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Bullshit Jobs

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Re: Bullshit Jobs

#201

Post by eeZah7Ux »

wjnc wrote: post #22

The thing I find really hard to understand from a business perspective is that bullshit jobs are the low hanging fruit from a cost saving perspective. Why do they persist? What drives managers, teams, companies and cultures to accept bullshit in their environment. What drives the happiness of the bullshitters themselves. Coming from business I understand it's partially senior management does not care Enough. They've…

When a company grows in number of employees the owners and CEO go from having economical power to having both economical and political power.

As the company grows "too big to fail" it acquires power over society in general (and bailout money when needed).

That's a pretty good deal, and it can be the lifesaver when a company is struggling to be competitive.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#202

Post by dood »

mehrdadn wrote: post #111

Regarding the doctor's note thing, isn't it just to present a hurdle that the majority of people wouldn't jump over unless they actually needed to? So as to prevent people arbitrarily demanding an unlimited variety of conveniences that they don't really need?

Another example: if somebody asks you to do a random task (which is essential, very important, top priority), then a tiny amount of push back - e.g. sending an email asking for clarification of what is needed and why - often makes the task suddenly become unnecessary.

The broader principle is that if a request for expenditure of time/effort/money has minimal cost or risk to the requester, they are incentivized to request unlimited expenditure if it has any potential to benefit to them.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#203

Post by mathattack »

I’ve been at offices that require notes like this. (The company paid for special chairs) The reason listed was “we want to introduce some friction - enough that we are not using VC money to buy special equipment for everyone”

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#204

Post by TeMPOraL »

lmm wrote: post #196
TelmoMenezes wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you overlook two important things. One, that has been pointed out already, is that companies are not hive minds. Doesn't matter how rich and powerful you are, you have to hire layers of managements to run your organization. These managers get their share of status, power & money by managing more people. The people they manage also want to get into management, so more layers and departments will be created. Yo…

> Doesn't matter how rich and powerful you are, you have to hire layers of managements to run your organization. These managers get their share of status, power & money by managing more people. The people they manage also want to get into management, so more layers and departments will be created. You are also competing with other companies to keep your employees happy so that they keep making you richer, and for thi…

> If you can figure out how to achieve the same results with fewer layers of management, or have your management act more efficiently, you'll reap the rewards. So any bullshit managerial position is inherently unstable: as soon as one company figures out they can do without it, it'll vanish from the industry.

If you can implement it. Building a large company, or redoing management structure in such, is a very long process requiring buy-in from many people. People, whose personal interests may oppose your goal of eliminating inefficiencies.

My guess is that most "low-hanging fruits" in management styles already got picked, and what remains are the cases where it's actually very hard to build (and maintain) a bullshit-free system.

> We're at pretty close to full employment, which suggests there's plenty of genuine work to be done.

Not if some significant chunk of those jobs are bullshit. Just because a job is bullshit, doesn't mean it won't make you - and your employer - money.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#205

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

emptyfile wrote: post #42
stirlo wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

How in the hell??? Is this considered extreme even in america?

I used to work for a public school district and it too was extremely top-heavy with administrators. I worked in a building dedicated to administrators with not a single teacher or student.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#206

Post by tonyedgecombe »

perlgeek wrote: post #130
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are in a large company then it will accrete these rules until it is almost impossible to get anything done.

It might be an interesting experiment to automatically attach an expiry date to new rules, and if nobody (or too few) stakeholders vote for keeping them, they automatically go out of scope.

Legal and tax systems could do with this, force politicians to decide what is really important.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#207

Post by lmm »

majewsky wrote: post #74
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…

> Society hasn't found a rational way to redistribute wealth yet. There is no purely rational way to redistribute wealth (or, really, no rational way to actually do anything ). Rationality is a tool that allows you to choose the path of action that best fits your goals/values. It does not prescribe any values. What we (as a society) do right now to redistribute wealth may very well be "the rational way" relative to s…

The efficient frontier is large, but a lot of the things we do are just dead-weight losses. There are cases of incompatible values where we have to make trade-offs, sure, but there are also cases where we're being irrational under any value system.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#208

Post by lmm »

kamaal wrote: post #179
roel_v wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Programmers are not researchers; lab techs are not researchers; many other people who do work for the academics are not 'academic staff' (and can't be paid as such). It's not hard to imagine what that sort of structure leads to.

The question is do you call work from lab techs, programmers etc 'administrative stuff'? Also I doubt if it is a case where researchers just perform the main rituals and others do all the remaining work. If that is true, then your researchers are effectively managers here. The real workers are lab techs, programmers etc. If we have to do this, lets put the saddle on the right horse.

> If that is true, then your researchers are effectively managers here. The real workers are lab techs, programmers etc.

That's often how it works these days. Means the university can keep most of the workers on lower pay scales and avoid having to grant them tenure.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#209

Post by kamaal »

Jaruzel wrote: post #116
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…

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…

>>Meanwhile, somewhere upstairs in the boardroom, people in grey suits are patting themselves on the back as operating costs have fallen, profits are up, and incidents are down.

That's the key to win in this game.

You define the rules, and the conditions that qualify as success. Once you've done that you make the remainder of the story opaque.

One more thing is to talk in vague terms of percentages and averages. Most people won't understand a word of what you are saying and will still look a good story.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#210

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

eitland wrote: post #132
citation_please wrote: post #37

Ah, when bullshit jobs come up, sometimes the measure is "if this person disappeared, how long would it take for the world to notice?". This article is interesting to me because it applies a slight modification, "if this task was eliminated, would systems be more efficient?". In some ways this is a good question to ask, but much like a statement in legacy code, it's sometimes unclear why a rule exists until after you…

> If only there were unit tests for real-life bureaucracy... Not called unit tests but we have something similar here in Norway: - 5 or more weeks of mandatory holidays. (both you and your boss get trouble if you don't use it.) - maternity/paternity leave (more than a year combined IIRC, and while it won't land an individual in hot water legally, -everyone including your boss expects you to take advantage of it. Oh a…

> 5 or more weeks of mandatory holidays.

Impossible. Our handsomest politicians assure us that even 2 weeks vacation is pushing the bounds of outright societal collapse!

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