It wasn't the humble beginnings of my programming career (far from it), but I still ran into a similar situation in an internship at a recycling company, just a couple of years ago. "Hey we got all these daily excel sheets that someone needs to sit down and aggregate into these monthly balance sheets." A couple hours of VBA later and I had automated it.
Then a few days later, I happened to talk to someone from the accounting side about this experience. She mentioned that they were actually also tracking these same numbers and apparently had an automated system already. The production floor just knew nothing of it and had been doing the same task by hand forever. I guess the realization how inefficient organizations can be was probably the greater learning experience for me there.
Then a few days later, I happened to talk to someone from the accounting side about this experience. She mentioned that they were actually also tracking these same numbers and apparently had an automated system already. The production floor just knew nothing of it and had been doing the same task by hand forever. I guess the realization how inefficient organizations can be was probably the greater learning experience for me there.