On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs • Hacker News Board

Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

#301

Post by wtbob » Wed, Nov 05, 2014, 7:24 PM UTC

shanusmagnus wrote: post #193

hammerzeit wrote: post #54

This reads like a classic Graeber piece, in that he's starts off by tackling some fascinating questions -- why are there 2x the administrative workers in the US as in Europe -- but then skips straight to the anarchist polemics. Most of the jobs he categorizes as "bullshit" all share an element of arms-race components to them. i.e. if my competitor has really good telemarketers/lobbyists/corporate lawyers, I'd better…

What always surprises me about articles like this, and the discussions they produce, is how so many engineers and builders-of-things discard the evidence of their years of experience and see the world through the eyes of people who've never built a complex system. For instance, a couple of years ago I inherited a convoluted, needlessly ornate and grotesque application that could clearly be rewritten and even extended…

And that is when stops being an anarchist: when one is mature enough to realise that there are reasons, if not excuses, for the present situation (no matter how odd it may be), and mature enough to realise that changing the present situation will necessarily involve its own compromises, pains and oddities.

It's the difference between Paine and Burke.

Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

#302

Post by dragonwriter » Wed, Nov 05, 2014, 7:25 PM UTC

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #286

dragonwriter wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In addition to your misuse of "corporatism" as identified by tatterdemalion, you seem to be redefining "capitalism" to mean "what deelowe likes"; capitalism historically -- from the time that name was first given to an economic system by nineteenth century critics of the then-existing system in developed countries -- has always referred to a system which features unfettered accumulation of capital, and it is a system…

You seem to be repeating this idea over and over - that this is what a few people 200 years ago meant when they said "capitalism", and therefore that's what capitalism is. But that is not exactly what most people today mean by the term. Even if you were right 200 years ago, you're wrong today. Your approach therefore winds up changing the use of the term, to make it more useful for your side of the debate. That's not…

> You seem to be repeating this idea over and over - that this is what a few people 200 years ago meant when they said "capitalism", and therefore that's what capitalism is.

You have misunderstood. It is not that it is what "capitalism" means because it was what the term was first coined for, its because it was both what the term was first coined for and what it has been used predominantly for since -- both in criticism of that system and other systems sharing its salient features, and in describing (with or without criticisms) actual current systems by how they differ or continue capitalism (both aspects are frequently seen in the descriptions of modern mixed economies.)

The use of "capitalism" for either some other real system that has existed (other than by reference to shared features with the original capitalism) or for some idealized utopian objective that does not exist and has not existed -- whether one in which, as in Marx's Communism, the State has withered away, or one which has a active State with narrowly-circumscribed functions and goals -- is a distinct minority use, and any particular ideal is an even smaller minority use.

Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

#303

Post by dnautics » Wed, Nov 05, 2014, 7:25 PM UTC

jerf wrote: post #184

sklogic wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fact, large corporate entities are nearly as wasteful and inefficient as the socialist bureaucratic state-controlled monsters from the USSR. Looks like key here is in being monstrous, not in the underlying ideology.

While I sometimes describe myself as "libertarian", this is actually closer to one of my core positions. Large organizations become large because somehow, at some point in their past, they discovered how to produce some sort of wealth greatly in excess of what they were spending to produce it. This creates security for the entity. This security means that they are no longer getting feedback from the real world about…

(self-described libertarian here:) you don't suppose that large organizations often become large because they benefit from government subsidy? Aside from obvious candidates like Boeing and Lockheed Martin, I personally think that the inflation/investment social model whereby individuals are pushed into stock market or mutual funds that trade stocks, is a stealth subsidy that selectively benefits large companies and incentivises corporate aggregation.

Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

#304

Post by vectorpush » Wed, Nov 05, 2014, 7:25 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #279

vectorpush wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They really aren't on the same side and were mostly orthogonal to each other. Of course, both movements share some common grievances against the government, but the concrete ideas of both groups are just about 100% incompatible. As a glaring example, consider the Citizen's United case; Occupy supporters would almost unanimously point to the Citizen's United ruling as extremely damaging to American democracy, Tea Part…

> As a glaring example, consider the Citizen's United case; Occupy supporters would almost unanimously point to the Citizen's United ruling as extremely damaging to American democracy, Tea Party supporters on the other hand overwhelmingly side with the government regarding the treatment of money as speech. Side with the court -- the government (specifically, the Federal Election Commission) was the losing party in Ci…

You're correct to make that distinction; I ambiguously referred to the judicial branch as the "government".

Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

#305

Post by dllthomas » Wed, Nov 05, 2014, 7:26 PM UTC

wallflower wrote: post #6

Related: An epic Reddit answer to 'Why Americans get so little vacation time' Short answer: Communism lost http://www.reddit.com/r/business/comments/d8eiv/why_do_ameri...

I have trouble taking seriously a post "educating" us about history that asserts Russia was part of the Axis Powers up until Germany attacked Russia. The pact that grew into the Axis was specifically created to oppose communism. Germany attacked Russia in violation of an agreement, but that agreement hardly made Russia part of the Axis.

Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

#306

Post by johnloeber » Wed, Nov 05, 2014, 7:26 PM UTC

jahaja wrote: post #83

binarymax wrote: post #28

I just had a great trip to a cousins wedding and saw a lot of family. My Parents' generation are now just past the 'age of retirement' and are in their late 60s and early 70s. The majority of them are still working in their bullshit jobs. I asked several if they were going to retire soon and they all replied the same. If they retire what would they do? Even though their work is mostly pointless from a job function pe…

To put it bluntly: "it's hard to teach an old dog new tricks". I think that this a damning criticism of contemporary society when it produces people unable to cope with freedom in it's literal meaning. However this is not really an individual thing, the problem is rather caused by the fact that "all the others" are unavailable for those with time on their hands - being busy working.

> I think that this a damning criticism of contemporary society when it produces people unable to cope with freedom in its literal meaning.

Nicely Put.

Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

#307

Post by strangename » Wed, Nov 05, 2014, 7:29 PM UTC

Keyne's "15 hour workweek" projection cited within is an interesting thought experiment, but it ignores effects of necessary overhead.

For example, let's look at the cognitive overhead I face as a programmer. There's a certain amount of time I spend just spooling content into my brain's working store. I'm not contributing anything new; I'm just keeping the old in my brain and coordinating with the changes my coworkers are making. Let's pretend that forms a nice, round 10 hours of time a week. If I work another 5 hours, that time has a 2:1 overhead:production ratio. Since the productive time is what's being sold, it operates at a steep 300% cost inefficiency. The next 5 hours brings it down to 200%, the next 10 to 150%.

There's a lot that would change in our economies if we could eliminate transaction and overhead costs. But physical and temporal limitation utterly forbid that in practice. One should always take those highly abstracted economic projections and starting points of analysis: see what assumptions lead them to be skewed from reality. That post-analysis is, in my experience, often the truly enlightening part.

Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

#308

Post by dnautics » Wed, Nov 05, 2014, 7:30 PM UTC

confluence wrote: post #16

lentil_soup wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry if I am being ignorant, but how's the military a socialist thing?

> Every day before dawn, brave men and women of different races and backgrounds rise as one, united by a common cause. They march together in formation, kept in step by their voices joined in song. These workers leave their communal housing arrangements and go toil together “in the field.” While they are out doing their day’s labor, their young are cared for in subsidized childcare programs. If they hurt themselves o…

(shove the healthcare part aside for a second) to a certain degree, all firms are 'socialist', because they are banding together to not compete with each other. This is the central interesting problem in the 'theory of the firm' which deals with how in a capitalist system groups of individuals band together to not compete. This definition, then is meaningless. Socialism is when a central authority organizes the distribution of labor and resources under the threat of force.

As for the healthcare, universal healthcare for soldiers is a horribly malfunctioning system in the US, and it is unlikely to change anytime soon.

Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

#309

Post by tomarr » Wed, Nov 05, 2014, 7:33 PM UTC

nl wrote: post #162

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.

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.

Even agricultural jobs you can't consistently (as in year round) do that. Seasonal variations, set-up times and travelling all factor into this.

Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

#310

Post by JimboOmega » Wed, Nov 05, 2014, 7:35 PM UTC

xanderstrike wrote: post #281

retrogradeMT wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> From the outside, it seems like startups do this better than most. As someone on the outside, hearing horror stories about mandatory 14 hour days and regularly working nights and weekends for startups I'd think they were doing it much worse. It's one of the things that has steered me away from working for a recent startup because I refuse to work more than 8 hours a week. I had an interview at a startup where I ask…

I was surprised to find so much discussion around the concept of the 15-20 hour actual productive week here, because Hacker News is such a startup friendly environment.

I've often seriously questioned if I'm cut out for startups because of the relatively low number (much less than 40) of productive hours I put in when things are not pressing at regular jobs.