"Fire the employee and hire someone off fiver to look at the script" This is exactly why the employee is incentivized not to tell his employer. whether he voluntarily discloses how the script works or not there is a pretty good chance he loses his job as soon as he reveals its existence even if management is thrilled about it and tells him what a great job he has done.
"in one of my orgs, I'd chat with the employee and find a solution" Its a law firm, what is OP going to do abandon tech and become a paralegal?
Your arguments are all very much ignoring the point of how every facet of this situation incentivizes OP not to tell management and that the most likely outcome of telling them is that they lose their job while the company benefits from OP's work and slashes a 90k salary. You are ignoring that OP as a rational actor can only take 1 of 3 actions.
1. Create the script and don't tell management. This is a win / win. Company gets its documents processed on time and OP keeps his job.
2. Don't create the script. Lose / Don't Win. Documents continue to be processed behind schedule but OP keeps his job but does hours of slow manual labor.
3. OP voluntarily gives company his script. Win / Lose. Company gets their documents processed on time, and saves 90k in salary. OP loses his job.
Option 1 is the only option where both parties win.
I understand the situation. I take real issue with them poster taking it upon themselves to make the decision it's win win, you don't, that's fine. :)
I don't not see your perspective, I do, I just don't agree they can say it's win win given the facts. Had they posted the whole thing and ended with "so I told the company and they laughed and now I get paid to do nothing, win win" I'd never have commented. I see why they can say it's a win all around, I just don't agree it truly is, in my opinion further negotiation should happen to test it, however for the reasons discussed exhaustively, that isn't advantageous so won't happen, so I don't think we can truly say it's a win-win, they are working on asymmetric information! :)
re: give up and become a paralegal, no: there may very well be other scripts to be written.
"in one of my orgs, I'd chat with the employee and find a solution" Its a law firm, what is OP going to do abandon tech and become a paralegal?
Your arguments are all very much ignoring the point of how every facet of this situation incentivizes OP not to tell management and that the most likely outcome of telling them is that they lose their job while the company benefits from OP's work and slashes a 90k salary. You are ignoring that OP as a rational actor can only take 1 of 3 actions. 1. Create the script and don't tell management. This is a win / win. Company gets its documents processed on time and OP keeps his job. 2. Don't create the script. Lose / Don't Win. Documents continue to be processed behind schedule but OP keeps his job but does hours of slow manual labor. 3. OP voluntarily gives company his script. Win / Lose. Company gets their documents processed on time, and saves 90k in salary. OP loses his job.
Option 1 is the only option where both parties win.