I look at it this way. Bosses don't understand craft, only results. It's your job to understand the craft, and to get the results your boss is looking for. Automation, scripting, refactoring, these things are part of the craft and can't be skipped, so they're part of the job and it's not done until they're done.

So don't present your results to the boss until all the work's done. It takes as long as it takes.

My advice: never ask your boss to do something that will make both of you look better and presents no risk.

frankly, it sounds like she could have simply taken the initiative and wrote the script on her own time. seems like she could have simply done it over a weekend, and it would have been worth it if she truly felt that it would save her an hour per week.

> it sounds like she could have simply taken the initiative and wrote the script on her own time

I agree, except no one should ever have to work on their own time. Personally, I think she should have written the script on company time.

That might be true - but she should do it only to prove that those kind of investments are worth it, and to gain trust from her boss/team.

I think programmers should be paid to not only do the crappy grunt-work, but also for automating it away, even though there will sometimes be cases where it turned out not to be worth it. To me, the automating is part of the job.

And sure, I remember when I used to think I could rewrite entire applications in a few hours the "right way", but that was pure inexperience on my part. For a junior dev, they might want to run it by someone more experienced, but otherwise, these kind of tangents can turn out to be some of the most valuable time spent on a project.

Yep. The worst thing in the world is to willingly waste your time.