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On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs

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Re: On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs

#181

Post by ams6110 »

zeteo wrote: post #75

I disagree that the answer is moral and political and that the "ruling class" sat down to decide most people should work bullshit jobs. The phenomenon is more elegantly explained by pure economics: as less time is expended extracting resources and producing things, more energy is absorbed by the zero-sum, gimmicky game of selling and marketing them. To give credit where it's due, I first saw this credible argument on…

I think it sounds like the author is experiencing angst about his own bullshit job.

Re: On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs

#182

Post by burgreblast »

api wrote: post #132
zeteo wrote: post #75

I disagree that the answer is moral and political and that the "ruling class" sat down to decide most people should work bullshit jobs. The phenomenon is more elegantly explained by pure economics: as less time is expended extracting resources and producing things, more energy is absorbed by the zero-sum, gimmicky game of selling and marketing them. To give credit where it's due, I first saw this credible argument on…

I think you are largely correct: it's an emergent pathology. Complex systems are full of those. But that doesn't answer the question as to why we never read articles like this. Why doesn't anyone ask this question? So I also blame the Puritan work ethic. "Idle hands are the devils tools," we're told, and work is (like Soviet Russia) both a duty and a right. Nothing offends our ultimately Puritan-rooted morality more…

Before we go too far, raising children is definitely not Biblically categorized as idle hands, but in fact praised and respected.

The old-school Puritan would prefer you spend time teaching and raising children than helping an ad company sell more clicks. Or generally make a Skinner box.

Don't know much about Soviet Russia but 19-teens Russian avant-garde art was pretty boss. To say nothing of Kandinsky.

My perspective is that idle hands are actually idle: not building, not thinking, not active, not contemplative, not searching, not trying, not even resting. But idle. Un(der) used. And rather hard to defend. Consumption is easier than creation.

Re: On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs

#183

Post by arh68 »

> Hell is a collection of individuals who are spending the bulk of their time working on a task they don’t like and are not especially good at

So, as a young person who might end up in a bullshit job, what are the best ways to enjoy it? It's not all bad, after all

Re: On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs

#184

Post by shaydoc »

I wrote this song as a response to a bullshit job I was doing for a period of time, thankfully I got my ass out because it drove me to write such thoughts....

Title: The Ballad of a 30 something Office Worker

https://soundcloud.com/swampscott/the-ballad-of-a-30-somethi...

Yeah, I was in an environment (as a result of consulting) that sucked the very life from my creative nature...

Re: On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs

#185

Post by burgerz »

Part of the explanation lies in the hiring process. At the company I work we have a ton of useless people - 'office manager', 'coordinator' and other titles that don't mean anything - which make you wonder how they got the job in the first place. Usually answer is they are hired because they know someone at the company, and it's so easy to get somebody who has no skills to fit into paper pushing jobs. Of course there isn't anybody to oversee all this. The chief executives aren't checking if some guy in the building is really needed there. At every step down from CEO somebody is getting hired by someone because they need a job.

Re: On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs

#186

Post by wissler »

zeteo wrote: post #75

I disagree that the answer is moral and political and that the "ruling class" sat down to decide most people should work bullshit jobs. The phenomenon is more elegantly explained by pure economics: as less time is expended extracting resources and producing things, more energy is absorbed by the zero-sum, gimmicky game of selling and marketing them. To give credit where it's due, I first saw this credible argument on…

It's not economic at all, it's political (whether it is intentional or not is a different question). In evidence is all the violence that is brought to bear in sustaining the current economic status quo (i.e. the piles of regulations and laws).

Re: On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs

#187

Post by kunle »

We ARE working essentially 15 hour weeks (or trending towards that). But instead of each person working 15hour weeks, most people will just be unemployed. The average will end up around 15 hours.

Re: On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs

#188

Post by seanmcdirmid »

singingfish wrote: post #46
impendia wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was with you until the end. Can you provide an example of an academic sabotaging useful production in order to prove his or her value?

One peer reviewed paper a year. Regardless of quality. Wittgenstein - a philosopher with a major influence on modern life after he died published two short works in a lifetime.

Don't publish just to publish, only publish what you believe are great papers and don't bother playing the system.

Re: On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs

#189

Post by ramchip »

bennyg wrote: post #87
impendia wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a math professor. This phenomenon of lengthening literature reviews doesn't exist in math, nor indeed have I ever seen mathematicians assign pointless busywork to sabotage others, or to inflate our own importance, or for any other reason . Indeed, we hate extraneous paperwork: http://www.mathjobs.org/jobs and are trying to change the library system: http://thecostofknowledge.com/ Now the intrinsic value of resea…

Well, pointless busywork was a staple of my high school and under days of math. Once I got to college, I had a professor for Calculus I that said our grade was the four tests + the final or just the final - whichever grade was higher. Having taken Cal in high school, I just showed up for the final and got a B+ (I reversed the damn derivatives of ln/e). That was the best math class I never took. To be fair, my discipl…

I think you're interpreting "math professor" as "school teacher", while others are talking about the tenured kind of professors. "Students" here are researchers, who do work potentially ostensibly for society, not just homework for their own education.

Re: On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs

#190

Post by j_baker »

api wrote: post #132
zeteo wrote: post #75

I disagree that the answer is moral and political and that the "ruling class" sat down to decide most people should work bullshit jobs. The phenomenon is more elegantly explained by pure economics: as less time is expended extracting resources and producing things, more energy is absorbed by the zero-sum, gimmicky game of selling and marketing them. To give credit where it's due, I first saw this credible argument on…

I think you are largely correct: it's an emergent pathology. Complex systems are full of those. But that doesn't answer the question as to why we never read articles like this. Why doesn't anyone ask this question? So I also blame the Puritan work ethic. "Idle hands are the devils tools," we're told, and work is (like Soviet Russia) both a duty and a right. Nothing offends our ultimately Puritan-rooted morality more…

I think a simpler explanation is that people enjoy being productive. Otherwise, why would people have a problem with meaningless jobs?
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