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On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

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Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

#201

Post by retrogradeMT »

ams6110 wrote: post #86
jug6ernaut wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not going to deny anything you said, its almost 100% true. But I believe your missing an important "fact"(maybe). That is its not really physically/physiologically/mentally possible to put in 40 hours of true "work". Not consistently anyways. So as much as it is we not truly putting in 40 hours, its the entire effort to be available for 40 hours IMO that you are getting paid for.

It is possible and commonplace in jobs where you physically work. Construction, any of the trades, factory work, food service... if you work 40 hours you have actually worked very close to 40 hours. There isn't any real opportunity to slack off or stand around in those jobs. Office jobs, yeah. Many of those are bullshit jobs.

It seems that the answer should be, at least in the shot term, for good managers to recognize the 40 hours "available" concept and provide more flexible schedules. No one gains from having an office full of workers surfing Facebook on friday afternoon. Let people be someplace else if it their queue is empty.

From the outside, it seems like startups do this better than most.

Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

#202

Post by jobu »

furyg3 wrote: post #48

While there's a lot to debate in the article, kudos to Graeber for talking about a taboo. White-collar employees 'work' (periods of focused concentration) a lot less than 40 hours. There are exceptions, and HNers may deny this fact (because the demographic is different or because the taboo is more powerful in this circle), but Graeber's inebriated cocktail party confessions match my own discussions with friends. Howe…

Unfortunately Keynes didn't take into account human nature as well as Parkinson: http://www.economist.com/node/14116121

TL;DR: Parkinson's law is the adage that "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson's_law

Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

#203

Post by talos »

I find it incredible that we're at almost 200 comments, and no one has brought up the phenomenon of people doing real (often clerical office work they don't care too much about, except that it's in a field they're interested in) for free -- unpaid internships.

Despite the fact that this is quite illegal, there is no enforcement (http://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-labor-department-l...).

Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

#204

Post by normloman »

pidg wrote: post #84
bryanlarsen wrote: post #74

As hammerzeit mentioned, a lot of bullshit jobs are there because of an arms race. Your competitors have marketers, lobbyists and corporate lawyers, so you need them too. If everybody fired 90% of their marketers, marketing dollars would go 10x as far, and things wouldn't change much. Just take a look at marketing. It's an industry that's so big it props up newspapers, television, Google and most of the rest the web…

If being a marketer is a bullshit job, then being a web developer is a bullshit job too. Most people could spend a week with a marketing book and do some basic marketing. Likewise, most people could spend a week learning WordPress and create a passable website. So let's reduce the number of web developers by 90% too! Think of the billions it could save in inflated invoices from web agencies (commissioned by clueless…

Just got finished at a job with small web agency. Most of the businesses we worked with were small enough that they really could get away with learning Wordpress. Hell, most of our projects were just skinning Wordpress and charging clients up the ass for it. I wouldn't call the job bullshit, since a few clients really did need a dedicated team of experts. But it was at least 80% bullshit.

Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

#205

Post by corin_ »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #200
corin_ wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Purely for the sake of pedantry, Home Depot is actually under 40 years old, so it didn't even exist before software, yet alone after.

Not a lot of businesses had more than a mechanical calculator in 1975

I don't have a car but I haven't existed long before cars. Home Depot may have existed without using software, but a company created more recently than unix wasn't around "long before software"

Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

#206

Post by foobarqux »

humanrebar wrote: post #189
nl wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked agricultural jobs. We worked 8 hours a day, with a 15 minute "smoko" break after 2 hours, 1/2 hour lunch break after 4 hours, and another 15 minute break after 6. (This is in Australia, and was these were the award conditions) Except when we were on breaks we were continually working.

Fair enough, but can you do that until you're 80? And what happens when you have a serious knee problem or a pregnancy? I suspect it's exceptional that someone can do physical labor for 40 hours a week for 45 weeks a year for 60 years. The common response is, "Well, yeah, but you should retire at some point." And that's a fair response, but farm workers are severely under-charging if they expect to work for 30 years…

People worked in factories for 14+ hours of continuous work.

Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

#207

Post by orangecat »

crdoconnor wrote: post #188
rakoo wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People actually like to work - to feel useful. There is this common misconception that basic income will make everyone stay home and do nothing useful. I think it's completely wrong, people (most of them) will continue to work; the huge difference is that they will not do it for the money, but for the actual effect it has. Your example shows it. You can also ask yourselves if chefs, musicians, programmers, mechanic…

>There is this common misconception that basic income will make everyone stay home and do nothing useful. Rather than answering supposedly common misconceptions that nobody on this thread actually had - answer me this instead: What is so wrong with giving the unemployed a JOB rather than just money? They need money, but they also want to work. During the last depression the PWA built tons of useful stuff, much of whi…

I'm skeptical that we have a significant number of useful projects today at which throwing unskilled labor would be useful. We saw a form of this in the last stimulus, where "shovel-ready" turned out not to be a thing.

Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

#208

Post by owenmarshall »

crdoconnor wrote: post #188
rakoo wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People actually like to work - to feel useful. There is this common misconception that basic income will make everyone stay home and do nothing useful. I think it's completely wrong, people (most of them) will continue to work; the huge difference is that they will not do it for the money, but for the actual effect it has. Your example shows it. You can also ask yourselves if chefs, musicians, programmers, mechanic…

>There is this common misconception that basic income will make everyone stay home and do nothing useful. Rather than answering supposedly common misconceptions that nobody on this thread actually had - answer me this instead: What is so wrong with giving the unemployed a JOB rather than just money? They need money, but they also want to work. During the last depression the PWA built tons of useful stuff, much of whi…

I think you've set up a dichotomy where you can have the PWA or basic income.

The best approach would be both: a basic income to provide people enough to survive (probably not so comfortably, but...). From there, you could have a PWA that focuses on infrastructure that features a strong training component and pays well, or you strike out on your own.

Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

#209

Post by shkkmo »

baggachipz wrote: post #165
shkkmo wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was always sad the the Tea Party and the Occupy movement never managed to figure out that they were on the same side...

Let's be honest here: Racism got in the way of that. The Tea Party started very differently from where it ended up.

I think the racism of the Tea Party and the hooliganism of the Occupy movement were deliberately overplayed in the media to keep the two groups from seeing each other as allies.

Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

#210

Post by ceejayoz »

mercurial wrote: post #79
ceejayoz wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By that definition the whole of Western Europe would be a socialist state. Much of the US believes that to be the case.

It's endlessly bizarre to see Americans throw around the word "socialist" as if it was a curse. Western Europe is made of social democracies. Northern Europe in particular has made the choice to live with high taxes and better social services. It does not mean that they are governed by unelected oligarchs, they get the same kind of elected oligarchs as the rest.

There has been a concerted campaign in the US to convince people that other countries' social services are inefficient, dangerous, and hated by their populations.

In a fun example, an American financial newspaper claimed (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/12/hawking_british_and_...) that if Stephen Hawking were British and subject to the NHS that he'd be dead. He is, of course, British.

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