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Bullshit Jobs and the Labourisation of Work

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Re: Bullshit Jobs and the Labourisation of Work

#21

Post by coldtea »

drdeadringer wrote: post #5
danielvf wrote: post #3

It’s the second half of the article that contain the real insights - that what are termed “bullshit” jobs, and despised by the people working them, actually do create economic value. Today younger people have an expectation of meaningful work, even though the world for the most part still doesn’t provide it. This expectation / reality mismatch creates the impression that jobs are much stupider now then they used to b…

Now I am curious: was there ever "meaningful work"? Have people "always" searched for such a thing and "never" found it? Sure, Farmer Joe [or whoever] can declare that s/he finds meaning in what they find themselves doing to live, perhaps after the fact of becoming entrenched in the doing of it ... but how common is it for Newboy Johnny to boisterously look upon the world with his newly minted College University degr…

>Now I am curious: was there ever "meaningful work"? Have people "always" searched for such a thing and "never" found it? Sure, Farmer Joe [or whoever] can declare that s/he finds meaning in what they find themselves doing to live, perhaps after the fact of becoming entrenched in the doing of it ...

Meaningful work is not about fulfilling someone's dreams or them "becoming entrenched in the doing of it".

It's about the work itself having meaning.

If farmer Joe didn't farm, people wouldn't be able to eat their veggies.

If some office drone doesn't do his job, chances are nothing much would change to the output of their company (assuming the company is actually doing something meaningful and not harmful itself). If anything, some jobs just create more work for other parts of the company, without meaning (e.g. just to satisfy some state or company bureaucratic procedures) as opposed to improving workflows.

>ut how common is it for Newboy Johnny to boisterously look upon the world with his newly minted College University degree in hand and say "Yes, this one lifetime career path is just for me and I'll take it!"? It's not 1952 any more. I don't know why anybody younger than I am still believes that any of this is real.

They might not believe that any of this is real today, but they could very well believe that the old way is better, and that as active citizens that shape our society and steer it (as opposed to mere pawns that go this or that way randomly as technology or time changes) we should recreate that kind of environment.

Changing multiple jobs throughout one's career should be a personal choice, not something imposed by a thankless and merciless corporate consensus -- alongside discarding people after a certain age because they can hire young starry eyed idiots to pay them way less while overworking them.

Re: Bullshit Jobs and the Labourisation of Work

#22

Post by 0db532a0 »

JamesBarney wrote: post #16
0db532a0 wrote: post #12

I recently deleted my LinkedIn account after growing sick of the irrelevant messages from recruiters and the mind-numbing, inane posts from the cult of self-proclaimed thinkers, influencers, TED luminaries and Elon Musk sympathisers. One of Oleg Vishnepolsky’s golden posts was the final straw. I decided that I didn’t want to be a part of the bullshit and self aggrandisation any more. And why not, since I’d already de…

There is definitely value to LinkedIn, for all the obvious reasons. It let's you keep up to date with new jobs, and old colleagues. But you probably already decided that it's not valuable enough to keep you on the platform. Only thing I can add if you ever start your own company it's becomes over an order or magnitude more valuable.

Yes that’s what I’m worried about. Too late now, I suppose.

Re: Bullshit Jobs and the Labourisation of Work

#23

Post by 0db532a0 »

lordnacho wrote: post #18
0db532a0 wrote: post #12

I recently deleted my LinkedIn account after growing sick of the irrelevant messages from recruiters and the mind-numbing, inane posts from the cult of self-proclaimed thinkers, influencers, TED luminaries and Elon Musk sympathisers. One of Oleg Vishnepolsky’s golden posts was the final straw. I decided that I didn’t want to be a part of the bullshit and self aggrandisation any more. And why not, since I’d already de…

Actually, one of the reasons I still use LinkedIn is that their algo isn't that great. It keeps throwing up the occasional article that I actually want to read, often because some random person I'm mysteriously connected to liked it. If the algo gets "too good" I find it gets too samey. Also there's some humour to be found when every other person is a "thought leader" but graduated less than 10 years ago. The self-pu…

I wish I could see the humour in it.

Re: Bullshit Jobs and the Labourisation of Work

#24

Post by xivzgrev »

lordnacho wrote: post #14

The key to BS jobs is that even though the person doing it is being paid by someone who values it in some sense, it feels utterly senseless that someone values it. I know a lot of people who work in the consulting industry (As in Big4, MBB, etc). None of them are starving, and someone seems to want to pay them to work. But zero of them can see why there's any point in their work. Whatever the purported reason for a p…

I find the part about the MBB people not seeing any point in their work surprising. I used to work in strategy consulting.

Their perception of “Wasteful” is probably from the gobs of money these firms charge for what seems like a relatively small amount of work. But the clients aren’t really paying for the work. The value is having a trusted, third party sign off on whatever strategic initiative management wanted to push. And that IS worth gobs of money to them.

Now I decided to leave because the job was really about helping rich people / firms get richer, and that didn’t feel meaningful to me. But it wasn’t a bullshit job.

