If you can trust the company to act in an ethical manner rather than a purely profit-seeking manner, there should be no problem in telling them you have automated your own job out of existence.
They pat you on the back, license the software from you for 0.5x your former salary every year, move the folks that formerly did that same work to other projects, and put you on retainer to update the program if it ever needs it. Then they offer you different work, to see if you can work more magic.
That said, I would only trust one of the companies that I have ever worked with to do that. The rest would screw me over good and hard, giving one excuse or another.
By the Hillel principle ("If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, who am I? If not now, when?") you have to consider the impact on yourself as well as upon others. Will the company fire me? Will it keep me and fire my co-workers, since I can do all of their work for a week in a single day? Will it pay me more to do so? Do I have a duty to act in the company's best interest if that conflicts with my own? What if it is best for myself and the company, but ruinous for innocent bystanders?
Clearly, if this is a typical US company, the ethical course of action is to not inform the employer. This is an unfortunate loss for the economy as a whole, but it is the only appropriate response to the modal behavior of business management. Maybe also file a patent on the method of automation, if able.
They pat you on the back, license the software from you for 0.5x your former salary every year, move the folks that formerly did that same work to other projects, and put you on retainer to update the program if it ever needs it. Then they offer you different work, to see if you can work more magic.
That said, I would only trust one of the companies that I have ever worked with to do that. The rest would screw me over good and hard, giving one excuse or another.
By the Hillel principle ("If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, who am I? If not now, when?") you have to consider the impact on yourself as well as upon others. Will the company fire me? Will it keep me and fire my co-workers, since I can do all of their work for a week in a single day? Will it pay me more to do so? Do I have a duty to act in the company's best interest if that conflicts with my own? What if it is best for myself and the company, but ruinous for innocent bystanders?
Clearly, if this is a typical US company, the ethical course of action is to not inform the employer. This is an unfortunate loss for the economy as a whole, but it is the only appropriate response to the modal behavior of business management. Maybe also file a patent on the method of automation, if able.