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Bullshit Jobs

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Re: Bullshit Jobs

#251

Post by overlords »

RealityVoid wrote: post #237
overlords wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Burger King stops advertising on Tv and loses even more market share to McDonalds. McDonalds then spends less on advertising because it realizes it doesn't need to because Burger Kind gave up. You're left with a "monopoly", McDonalds whose shareholders/top management make even more money, rather than it being redistributed to employees of Burger King.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#252

Post by dalbasal »

If you buy in to Yuval Noah Harari's narrative than the limiting factor has been and is flexible cooperation within group, at scale. It is what out highly developed sences of politics and religion are for. Its what money is for, caste systems, popes, grand admirals, corporations and premium fashion brands.

In any case... a lot of traditional "bullshit jobs" are about. Middle management. Lawyering, reporting, coordinating, administrating, bureaucratic procedure management....etc.

Maybe we should think of these as extremely inefficient ways of solving that neverending "problem" of flexible cooperation in large groups. Even though the low hanging fruit is gone and the marginal efforts are extremely inefficient... throwing resources at bottleneck is ... to be expected.

Just a thought. Not sure that I'm convinced myself. I think it might explain the chair rule though.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#253

Post by village-idiot »

roel_v wrote: post #142
akvadrako wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You call researchers administrators?

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.

They’re also not admins.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#254

Post by hoophoop »

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…

> I don't believe BS jobs are prevalent in the private sector

> As a manager

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#255

Post by undreren »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #15
avip wrote: post #13

I think the spontaneous emergence of such procedures is straightforward: 1. Wu appears in work with a chair 2. Said chair creates mild inconvenience to X 3. X asks Wu to remove the chair 4. Wu replies his chair violates no company code 5. X launches the creation of a chair bringing policy, designed mainly to make Wu's chair a clear violation of it

If you are in a large company then it will accrete these rules until it is almost impossible to get anything done.

Do you work at my workplace?

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#256

Post by kamaal »

roel_v wrote: post #231
kamaal wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 'r…

>>you mean 'real work' as 'producing something', but 'creating the circumstances in which others can produce something' is also work.

The thing is its always easy to see who 'produces something'. When you start talking about 'creating the circumstances', you trigger of a chain of helpers, who help helpers, who ... and so on. Until you arrive at a point where there is a whole hierarchy of people sitting just to approve things, keep records and pass memos.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#257

Post by zolthrowaway »

baxtr wrote: post #45

Let me take the opposing view (not just for fun’s sake): I think one reason why BS jobs exist is to keep everybody busy. if there were no bullshit jobs, what would we do with all the people? Maybe we end up with many more people unemployed, maybe watching TV all day?

Would some people watch TV all day? Sure. However, there are tons of people that are trapped at a desk for 8 hours a day browsing the internet and watching Youtube videos anyway. I don't see all that much of a difference outside of freedom. "Busy" in this context just essentially means must keep their butt in their seat for 8 hours. Giving people freedom with their time allows people to write books, make music, paint pictures, learn skills, create products, etc.

Is it all positives? Probably not. I could see issues with people isolating themselves with no requirement to go into an office. But personally, I don't think unemployment is worse than bullshit jobs. Being busy is not a good metric to go by. If I carry buckets of water back from the river all day, I'm busy. But that's incredibly stupid to do if I have running water.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#258

Post by TeMPOraL »

Gys wrote: post #215
kamaal wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>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, b…

> 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.

So a litmus test: what's the delta of impact on company performance between you making a lousy, half-assed job and working your ass off to deliver best results? If the answer is "not much", then your job is most likely pointless. The person spending 80% of the time making cat memes is an obvious bullshit-job holder, but so is the "Senior Manager Pizza deliver car inspector" iff his inspections don't have a meaningful impact on health&safety.

(Then there's also an aspect of how people in general are qualified to do a job. Take my favourite pick, social media marketer/analyst - unless you are a good statistician and are working with decent data, your job is most likely pointless regardless of your efforts, by the virtue of you not understanding what you're doing, and taking inferences from random noise. But if you actually know what you're doing, you can probably make your customers a lot of money.)

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#259

Post by Firadeoclus »

overlords wrote: post #251
RealityVoid wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Burger King stops advertising on Tv and loses even more market share to McDonalds. McDonalds then spends less on advertising because it realizes it doesn't need to because Burger Kind gave up. You're left with a "monopoly", McDonalds whose shareholders/top management make even more money, rather than it being redistributed to employees of Burger King.

The premise was not having ads at all, not one company giving up on ads.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#260

Post by TeMPOraL »

snaky wrote: post #43
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are in a large company then it will accrete these rules until it is almost impossible to get anything done.

To get anything done large companies hire contractors.

They also hire contractors for external validation. Their internal team knows they should do X, but they won't get buy-in from management until an external contractor comes in and tells the company needs to do X.
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