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Bullshit Jobs

slatestarcodex.com

211–220 of 576 posts

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#211
Why does working a Bullshit Job have to be about ritual or tribal identity or anything else, when the most important thing in that person's life is putting food on the table? Even if a job is bullshit, there isn't enough of a social safety net in most/all of the world to provide for one's needs without taking a job. For an employee with no financial cushion and trying to avoid homelessness/starvation, what the job does or its contribution to society is secondary to the income it provides that allows that person their basic necessities.

Similarly, if those basic needs were met a la Universal Basic Income or a Star Trek society, there'd probably be less bullshit jobs of people doing something, ANYTHING, just to earn enough to live and provide for their family.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#212
There's a well-known reason for these requirements: they are an attrition tactic. It erects barriers to obtaining insurance benefits. Many give up, reducing the costs to the insurance company. It happens with WAY more than chairs, and is fundamentally unethical.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#213
post #178

Well, I think Dr. Alexander is doing a great job. I mean, he is protecting the mental health of his patients by using the authority he has been given and I think that is what his job is about. Nevertheless, he might do even better if he would recommend to his patients someone who is better qualified to help them with treating the origin of their physical problems (while still providing them with the letter they requi…

As I understand it the majority of back pain cases have unknown/undiagnosable causes (and the only "treatment" is either more or less exercise and painkillers),so unless there is an actual physical deformity a psychiatrist is as qualified as anyone to diagnose it.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#214

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 think there is a simpler explanation, that has nothing to do with technology, productivity, or society: big companies are naturally inefficient internally (due to complexity) but as a whole are best optimized for capturing and retaining markets/regulators.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#215
post #195
post #80

I am struggling to find a definition. The article refers to another article that comes with 'the ballooning of not even so much of the ‘service’ sector as of the administrative sector, up to and including the creation of whole new industries like financial services or telemarketing, or the unprecedented expansion of sectors like corporate law, academic and health administration, human resources, and public relations.…

>>So only engineering and production are 'real jobs' ? To some extent yes. But that covers start-to-end aspects of such jobs. For example, Courier is a highly productive work in the process of delivering iPhone to your door step. Every job demands involvement of some kind of meta-coordination. Think of it like an operating system. The OS needs to manage things, and is a very important piece of software. But if it sta…

From the definition given in another comment: 'a form of paid employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence'

The 'Senior Manager Pizza deliver car inspector' might think his job is safety related and take that very serious. So then its not a BS job at all. Others might think his daily checkups (just making this up) are over the top and BS, but he himself thinks is neccessary.

Seems to me it comes down to the extend you think your job can be winged. For example a marketing research job. Because you feel your reports are not read by your superiors, you just make up stuff and think its BS. But you could also write very good reports, go up a higher level, ask your boss for better work, etc. The BS is mainly in your mind.

I am still not convinced there is a good definition for BSJ (BS jobs).

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

History proves otherwise. In many cultures, including ancient Greece, China and the roman empire, scholars described that artificially creating employment to prevent social unrest was not uncommon.

Maybe in the past, but these days, it would require unprecedented (in western democracies) levels of direct influence. On the other hand, the market is itself extremely good at keeping people occupied, chasing ever diminishing salaries.

>levels of direct influence

Um... isn't that exactly what a 'jobs program' is. The US government has a lot of programs with private industry along those lines.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#217

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…

Reminds me of a story I read here a while ago - about someone in military being overwhelmed with required reports, who eventually decided they'll stop submitting all reports for a while, and wait until complaints come, in order to determine which reports actually serve a purpose.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#218
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

By the way, I think this is why communism failed. I don't think their error was for companies to be state-owned. The problem was that, in the pursuit of efficiency, they merged all companies in a sector into one combine, thus making it impossible to replace (today we would say "too big to fail"). Maybe the communist/socialist bloc would've been more successful if they had retained multiple state-owned corporations in…

You might like to read Red Plenty. The problem isn't the size of the companies as such, it's the notion of planning the economy.

If you allow multiple corporations but oblige them to follow the same plans, that does nothing to address the problem. If you allow the corporations to compete in a market economy then, well, you have a market economy.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#219
post #174

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 no bullshit jobs. I like David Graeber very much, but he is wrong on this. If you believe that we operate in a market economy, then by definition bullshit jobs would be removed. Government or public institutions may be less subject to the market, but even they are subject to it. Procedures and rules are critical. Most tech people make the fundamental mistake of thinking that because their companies are smal…

The article's last paragraph and link to book review[1] discusses this.

[1] http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/11/30/book-review-inadequate-...

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

One, bullshit jobs may exist as loops that can be hard to spot if they're multi-step. Department A generates work for department B, which generates work for department C, which - after couple more steps - generates work for department A. Second, "bullshit" in "bullshit jobs" doesn't mean useless from market's short-sighted POV. A competitive market is prone to formation of negative-sum games between companies, and fu…

I agree with the first loop. I think there are very few markets where the 2nd loop actually exists.

1. There is constant innovation, even in the most established areas people are always trying new things. 2. Advertisement is an education campaign. There are always new people that have a problem to solve and they may not be aware of what exists.

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