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Bullshit Jobs

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Re: Bullshit Jobs

#31

Post by stirlo »

Animats wrote: post #18

University 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,…

I was like WTF at this and had to google it. From Wikipedia...

"Academic staff: 2,219

Administrative staff: 12,508 excluding SHC

Students: 16,430"

Oh how far western civilisation as fallen to end up with the statistics above.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_University

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#32

Post by boomlinde »

dmurray wrote: post #4

It would be ok to replace "Mr Smith tells me he has chronic back pain" with "Mr Smith has chronic back pain", if the former is enough evidence to make that diagnosis. If he was diagnosing Mr Smith with cancer, or depression, the doctor's note wouldn't include a scan of the tumour or a transcript of the interview: the doctor should abstract those away and just present the conclusion.

I think that the point is that it isn't enough evidence to make a diagnosis. The article expands on why it is inappropriate for a psychiatrist to make a recommendation related to back pain. He's not just "the doctor", he's a specialist with a license to practice a limited set of medicine.

What should a psychiatrist write on a doctor's note if his patient claims to suffer from cancer, no other evidence given than the claim itself? Now, depression, that's something a psychiatrist can legitimately diagnose.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#33

Post by taway_1212 »

wjnc wrote: post #22

The 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…

> The 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.

Typically, at least in large organizations, the manager is interested in increasing, not decreasing, his budget. Since everything that happens in modern companies is very opaque (i.e. how much actual value is created is not clear for people outside a given business unit), the budget size/headcount is often used as a proxy for value. So, according to this logic, the bigger the headcount, the more important for the company the manager must be, so he can then negotiate a raise, bonus, or a promotion for himself. I agree with Michael O. Church here - managers in tech are mostly one-man PR firms (managing their own reputation). That sucks, but that's the result of our current workplaces in tech getting so complex that judging actual merit is close to impossible.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#34

Post by dmurray »

darawk wrote: post #11
dmurray wrote: post #4

It would be ok to replace "Mr Smith tells me he has chronic back pain" with "Mr Smith has chronic back pain", if the former is enough evidence to make that diagnosis. If he was diagnosing Mr Smith with cancer, or depression, the doctor's note wouldn't include a scan of the tumour or a transcript of the interview: the doctor should abstract those away and just present the conclusion.

True, but the presumption in the case of cancer is that: a) The doctor in question is qualified to diagnose cancer. b) The doctor has made that diagnosis, in the medical sense. In this case, Scott is a psychiatrist, who is unqualified to diagnose back pain or recommend any course of treatment on the matter. He believes his client when they say that they are in pain, but that belief is a personal, not professional, op…

He's a medical doctor. He's qualified to diagnose back pain and recommend (professionally, not just personally) the patient tries using his own chair. As I understand it the AMA would be OK with this, while they wouldn't be OK with, say, me (not a medical professional) writing the same letter and presenting it as a professional diagnosis.

He knows the limits of his abilities and wouldn't recommend the patient take 2 weeks off work, undergo back surgery or prescribe opiates. If any of those were in the discussion, he'd tell his patient he really does need to see a specialist.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#35

Post by nikanj »

a012 wrote: post #5

Reminds me of a distant previous job where I requested a 24" LCD for monitoring and doing other tasks, the response was why I need such a large LCD while everybody in company just have 17"? Though it's no written in paper but generally you can't be different than all other employees unless you have a very strong reference. And this case it's doctor's note.

I use monitors as a surprisingly good heuristic for measuring the values of an organization.

If you make your rockstar ninja unabomber programmers stare at a single 24" screen all day, you're basically paying for Wayne Gretzky and then skimping on skates.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#36

Post by pmiller2 »

stirlo wrote: post #31
Animats wrote: post #18

University 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,…

I was like WTF at this and had to google it. From Wikipedia... "Academic staff: 2,219 Administrative staff: 12,508 excluding SHC Students: 16,430" Oh how far western civilisation as fallen to end up with the statistics above. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_University

And here I thought it was bad that the university I went to grad school at had a 1:1 administratior:faculty ratio.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#37

Post by citation_please »

Ah, when bullshit jobs come up, sometimes the measure is "if this person disappeared, how long would it take for the world to notice?". This article is interesting to me because it applies a slight modification, "if this task was eliminated, would systems be more efficient?".

In some ways this is a good question to ask, but much like a statement in legacy code, it's sometimes unclear why a rule exists until after you remove it, and then it's too late.

If only there were unit tests for real-life bureaucracy...

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#39

Post by aedron »

Maybe it's simply that companies aim for a certain aesthetic, and letting people bring random chairs in would go against it.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#40

Post by computator »

jgtrosh wrote: post #7

I 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.

Language is so tricky. Adding that extra sentence would make the note more passive aggressive, at least to my ear.

Suppose you were looking for a Python programmer, and I sent you these two notes:

(1) Joe asked me to put him in touch with you. Joe tells me he has a lot of experience with Python. Here's his email address.

(2) Joe asked me to put him in touch with you. Joe tells me he has a lot of experience with Python, and I have no reason not to believe him. Here's his email address.

The second one would leave me far more skeptical about the recommendation.

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