The future of work when there is no work left to do

A story showed up in the press recently, sourced from a user comment on the Reddit discussion site. It was by a guy who was sacked from a San Francisco tech company that had employed him for six years. His crime? About eight months into his six-year stint, he had written a program (he was a programmer) that did his job for him. So for the balance of his tenure at the firm, he had been coming to work every day, playing video games and going to the gym. That is to say, he was still collecting his pay, but the program he had written was doing his job for him. On Reddit, this guy called himself FiletOfFish1066, which is great, but I’m going to shorten that to FoF.

One thing I found baffling about FoF’s story—and let’s assume for now that he is telling the truth—is why the company didn’t promote him rather than sack him. Why not get him to see if he could automate other jobs the company was paying people to do? Now, on one level, the firm doesn’t want to be seen to be rewarding this sort of behaviour, but from another, surely it would be to their advantage to use this guy’s skills rather than lose them?