Re: Bullshit Jobs and the Labourisation of Work

#25

Post by gaius »

0db532a0 wrote: post #12

I recently deleted my LinkedIn account after growing sick of the irrelevant messages from recruiters and the mind-numbing, inane posts from the cult of self-proclaimed thinkers, influencers, TED luminaries and Elon Musk sympathisers. One of Oleg Vishnepolsky’s golden posts was the final straw. I decided that I didn’t want to be a part of the bullshit and self aggrandisation any more. And why not, since I’d already de…

It's a great barometer. From the people in my feed getting jobs as CISOs I know for example that CISO is one of these bullshit jobs.

Re: Bullshit Jobs and the Labourisation of Work

#26

Post by aswanson »

0db532a0 wrote: post #12

I recently deleted my LinkedIn account after growing sick of the irrelevant messages from recruiters and the mind-numbing, inane posts from the cult of self-proclaimed thinkers, influencers, TED luminaries and Elon Musk sympathisers. One of Oleg Vishnepolsky’s golden posts was the final straw. I decided that I didn’t want to be a part of the bullshit and self aggrandisation any more. And why not, since I’d already de…

A buddy of mine at got a gig with a 30 percent raise in another state with it. I got off it years ago along with all other social media because I find it intrusive.

Re: Bullshit Jobs and the Labourisation of Work

#27

Post by bloudermilk »

bartread wrote: post #20
danielvf wrote: post #3

It’s the second half of the article that contain the real insights - that what are termed “bullshit” jobs, and despised by the people working them, actually do create economic value. Today younger people have an expectation of meaningful work, even though the world for the most part still doesn’t provide it. This expectation / reality mismatch creates the impression that jobs are much stupider now then they used to b…

> This expectation / reality mismatch creates the impression that jobs are much stupider now then they used to be, when in fact most jobs used to be pretty terrible in the past too. I think this is the nub of it: we think things have changed, but they really haven't. Whilst the content/descriptions may have changed, grim jobs have always existed and have always been the majority. I spent the summer of 1998 working in…

I think we have to look pre-industrialization to see fundamentally different ways of organizing production and work. The digital age has certainly sped things up, but the 20th century was full of bullshit too.

Re: Bullshit Jobs and the Labourisation of Work

#28

Post by sowbug »

coldtea wrote: post #17
danielvf wrote: post #3

It’s the second half of the article that contain the real insights - that what are termed “bullshit” jobs, and despised by the people working them, actually do create economic value. Today younger people have an expectation of meaningful work, even though the world for the most part still doesn’t provide it. This expectation / reality mismatch creates the impression that jobs are much stupider now then they used to b…

> It’s the second half of the article that contain the real insights - that what are termed “bullshit” jobs, and despised by the people working them, actually do create economic value. Only there's no proof, just some handwaving. I'd rather trust those actually doing the jobs for their assessment of them.

An employer profitably exchanges wages for labor. That profit is the economic value. If this weren't true, then all businesses would be bankrupt.

By definition, non-owner employees are insulated from that economic value. It's unclear, then, why you'd prefer their assessment over that of someone looking at the business as a whole.

Re: Bullshit Jobs and the Labourisation of Work

#29

Post by temp-dude-87844 »

The LinkedIn angle doesn't contribute to the other points, and even as framing it doesn't help. While the stuff put on there may be fictitious and the interactions with it are just signalling, it doesn't relate to the observation that many people seem to place a higher significance on their work than just a paycheck, or that they expect some degree of fulfillment, a chance to make an impact, or an opportunity to leverage their experience and relationships for later gain.

This mainstream self-actualization of work is probably an artifact of knowledge work moving from the domain of the intellectual elites towards the masses, which broadened the prospects of people beyond working on the fields or factories for a lifetime. Two generations of this during an economic boom created a recipe that was immortalized in culture, but didn't work as well this time, and the ones who were spoonfed the dogma are still reeling from the bust, while the ones who were rich enough or lucky enough have made it through fine. The angst about the lack of job-related fulfillment transcends generations, but it mixes with the realization that they likely can't leverage their job experience and relationships to advance forward. And despite all the armchair economists repeating the refrain that the economy is not zero sum, people aren't blind and know that their relative losses to their peers affect their future prospects and likely stunt them for life.

Nonetheless, we shouldn't conflate intellectual fulfillment with financial security, and their respective lack thereof. People earning well who feel professionally unfulfilled have options to find something they like more, without the crushing pressure of needing uninterrupted income. And those engaged in fulfilling work with tangible impacts can get paid peanuts; in these cases it's often their emotional attachment to their work that keeps them going. It's most unfortunate when the two conditions coincide. But it should also not come as a surprise, as there's no morality in the economic system itself; rather, all money being paid out is coming from somewhere else, because somewhere someone thinks it's where it should go. The people in bullshit jobs wish they were in control, but control is harder to come by than money. Others on a different tier of Maslow's just wish for money, and so on.

Re: Bullshit Jobs and the Labourisation of Work

#30

Post by danmaz74 »

m0llusk wrote: post #9

Picking apart the jobs as bullshit metric directly might not be the only or best path. There is a known and confounding spectrum currently exhibited in most developed economies where some of the most valued labor such as teaching the young and caring for the sick and elderly turn out to be among the lowest paid while some of the highest paid labor is so detailed an specialized that it ends up in being sufficiently ad…

Saving a few pennies per unit, times millions of units, makes a very big impact - and is integral to how industrialised civilisations became so rich compared to previous ones. Ignoring this kind of math isn't going to help teachers or carers for the elderly.
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