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Bullshit Jobs

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Re: Bullshit Jobs

#131

Post by ur-whale »

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,…

This is what happens when a human organization becomes too successful: it generates more money than it knows what to do with and the parasites do take notice.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#132

Post by eitland »

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…

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

Not called unit tests but we have something similar here in Norway:

- 5 or more weeks of mandatory holidays. (both you and your boss get trouble if you don't use it.)

- maternity/paternity leave (more than a year combined IIRC, and while it won't land an individual in hot water legally, -everyone including your boss expects you to take advantage of it. Oh and it might land the company in hot water if they prevent anyone from using it which might explain why even the company often actively encourage it.)

It works mostly the same:

- like unit tests it verifies that the organization works, including edge cases like "what if half the company is away for two weeks at the same time". (The last point is encouraged by design it seems by specifying that at least two of the weeks should be in the summer.)

- like unit tests it might seem like a giant waste but turns out to be useful in the long run.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#133

Post by adamjc »

vorg wrote: post #125
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…

Bullshit jobs also 4) keep a country's population occupied so they don't self-organize and revolt against the country's entrenched power structures.

I think this is a side-effect rather than intentional.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#134

Post by akvadrako »

Dayshine wrote: post #113
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

Not sure this means what you think it means. My unit in the university has: Academic staff: 10 Administrative staff: 70 Students: 0 Because we do research, which requires a lot of staff who aren't academics.

You call researchers administrators?

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#135

Post by dmurray »

boomlinde wrote: post #32
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…

> 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?

Probably nothing? I don't think it's appropriate for the psychiatrist to inform the employer of possible Munchausen syndrome.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#136

Post by rythie »

icebraining wrote: post #51
nikanj wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

They have 16,600 employees, with $5.1 trillion under management. They only have 400 funds, which typically would have just one or two fund managers. That's a ratio of 20:1 admin staff to fund managers, assuming two fund managers per fund.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#137

Post by nouripen »

I contributed to David Graeber's new Bullshit Jobs book. And this week published: "Dissecting two academic trolls’ review of 'Bullshit Jobs: A Theory'": https://medium.com/@nouri.pennywhistle/dissecting-two-academ...

The OP asks a key question: "In an efficient market, why would profit-focused companies employ a bunch of people who by their own admission aren’t doing anything valuable?"

Anyone wondering this should skim the book, which squarely addresses this concern: "This is always represented as exactly what would never happen under capitalism. The last thing a private firm, competing with other private firms, would do is to hire people it doesn’t actually need. If anything, the usual complaint about capitalism is that it’s too efficient, with private workplaces endlessly hounding employees with constant speed-ups, quotas, and surveillance."

Don't know if I should spoil the explanations. :)

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#139

Post by CalRobert »

feverfew wrote: post #100
mumin-abu-jamal wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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

But what was there to do with this free time?

There is no way to say this without sounding smug, but I'm reminded of talking with new roommates in San Jose about 10 years ago

* them: "we all split the tv bill, it's $45 a person"

* me: (gasping at a $220 per month tv bill) I actually don't watch tv

* them: (in disbelief) but what do you do after work???

Nowadays this would probably be less weird since we have more streaming options but this whole idea that time is an expanse to be filled as trivially as possible is concerning. What do you do with your unfree time? Is it more purposeful than what you do with time you have at your disposal?

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#140

Post by TeMPOraL »

Jaruzel wrote: post #116
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…

It's not that these jobs are bullshit jobs, it's that commonly they are wrapped up in bullshit procedures . These procedures typically appear when there's an initiative to reduce costs. The easiest and cheapest way to employ an unskilled person to do a skilled job is to hand them a book of 'procedures' on their first day and say "Everything you need to do and know is in this Book". No time consuming cross-training re…

This is what frustrated me after reading the "E-myth" book. Apparently, the recipe for successful business is to enshrine everything in superdetailed Book of Procedures, and have employees follow its content like they were programmable automatons. Now maybe this works, but eliminating human agency like this doesn't sit well with me for some reason.
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