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Bullshit Jobs

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Re: Bullshit Jobs

#421

Post by throwaway2048 »

frebord wrote: post #364
annabellish wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you believe that we operate in a market economy, then by definition bullshit jobs would be removed. That's the theory, but we all know that theoretical capitalism and what we have today are very different beasts. Bullshit jobs are not literally companies paying people to do nothing, but more systemic problems. My local shop wants to sell a banana to me. The intrinsic complexity of this task is: A small group of p…

You have this completely wrong. The advertisers are hired to increase demand for and sell more bananas. If banana demand is actually fixed and the advertisers don't work out (are bullshit jobs), the banana company is not going to keep using the advertisers and cut out the bullshit jobs.

Its not the banana company selling bananas to the people being advertised too, its the banana stores, who are competing.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#422

Post by pokemongoaway »

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…

Either the survival processes are "basic and monkey-like" or they are what motivated the production of microchips... How can it be both ways? Why is what you're describing not just cultural collapse? The books describing the rise & fall of empires describe historical stages very similar to what is going on today. There is lots of room for innovation, but with high taxes and restrictive regulation there is less upside for entrepreneurs. The middle class being so weak has clear causes and effects. It is government and its lack of free market virtues that reinforce the need for so many bullshit jobs. Just look at all of non-STEM academia... With the tools we have today, if the average middle class man were more stable economically - and wasn't brainwashed into going to school until he's nearly 30 - then many of them could innovate enough to make a living in a reliable way. Local services, infrastructure creation & upkeep, artisan crafts, and apprenticeship models have lots of potential headroom. But there are also lots of historical strikes against the middle class - and high rent is a good example of one - which is a bubble created by fraudulent market regulation. We are constantly inundated by "free markets don't work" propaganda. How can we say the markets are free when all of the favorite examples of the propaganda: ISP, telecom, pharma, education, etc - are all the most highly regulated and conjoined with government! That's the definition of over-regulation... Then when "deregulating," there is a wave of opportunistic action which the propaganda calls "free market greediness" - which would never happen if government stayed out of market-making in the first place. And of course this propaganda promotes the idea that we need even more government regulation - and we must never de-regulate... It's a self fulfilling prophecy.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#423

Post by Kluny »

stirlo wrote: post #31
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,…

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

Seriously, I thought computers were supposed to replace all those administrators.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#424

Post by stale2002 »

wastedhours wrote: post #91
bambataa wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The link between doing useful work and being paid for it is broken in these cases, just noone openly admits it. So why not make it explicit and stop requiring people to pretend to work to get paid?

That we should! Let's hear some concrete implementation ideas as to how we can make it work without just making swathes of people redundant without something else in place (and that can't be swept away by party politics 4 years down the line). There's lots of smart people on HN, but the default reaction to everything is "automate! efficiency! the market!" and then "something, something, UBI!". A secure bullshit job t…

Well, the obvious solution is to not do it all at once, and instead do it over time.

The US is currently at record low unemployment rates, for the last couple decades, so if we start doing these things now, then unemployment will go up by only a couple percent.

And over time those unemployed people will get different jobs. As that's what happens today when people lose their job.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#425

Post by [deleted] »

ksdale wrote: post #365
CalRobert wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

Sort of tangential, but I have a similar thought whenever someone says they don't want to have kids because they don't want to "give up their freedom." No one bats an eye at the idea of spending 60 hours a week between work and commuting. A lot of young people don't even particularly care that much where they work, as long as the pay is ok, as opposed to say, starting their own business and making less money but havi…

[deleted]

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#426

Post by benmaraschino »

stirlo wrote: post #31
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,…

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

If you actually go to the source behind that figure (http://facts.stanford.edu/administration/) and scroll down, you'll find that it actually doesn't refer to the number of administrators--far from it--but rather just the total number of non-academic (i.e., not faculty) staff. Indeed, that figure includes service and maintenance staff, clerical workers, and employees of SLAC, in addition to "managerial and professional" staff, which includes research technicians, of which there are surely hundreds in the SOM alone, librarians, biostatisticians, accountants, lawyers, engineers, grants specialists, programmers, and yes, of course, administrators, among many other titles, but it's just downright wrong to say that Stanford has 12,508 administrators.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#427

Post by dmak »

throwaway713824 wrote: post #344
jakidud wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure this is illegal as well, what with non competes and all

Can you deliver pizza's at night? Why can't you do another dev job? Sure there's risk, but the calculus is: $100k a year or $200k a year? Retire in 30 years or 10? I've had lot's of jobs that didn't even make me sign a non compete.

I don't think a pizza delivery job is considered competition against a dev role.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#428

Post by tomc1985 »

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…

This is a tricky one, because society also shares that burden in providing jobs just as politicians do.

Society could provides these jobs in positions some might consider "pointless" or "bullshit": using gas station attendants instead of self-serve pumps, for example, or giving local mentally disabled folks a job sweeping floors and cleaning trays at McDonald's, or giving local homeless jobs hawking newspapers instead of self-serve vending machines.

The difference with these positions is that the person is performing real, if only a little, service to other people.

Some bullshit or pointless jobs can still give someone meaning. I think it's important to find a way to keep the population busy, even if it calls for society hiring tons more gas-pumpers or walmart-greeters

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#429

Post by dandare »

hoophoop wrote: post #254
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

Do you know what is Ad Hominem argument?

For the record I don't manage people, that was a parable.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#430

Post by ambicapter »

groestl wrote: post #159
Jaruzel wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think you're right, but I have a somewhat less dire view on this. I think that large companies optimize for a fundamentally different outcome than smaller companies, like startups. Large companies became large by applying a successful business model, something that startups are still lacking. If you have a working business model and stable cashflow, any change is potentially dangerous and can take down the company.…

Are you saying that as a company grows larger its business model becomes MORE precarious such that they can no longer afford experimentation or optimization of any kind?
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