

Is there something else that the nonprofit needs that you could potentially do or learn to do?

You could either suggest something or ask them outright, or a bit of both, but I think most places have wishlists that they assume are impossible, so having someone who wants to learn something and could fit in that learning without sacrificing the rest of their duties would be ideal. The more that you can listen to what the organization is trying to do or a problem that they face, and then figure out how your project can contribute to that goal, the better. So really listen at staff meetings, board meetings, anywhere the big picture is being discussed.
posted by salvia at 8:14 PM on July 25, 2019

I agree that ethically, as long as you’re doing the work you’re paid to do, you are free to use the rest of the time to expand your skills set. It would be particularly beneficial if you, say, looked for ways in which the company was seeking to update their technology in a thing, and built your skills in that thing.

Practically speaking, if you’re a programmer and you’ve spent a year and a half watching your programming duties go away while you stuff envelopes, there’s a pretty huge risk of you becoming rusty/obsolete and making it much harder for you to find a new job. I would highly recommend starting an active job search. You can always make a recommendation that the non-profit hire a contractor for temporary project work, since clearly that’s all they need. Heck, you could even offer to be that person and keep the project as a side gig for extra money. But you don’t want to paint yourself into a professional corner by staying in a job that doesn’t provide growth. Presumably it will take a few months to find a new gig, but the clock is ticking on your marketability, so don’t put it off any longer.
posted by Autumnheart at 8:27 PM on July 25, 2019 [2 favorites]

My inclination is close to Autumnheart's sentiment: they're not going to pay you a programmer's salary to stuff envelopes forever.

Start looking around for other ways to be useful (as a programmer) after you're done stuffing envelopes at your current organization, being sensitive about accidentally automating someone ELSE out of a job (or at least, don't spell it out for them in their face), and at the same time, look for another job.
posted by batter_my_heart at 11:48 PM on July 25, 2019 [1 favorite]

Apart from anything else, your employer is getting poor value if they're paying a developer's salary for work that could be done at minimum wage or by an intern. Surely they'll notice that eventually, and given that "most of the people who would have requested database reports from me in the past, now solve that problem another way", they could make the decision for you at that point. Some employers would already have realised that their erstwhile database programmer is significantly underutilised, and made the necessary corrections.

I guess your dream outcome would be that you keep your ears open at meetings & pick up on some currently unmet need in the organisation, which also aligns with marketable skills that you want to learn. Maybe that as-yet-unknown new project keeps you at your current place for a good while longer, and your employer gets the benefit of whatever it is that you learn to implement & manage for them - or, maybe it's your stepping stone to the next job. I guess either would be OK?

So I think perhaps it's a practical question around what-can-I-do-that-adds-value-here? rather than an ethical question. In fact the ethical dilemma belongs to your employer - how long should they keep paying their very expensive envelope-stuffer whose previous job role no longer seems to exist?
posted by rd45 at 1:45 AM on July 26, 2019 [1 favorite]

You're employed as a programmer, a profession which is notorious for requiring continual learning to stay up to date.

It should already be part of your job duties to be continually building your skills, and you would quite arguably be failing to do your job well if you didn't.
posted by automatronic at 11:52 AM on July 26, 2019