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Bullshit Jobs

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Re: Bullshit Jobs

#231

Post by roel_v »

kamaal wrote: post #179
roel_v wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Programmers are not researchers; lab techs are not researchers; many other people who do work for the academics are not 'academic staff' (and can't be paid as such). It's not hard to imagine what that sort of structure leads to.

The question is do you call work from lab techs, programmers etc 'administrative stuff'? Also I doubt if it is a case where researchers just perform the main rituals and others do all the remaining work. If that is true, then your researchers are effectively managers here. The real workers are lab techs, programmers etc. If we have to do this, lets put the saddle on the right horse.

"If that is true, then your researchers are effectively managers here. The real workers are lab techs, programmers etc."

Well yeah. Professors are like business unit leaders/managers, acquiring funding for research and setting the main outline of what to do. Then the others (usually, although not always, designated 'administrative staff', or grad students/post docs) execute the work. I'm not sure I would call them 'real workers', that implies that others (i.e., managers) don't do 'real work'. I mean I understand what you say - you mean 'real work' as 'producing something', but 'creating the circumstances in which others can produce something' is also work.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#232

Post by talltimtom »

kamaal wrote: post #179
roel_v wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Programmers are not researchers; lab techs are not researchers; many other people who do work for the academics are not 'academic staff' (and can't be paid as such). It's not hard to imagine what that sort of structure leads to.

The question is do you call work from lab techs, programmers etc 'administrative stuff'? Also I doubt if it is a case where researchers just perform the main rituals and others do all the remaining work. If that is true, then your researchers are effectively managers here. The real workers are lab techs, programmers etc. If we have to do this, lets put the saddle on the right horse.

It’s not about “who’s doing the real work” it’s a question of what type of work you are doing. A facilities administrator (fancy title for handyman) will have a much more hands-on part in bringing in new research equipment and setting it up. But it’s still the research staff who ordered it and will plan the experiments that get published in nature.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#233

Post by TeMPOraL »

dandare wrote: post #163

This may be an unpopular opinion but I don't believe BS jobs are prevalent in the private sector. Of course, bureaucracy exists, but that is hardly a new thing. There are outliers, but this is far from the pandemic presented here. Some of the arguments I keep hearing: 1/ I don't understand why X exists and therefore X must be a BS job. In the parent article, we read a premise that "someone invented a procedure", but…

> As a manager, if my subordinate asks for a special chair, I will ask him to get a doctor's note, to see if he is serious or just bored, and to prevent all his colleagues from wanting a special chair the next day.

And I would wonder whether you think of your employees as little children, or are you just giving into the false economy of being cheap on equipment. The latter seems common, and I've personally been in companies that could easily double the productivity of their developers at the one-time per-developer cost of one developer salary, by buying a decent computer, extra monitor, a pair of headphones and a good chair.

Also note that in this article, the employee needed a note to bring their own chair to work, so it's essentially free for the employer anyway.

> 5/ I have not seen many - if any - BS jobs in my IT career. Sure, it would be great to reduce state regulation but the guy in my company responsible for compliance is not doing a BS job.

I guess we have strongly different perspectives, because to me, most of the jobs I've seen in this industry are bullshit, in the sense that the world would be a better place if those jobs (often: companies) didn't exist in the first place.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#234

Post by leetcrew »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #61
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 much does a university do outside of giving classes to students? Don't they also operate a huge research endeavour, patent administration, and operate numerous businesses all at once?

universities duplicate many services offered by businesses (and even the government, to an extent) in the surrounding area. i certainly found this convenient as a student, but i always found it a bit silly. wouldn't it be more efficient to just offer an expansive shuttle service to take the students to important places? you could even give stipends to the poorest students. institutions tend to be pretty wasteful when they implement a ton of different out of band stuff in house.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#235

Post by WalterGR »

kissickas wrote: post #44
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.

That's nonsense, and taking one look at basically any fund manager will tell you otherwise. Just to give the most outrageous counterexample, the sovereign wealth fund of Norway employs 550 people and manages $1 trillion in assets, including 1.3% of all global stocks. https://www.nbim.no/en/organisation/about-us/

Given the content of the link nikanj provided, it makes more sense to interpret “Takes a lot of people to manage that much money,” not literally, but rather as meaning “Takes a lot of people to run an organization that big.”

From the link:

In 2017–18, Stanford is a $6.3 billion enterprise. This figure represents the university’s consolidated budget for operations, a compilation of all annual operating and restricted budgets that support teaching, scholarship and research, including the budgets of all schools and administrative areas and the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. It does not include the $1 billion capital budget and excludes the budget for Stanford Health Care and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#236

Post by TeMPOraL »

dantheman wrote: post #220
TeMPOraL wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

That's motte-and-bailey defense of advertising. Yes, it also serves to help people discover off-the-shelf solutions to their problems. But that's not its primary function, nor it's where most money is being made. The discovery part is easy - in fact, most of the times it's best done in pull fashion ("I have a problem, let me look for solutions") instead of push ("here is a solution for the problem you didn't know you had"). Most of advertising is about misleading people to make suboptimal choices - choosing the product whose vendor is best at advertising, instead of the one best suited for the need - and about fighting for a fixed-size pie of customers in a given market.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#237

Post by RealityVoid »

overlords wrote: post #221
TeMPOraL wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If the advertising competition you mention didn't exist, for example competitors closing shop and not playing the zero sum game, then you'd have a monopoly company, which would also be bad. So in that case, it's good to play the zero sum game since it's a redistribution of income. Of course, it's wasted labour, and so what you really want is for the government to step in and extract more in taxes and simply hand over…

I fail to see why not having advertisement would lead to monopolies.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#238

Post by WalterGR »

joering2 wrote: post #54
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.

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…

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

I have a CS bachelors degree from UC Berkeley. IIRC that cost me around $4,000 per year. I don’t believe that I was ripped off or defrauded.

“America educational system” is way too broad of a target. Unless you feel that I was ripped off and defrauded without my knowledge...

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#240

Post by TeMPOraL »

overlords wrote: post #221
TeMPOraL wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If the advertising competition you mention didn't exist, for example competitors closing shop and not playing the zero sum game, then you'd have a monopoly company, which would also be bad. So in that case, it's good to play the zero sum game since it's a redistribution of income. Of course, it's wasted labour, and so what you really want is for the government to step in and extract more in taxes and simply hand over…

I'm not saying the competition shouldn't exist - just that we should put brakes on some of the negative-sum games it causes, once the market is saturated and things turn into a fight for a fixed pie. As you say, at this point it's all wasted labour, and it can eat pretty much all your profits.

I tried to refrain from mentioning government regulation here, but the brakes need to be put on everyone simultaneously - deciding to just stop all advertising expense for yourself is a competitive suicide.

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