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The rise of the pointless job

theguardian.com

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Re: The rise of the pointless job

#171

Post by ASpring »

mbid wrote: post #63

There are plenty of bullshit jobs in the software industry. Many things designers and graphics developers do is goon-ish. Design is mostly an arms race. Employees of big companies create new design languages and at some point the rest has to adapt or be left behind. Of course, marketing is 99% bullshit anyway, and that's where a good deal of the design goes. I doubt games are more fun now than 10 years ago because gr…

It's a bit much to say design is goonish and an arms race. I'd argue the reason that Apple is the most valuable company in the world is mostly due to their design expertise.

You can make the same argument about software between companies being an arms race that competitors adapt to to or get left behind (see cloud, mobile, voice, etc.).

Re: The rise of the pointless job

#172

Post by tonyedgecombe »

Filligree wrote: post #98
geodel wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best minds of previous generations were fighting wars or leading battles. I personally do not think either of those activities is specifically better or worse.

I do. Wars. Wars are worse.

They do help reduce economic inequality, nothing like a good war to flatten wealth.

Re: The rise of the pointless job

#173

Post by dalore »

aristocles wrote: post #147
romanr wrote: post #29

This is another argument in favor of universal income. Bullshit jobs is one of consequences of progress, low cost goods, food and comfort. With increasing automation it’s going to be get incrementally harder to find bullshit jobs for people. until society understands that not everyone can and have to be employed.

UBI will lead to societal degeneration. Prices of essential services and goods would skyrocket; people would lose direction and the small amount of meaning they had. I call UBI gay-space-communism because it suggests that all human beings are capable of handling themselves outside of employment and daily routine. They are not. The market creates this drive in people, and if you remove it, people will degenerate fast.…

If goods and services skyrocketed, then those on UBI would start offering goods and services (aka working). I don't think it would degenerate at all.

Why would you lose direction and meaning? That's such a cultural thing to say, to think your job is your direction and meaning.

Re: The rise of the pointless job

#174

Post by crdoconnor »

digi_owl wrote: post #160
crdoconnor wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keynes said that the government paying people to dig holes and fill them up was sufficient to escape a liquidity trap. He didn't actually advocate nonproductive work.

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_General_Theory_of_Employme... "If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with banknotes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coal mines which are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish, and leave it private enterprise on well tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again (the right to do so being obtained, of course, by tendering for leases of the note-beari…

aaand the very next sentence...

"It would indeed be better to build houses and the like"

It also follows on from a criticism of the economic utility of digging up gold and then burying it in the ground, which is an economic analog of digging holes and filling them in.

It won't be the first or the last time that quote gets taken out of context. Rich, white men with gold in the ground prefer your misinterpretation.

Re: The rise of the pointless job

#175

Post by thanatropism »

Faark wrote: post #159
PeterisP wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However, digging a hole in the ground and then filling it up is horribly, soul crushingly demotivating. Even if someone is working in a job that de facto amounts to doing just that, it should be covered up so that this fact isn't obvious and that a person can reasonably choose to ignore the truth and convince themselves that their job has some real value. Which is actually done, all kinds of internal propaganda, glor…

> soul crushingly demotivating Probably a motivator to get a better / real job? I certainly prefer that over UBI

Either HN is decaying into downvoting-who-you-disagree with (which is not my recent experience), or the UBI hype train is out of control.

Re: The rise of the pointless job

#176

Post by conductr »

expensivedrone wrote: post #80

I'm a programmer working at a big-tech company. I make ~$350k/year, even though my job could be done equally well by a college intern. I only do ~2 hours of productive work in an average day. My previous jobs were far more interesting and challenging, and I had apparently done extremely well in my interviews. Hence why I got an offer with an extremely good compensation package. However, the team that I go put into, i…

Save, don't spend, so don't get used to living on that salary. If you do, you risk getting trapped.

Re: The rise of the pointless job

#177

Post by crdoconnor »

ams6110 wrote: post #75
crdoconnor wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keynes said that the government paying people to dig holes and fill them up was sufficient to escape a liquidity trap. He didn't actually advocate nonproductive work.

There's tons of actual productive work that could be done though. Cleaning trash from streets and parks, filling potholes, fixing sidewalks, pulling weeds, painting over graffiti. These things would would make everyone's days a little nicer.

Oh I agree. High unemployment and a lot of bullshit jobs doesn't mean that we've run out of things to do. It just means that employment is being deliberately repressed and the economic system has been morphed into dysfunctional beast that serves a tiny number of privileged people.

Re: The rise of the pointless job

#178

Post by pbrb »

monocasa wrote: post #92
blackbagboys wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is also common in higher-end nightclubs and bars in the U.S., although these aren't full-time jobs and the attendants work mostly for tips.

Or just strip clubs in general. I was in the most ghetto strip club I've ever heard about (unpainted cinder block walls), but they had an attendant.

That's to keep ppl from rubbing one out my man.

Re: The rise of the pointless job

#179

Post by merpnderp »

iriNjfk993 wrote: post #71
mfoy_ wrote: post #27

Keynes was a little more direct: "The government should pay people to dig holes in the ground and then fill them up."

The frustrating thing is though: we have plenty of real demand Social work, infrastructure repairs, mental health services. But all the effort coalesces around BIG Corp. and Douche Co. needs first Somehow we’re convinced that Bezos and Koch’s are more important than our neighbors Some looney economists will tell you it’s proven in physics these people are just better Ignoring the history of violent imperialism and co…

Except I like what Bezos does for me. He gets my capital because I get something in return. I'd much rather my money go to one of Bezos services than it be taken from me by the government to pay someone to fill holes. And filling holes doesn't create jobs, it sucks capital from places that do. Bezos on the other hand created whole new industries.

Re: The rise of the pointless job

#180

Post by 3pt14159 »

poulsbohemian wrote: post #137
lainga wrote: post #15

I have said this before, but I see some parallels between the modern world and Japan during the early Tokugawa era. Japan had pretty much reached a steady state by the time Tokugawa Iyeyasu came to power in 1600; most of the available land had been cultivated or settled, and, especially after the policies of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, society was locked in a rigid structure without much room for advancement or unrest. As a…

This is very similar to the situation that caused the Swiss to become the mercenaries of Europe. If you were the second son, you weren't going to inherit the farm and thus in a resource-poor country like Switzerland of the Middle Ages, your best choice was to go abroad and find some feudal lord putting together an army. Thus you became a "freelance" and hopefully found riches. I've always thought Machiavelli's dislik…

Eh. They could become merchants or craftspersons too. The options weren't starve to death or kill for money.
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