Programmer Automates His Job For 6 Years, Finally Gets Fired, Forgets How To Code

Reddit user FiletOfFish1066 just got fired from his programming job. The reason and circumstances will completely blow your mind, though. FiletOfFish1066 (FOF) worked at a well-known tech company in the Bay Area and for six full years did nothing except play League of Legends, browse Reddit, work out in a gym, and basically do whatever he felt like doing. Guess how much his company paid him to basically do nothing for a full six years? $95,000 per year on average.

How is this possible? He fully automated his own job during the first eight months of his employment.

When he first got his software testing quality assurance job, he spent eight months automating all of the programming tasks. With all of his tasks fully automated by a computer, he was able to literally sit back and do whatever he wanted. From Reddit, FOF describes in his own words what it was like to automate his own job:

“From around 6 years ago up until now, I have done nothing at work. I am not joking. For 40 hours each week I go to work, play League of Legends in my office, browse reddit, and do whatever I feel like. In the past 6 years I have maybe done 50 hours of real work. So basically nothing. And nobody really cared. The tests were all running successfully. I shit you not, I had no friends or anything at work either, so nobody ever talked to me except my boss and occasionally the devs for the software I was testing.” -Reddit via Payscale Career News

FOF is pretty despondent in tone after he posted about getting fired from his job. He’s upset because he has completely forgotten how to code, having relegated all that work to the computer, and now possesses no marketable skills. But, he also is not stressed financially, having saved up $200,000 during his 6-year long “career”. He was able to save up that amount of money because he lived at home, ate whatever his mom cooked for dinner and usually had a cheap fish sandwich and a coke every day for lunch at his job. He admitted he’s currently addicted to the League of Legends game and beer. He also expressed a keen desire to overcome these addictions and get his life back together:

“Time to try and cut my League of Legends and beer addiction…..I’m going to try and practice running through Cracking the Coding Interview as well as a data structures and algorithms book. I’ll also be applying to some jobs. After thinking about it for a while I think once I study everything I forgot, my motivation will come back. I always liked software dev, I just was a lazy ass.” -Reddit FiletofFish1066 (ten minutes after researching and finding these quotes on Reddit, FiletofFish1066 seems to have deleted his account and entire story).

It would be interesting to follow FOF’s next moves. Do you think he will find another job then automate it as well? Or do you think FOF will take a totally different course in the future?