Was his manager really relying on his professionalism by barely talking to him for 6 years? 6 years! Yeah, I would call it incompetence to not know what your employee is doing for 6 years.
It’s a massive wasted opportunity from all sides. Someone automates a thing? Reward him. Promote him. Let him automate more stuff. Train him to get better. Have you automated a thing? Tell people. Or if you really intend to keep it secret, at least use that time to invest in yourself and learn some new stuff. Build new stuff. Figure out new value to add and get promoted for that.
Both manager and employee were content to do nothing beyond the bare minimum for 6 years.
I’ll agree the want for leisure is the mother of invention. Goodness knows, I have spent more time figuring out how to get boring jobs done faster/more efficiently so I can go do something more interesting.
When necessity is the mother of invention, I find my inventions are more out of desperation - cobbling something out of the tools at hand because something has to be done now, instead of thoughtfully inventing something better.
I’ll admit I can’t imagine 6 years without a major discussion of the fundamentals of the job itself. But honestly, if the worker was accomplishing their tasks and lying consistently about the job, it wouldn’t take an awful lot for me to be convinced that this was one of the workers who has found their niche, performs it well, and is not going to benefit from me sticking my nose in when he’s obviously more competent about this particular job than I am.
That’s what I mean by relying on the professionalism of one’s employees. However, it also requires that the employee was fairly consistently lying to me.
Now, that’s the narrative running in my head. It may be false, and maybe nobody even attempted to talk to him for 6 years, in which case, yes, I’d call that incompetence.
So in summary, like most stories, the manager’s competence depends on the narrative one wishes to construct. (I personally have a massively negative interest in managing, so I tend to give the benefit of the doubt to management when reading stories.)
I think we just see it differently, and it may partially be because it’s “how I’ve been raised” – I’ve always worked under terms where I did not own any of what I had built. But I see your points and acknowledge they have their own merits.
