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Bullshit Jobs

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Re: Bullshit Jobs

#51

Post by icebraining »

nikanj wrote: post #27
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,…

"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.

Vanguard manages over $4 trillion with only 1600 employees.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#52

Post by wjnc »

nikanj wrote: post #29
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…

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 mana…

But that does not explain real life differences between companies in the same sector and with the same type of ownership. In my sector I've seen good and bad cultures at work. The difference is astute. So there must be aspects of culture (and change) that are attainable by stock-owned companies, but only attained by some.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#53

Post by groestl »

citation_please wrote: post #37

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…

It seems, for lack of unit tests, real-life almost never removes code from bureaucracies, and achieves efficiency only by replacing the whole organization.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#54

Post by joering2 »

nikanj wrote: post #27
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,…

"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.

I think they put it there to realize Stanford mission is not to educate future businessman and women, scholars etc. Their main business is making hard core cash. Which obviously should not be a mission of educational platform. And thats why you need so many helpers running around.

Frankly its truly disgusting that they will make their students invent stuff that they patent and sale, and also kae them pay tuition for that. And of course Stanford is not an exception; MIT makes even bigger buck!

If american healthcare system is not a total rip off and fraud to you, then look no further than american educational system.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#56

Post by [deleted] »

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

[deleted]

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#57

Post by alxlaz »

vfc1 wrote: post #30
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…

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…

> 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.

Better yet: there are companies where a team needs to have at least N people in order for it to be assigned a manager. Otherwise it gets a "team leader" and several of those get assigned to a single manager.

N varies with the job, too. It can be as low as 5-6 in software development or engineering, and as high as 30-40 in administrative departments or poorly-automated production floors.

So if you cut the bullshit jobs, you also cut yours. No one does that.

How good it looks on the CV is also a factor, indeed, and often it's a barrier of entry, too. When hiring managers, many companies, including the ones that you'd think would know better, routinely demand a minimum team size, regardless of team performance. You can manage a team of 200 and run all projects into the ground and still get hired -- and yet get disappointed looks if you managed a team of 20, no matter how well it performed.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#58

Post by varjag »

vfc1 wrote: post #23

The 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…

also close to your last point,

- abundance of people with good social and low practical skills

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#59

Post by IanSanders »

Radim wrote: post #16

People 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…

>Ultimately patterns (atoms, cells, people, societies, whatever) organize by efficiency, by how well they reduce energy gradients across time, not by what the individual actors wishes or feels.

I disagree. Look up game theory and tragedy of the commons.

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

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

>term used in social science to describe a situation in a shared-resource system where individual users acting independently according to their own self-interest behave contrary to the common good of all users by depleting or spoiling that resource through their collective action.

>Although common resource systems have been known to collapse due to overuse (such as in over-fishing)...

Especially check the "examples" section

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#60

Post by slx26 »

citation_please wrote: post #37

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…

sure, you can build a rube goldberg machine, and removing any of the parts might break it. this still doesn't mean the machine is efficient or makes much sense. adding a piece you usually also create interdependencies, which lead to adding even more pieces later. it's not about something breaking, it's about something being already broken in its current state, and priorities (I understand your point, just adding this as a thought)
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