Those bullshit jobs which pull the great bulk of humanity together to pay the mortgage and buy groceries and degrees and Beanie Babies and cocaine... They are the substrate from which real progress grows.
Bullshit Jobs
21–30 of 576 posts
Re: Bullshit Jobs
#22The thing I find really hard to understand from a business perspective is that bullshit jobs are the low hanging fruit from a cost saving perspective. Why do they persist? What drives managers, teams, companies and cultures to accept bullshit in their environment. What drives the happiness of the bullshitters themselves. Coming from business I understand it's partially senior management does not care Enough. They've got real problems on their hands. But every now and again a No bullshitters should pop up and say stop this local incident of BS. It just does not happen. I'm one of those that tries to make senior management aware of total time and energy sinks in the corporation. Often it just doesn't click and I move on. Why don't cultures change (fast) enough?
Re: Bullshit Jobs
#23The creation of bullshit jobs probably comes from a combination of 3 things:
- the primal psychological need to show that we are busy to the tribe, to prove that we are useful and carry our weight in the group. Those who didn't in early times where expelled from the tribe, ridiculed, etc.
- the quest of certain individuals for status and power over other individuals, meaning a middle manager will want to be a manager of 10 persons and not 4, so it will keep hiring to fill all positions regardeless of true need - its his social status and his career, and not his money
- the huge amount of automation introduced in the last few decades, making many jobs unnecessary.
There have always been bullshit jobs, just not that many as today.
Re: Bullshit Jobs
#24> It seems to be an issue of people spending time and money to create and satisfy procedures that degenerate into rituals, so that they can look all procedural and responsible in front of – courts? regulators? investors? I don’t know. Direct supervisors? I don't think someone inventing or enforcing a procedure like this is trying to satisfy investors . They're mostly concerned with their own job security and chances…
>Direct supervisors? I don't think someone inventing or enforcing a procedure like this is trying to satisfy investors.
You'd be surprised. There are a lot of procedures and changes changed when a company tries to attract investors...
Re: Bullshit Jobs
#25People fall into rituals and procedures for reasons that are not necessarily obvious to them. Why should we expect to be able to determine what is and isn't "bullshit"? Wouldn't you need to know where the whole endeavour ends up, before you can pass such definitive judgement? I'm not questioning any individuals feelings (your job may certainly feel like bullshit to you ), but whether something is sustainable and make…
There's a term for this. Chestertons fence (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence)
Re: Bullshit Jobs
#26[deleted]
Re: Bullshit Jobs
#27University administrators.[1] Stanford is busily building their new Redwood City "campus". It's all administrators . No students. No faculty. No research. 13 office buildings. 2700 staff. Initially, the campus will be home to Stanford employees working in such critical areas as the School of Medicine administration; Stanford Libraries and University Archives; the major administrative units of Business Affairs; Land,…
"In 2017–18, Stanford is a $6.3 billion enterprise." http://facts.stanford.edu/administration/finances
Takes a lot of people to manage that much money.
Re: Bullshit Jobs
#28I felt that the note could be understood as mildly passive aggressive. Maybe adding something like “I have no reason not to believe him/her” would remove any interpretation that you're writing this note out of obligation but do not believe the patient. Good post btw; I have no input on ethics and would be stumped as well.
But he does want to help the patient, does he not? But to write something else would be to take the burden of proof into his hands. "Obligation" also makes it sound like he's forced to do it, it's more like without further tests which would inconvenience the patient, he can't be sure the patient is reporting the truth (even with the patient in front of him, he wouldn't be able to objectively observe pain, and he can only ask and believe the answer).
But the note fixes the stupid problem of "The rules say no special chairs without a doctor's note"...
Re: Bullshit Jobs
#29The thing I find really hard to understand from a business perspective is that bullshit jobs are the low hanging fruit from a cost saving perspective. Why do they persist? What drives managers, teams, companies and cultures to accept bullshit in their environment. What drives the happiness of the bullshitters themselves. Coming from business I understand it's partially senior management does not care Enough. They've…
Everyone up the chain of command is wasting someone else's money. Ultimately it's stockholder money, but the stockholders are actually giant retirement funds, and the fund managers who use the voting powers don't actually have their own money in the fund.
Wasting that money does bring the status of having a bigger organization, more direct reports, etc. Saving the money brings the questionable honor of being the manager whose team shrunk by 25% in a year.
The only corporations where efficiency still is key, are the ones where the owner-CEO is still able to keep an eye on the whole operation.
Re: Bullshit Jobs
#30The thing I find really hard to understand from a business perspective is that bullshit jobs are the low hanging fruit from a cost saving perspective. Why do they persist? What drives managers, teams, companies and cultures to accept bullshit in their environment. What drives the happiness of the bullshitters themselves. Coming from business I understand it's partially senior management does not care Enough. They've…
I have had a middle manager tell me that they where not cutting down the team, because he wanted to be a manager of 5 people, just like that.
The problem is that teams in large organizations are not run by the company owners themselves anymore, instead they are run by a middle manager whose job is to run the team.
The middle manager has no incentive to cut down too much on the team size, as that would risk his career, perceived social status, and even directly its job.
If a team of 10 all of the sudden becomes a team of 3, maybe there is no need for the middle manager anymore.
Also it does not look well on the CV to be a manager of a team of 3 instead of 10 people, so its not good for the manager career to cut down the team too much.
If the team size gets reduced a lot, the manager will be asked to do non-managerial tasks again, which would effectively mean a demotion.