Bullshit Jobs • Hacker News Board

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#81

Post by kamaal » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 9:03 AM UTC

wastedhours wrote: post #66

stirlo wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

How far western civilisation has fallen to end up with employing people in middle level, secure (if inefficient) jobs! Excuse my flippancy, I've worked in universities before and they are horrendously inefficient - however , quite often in the cities where a big university is there's very few other large employers (where I was the joke at house parties was asking whether someone you'd never met worked for the univers…

Its not just the universities. Its all big people structures. After a while the whole point of management is to take care of themselves until the eventual decline of the structure due to inefficiency and corruption.

12.5K people managing 2.5K. Having an real worker to manager ratio of 1:5 is not inefficient, its trying really hard to be self destructive.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#82

Post by majewsky » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 9:04 AM UTC

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

WTF. My alma mater (Dresden University of Technology) has 6000 academic staff and 2500 administrative staff for 35000 students, which sort of matches the expectation that I had before checking.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#83

Post by firefoxd » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 9:05 AM UTC

"Nothing we do in this large department of ours is really very important, and there’s never any rush. On the other hand, it is important that we let people know we do a great deal of it."

General Peckem - Catch 22

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#84

Post by dantheman » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 9:07 AM UTC

normalhuman wrote: post #65

I am fairly convinced that bullshit jobs (and entire bullshit industries) exist as a consequence of the following things: 1) There is less and less actual work to be done due to technological progress; 2) There are economic incentives to create larger and larger organizations; 3) Society hasn't found a rational way to redistribute wealth yet. This is tragic. Entire human lives are being wasted on this dystopia of bor…

I've heard similar opinions to this before, and I don't think it makes sense. It's so hard for businesses to stay in business that if they could shed the bullshit jobs they would.

I think technological progress is slow process and these jobs exist because they provide some competitive advantage or provide surge capacity. If they're truly bullshit and in the private sector they will eventually disappear. It can take a long time to accurately determine if an activity is essential in complex organizations.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#85

Post by bambataa » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 9:08 AM UTC

wastedhours wrote: post #66

stirlo wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

How far western civilisation has fallen to end up with employing people in middle level, secure (if inefficient) jobs! Excuse my flippancy, I've worked in universities before and they are horrendously inefficient - however , quite often in the cities where a big university is there's very few other large employers (where I was the joke at house parties was asking whether someone you'd never met worked for the univers…

The link between doing useful work and being paid for it is broken in these cases, just noone openly admits it. So why not make it explicit and stop requiring people to pretend to work to get paid?

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#86

Post by kamaal » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 9:08 AM UTC

normalhuman wrote: post #65

I am fairly convinced that bullshit jobs (and entire bullshit industries) exist as a consequence of the following things: 1) There is less and less actual work to be done due to technological progress; 2) There are economic incentives to create larger and larger organizations; 3) Society hasn't found a rational way to redistribute wealth yet. This is tragic. Entire human lives are being wasted on this dystopia of bor…

>>There are economic incentives to create larger and larger organizations;

One of the real reasons why languages like Lisp and Perl had a short life in MegaCorps is they were anti-dote to large people hierarchies. You can disproportionate work with small teams.

Execs and VPs openly boast in company all hands about their 'team sizes' and numbers almost as the biggest accomplishment of their lives.

No one is going to buy any technology or methodology which shrinks their head count.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#87

Post by TangoTrotFox » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 9:09 AM UTC

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…

At my university which is also a heavily endowed top ten, and it's hard to not imagine that they were intentionally aiming to waste money. In my opinion the purpose of this was to justify increasing costs which internally is then seen as a measurement of growth. You would regularly see buildings, fully functional and usable buildings, being completely demolished and replaced with new buildings to no end. The only real changes would be snazzier looking architecture and some nicer desks because, ya know, you have to tear down a building to stick in some nicer desks.

What I think people forget when we speak of monolithic institutions, be they institutions of learning, corporations, or even governments is that they aren't really monoliths. They're just made up of lots of individuals who are mostly just interested in themselves. So who is the person whose motivation is to reduce costs? Go look at the regularly flaunted bios and list of achievements of presidents of any major university. You're not going to find reducing costs anywhere in there. Instead you'll just find a whole slew of different ways they managed to find to spend even more money.

Here [1] is the president of Stanford's bio. Lo and behold, among his amazing achievements include 'Dr. Tessier-Lavigne worked with faculty, students, staff and trustees to develop and execute a ... a $500 million / 2 acre campus expansion project in the heart of Manhattan that broke ground in 2015.' Literally managing to spend half a billion dollars of other peoples money for a 2 acre expansion is, in and of itself, regarded as a noteworthy achievement.

[1] - https://president.stanford.edu/biography/

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#88

Post by mumin-abu-jamal » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 9:10 AM UTC

ekianjo wrote: post #79

normalhuman wrote: post #65

I am fairly convinced that bullshit jobs (and entire bullshit industries) exist as a consequence of the following things: 1) There is less and less actual work to be done due to technological progress; 2) There are economic incentives to create larger and larger organizations; 3) Society hasn't found a rational way to redistribute wealth yet. This is tragic. Entire human lives are being wasted on this dystopia of bor…

You have a bleak perspective on things. As human beings we have never had as much free time as now where we dont need to worry about food, and we ha e never had as much disposable income as now to be able to enjoy more things out of work. And your view can be easily reverted. We have never had as many interesting jobs as now. And centuries before us you had to do what your parents did and you had a miserable life any…

"we have never had as much free time as now where we dont need to worry about food"

We actually have less free time compared to hunter-gatherers. http://rewild.info/in-depth/leisure.html

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#89

Post by guptarohit » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 9:10 AM UTC

normalhuman wrote: post #65

I am fairly convinced that bullshit jobs (and entire bullshit industries) exist as a consequence of the following things: 1) There is less and less actual work to be done due to technological progress; 2) There are economic incentives to create larger and larger organizations; 3) Society hasn't found a rational way to redistribute wealth yet. This is tragic. Entire human lives are being wasted on this dystopia of bor…

100% agree!!

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#90

Post by wastedhours » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 9:11 AM UTC

kamaal wrote: post #81

wastedhours wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How far western civilisation has fallen to end up with employing people in middle level, secure (if inefficient) jobs! Excuse my flippancy, I've worked in universities before and they are horrendously inefficient - however , quite often in the cities where a big university is there's very few other large employers (where I was the joke at house parties was asking whether someone you'd never met worked for the univers…

Its not just the universities. Its all big people structures. After a while the whole point of management is to take care of themselves until the eventual decline of the structure due to inefficiency and corruption. 12.5K people managing 2.5K. Having an real worker to manager ratio of 1:5 is not inefficient, its trying really hard to be self destructive.

I think you're looking at the numbers incorrectly - the vast majority of the admin staff aren't managing the academic staff, they're providing other/different services, as well as supporting the academic staff.

EDIT: I'd also like to make the point that I'm not advocating for this level of human resource, but that I've seen it from the inside and know how much of a complicated issue it is to be solved to the extent that throwaway comments on a forum about "waste" and "inefficiency" contribute exactly FA, and could lead to animosity toward those roles and the people in them making a go of it (as bored as they might be).