There is nothing unethical about this. In fact I applaud your boss. If you can automate something instead of pay people to do it, you should do it.

Some of the reasons that stopped me:

- He asked me privately during a lunch, without telling the people that do the actual work about it.

- I only knew that he intended to fire these people later when started putting the spec of the project.

- He asked me (someone very junior/intern) instead one of his more confirmed devs, which means he didn't want the company to know yet.

- I had a lot of sympathy and even kind of a friendship with those people.

- I wasn't paid enough for it.

"I wasn't paid enough for it" is probably close to the best reason.

To even consider doing it (for me) the value I gain should at least relate to the value I'd produce.

It's the only thing close to a justifiable reason, honestly. But even then, if you're paid for a full-time job as a developer, and asked to develop a piece of software, you can't very well say "I'm paid enough to develop all the other stuff you want, but not this one thing" with a straight face. You could certainly use your development of it as a good reason for a raise, though!

While there are some truly bad things in the top-level comments, it seems a non-trivial percentage of the responses here are some form of "my employer attempted to make money, sometimes even a profit, in legal ways."

Not only is it ethical, it is the reason we are on computers right now and not foraging for food.

Agreed, it's pretty much what we (programmers) do. A cleverer boss will use his people to make more profit, instead of fire a bunch to reduce costs, but cest la vie.

Sometimes, sometimes not. Not all automation puts people out of work. I work for a company whose service facilitates a marketplace and allows a real life industry to grow.

Without our service nobody was doing the job of connecting the people who find each other on our platform. The industry was simply smaller and people could find others to work with only through their personal networks. There are no jobs being lost to our automation, only jobs being created.

And yeah, that’s a good feeling.

All depends on what would happen to the laid off persons.

If this were a country with good social support and they would get some sort of severance, it would be fair.

If they would not be compensated for the caused harm, it would be unethical, since one's action would be a key contributor to that harm.

I remember my first on site project at a paper mill in the north of England. I couldn't figure out why the people involved were so hostile. It was only later when I was talking to the salesman about it that I found out they were all going to loose their jobs once I'd finished.

Should've gone through with it but shared the result with the data-entry people instead of the boss!