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.
Bullshit Jobs
211–220 of 576 posts
Re: Bullshit Jobs
#212Re: Bullshit Jobs
#213Well, 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…
Re: Bullshit Jobs
#214I 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…
Re: Bullshit Jobs
#215I 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…
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
#216Earlier 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.
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
#217Ah, 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…
Re: Bullshit Jobs
#218Earlier 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…
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
#219I 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…
[1] http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/11/30/book-review-inadequate-...
Re: Bullshit Jobs
#220Earlier 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…
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.