Your friend could have still done the woman a favor, if he shared the automation with her privately, instead of with their employer.

Doing things like this for yourself is how you make automation work for you instead of against you. Then you can take some of your extra time to automate even more. Or, if you're a dev, to clean up code so it's easier to work on later, or to improve your skills.

How that applies in the vibe coding world, I'm not sure. Maybe by getting better than average at vibe coding. (I'd be interested in your further thoughts on your last paragraph.)