Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thats pre civilization. Does it count?
Yes, it's human history
Unless it was written down, it's human pre-history.
Bullshit Jobs
361–370 of 576 posts
Re: Bullshit Jobs
#362Earlier quoted context omitted.
> As a manager, if my subordinate asks for a special chair, I will ask him to get a doctor's note, to see if he is serious or just bored, and to prevent all his colleagues from wanting a special chair the next day. And I would wonder whether you think of your employees as little children, or are you just giving into the false economy of being cheap on equipment. The latter seems common, and I've personally been in co…
> I've personally been in companies that could easily double the productivity of their developers at the one-time per-developer cost of one developer salary, by buying a decent computer, extra monitor, a pair of headphones and a good chair. This is completely pervasive myth in places like HN. I founded a startup. For the first three months we hadn't signed a lease for real office space, so there were no monitors, cra…
And I counter that with my personal experience because I've been at this job long enough that I notice things that are really, really distracting me from doing my job. Like:
- sitting in a hot, airless room will drop my productivity to much less than half; I'll be spending most of the day angry and trying to fight sleepiness
- a computer that can barely run a browser and an IDE at the same time will operate slower than I think, and will introduce distractions and annoyance every time I have to wait 15 seconds for the page to reload
- having just one display is bearable (I'm used to it), but having two significantly cuts down on switching between programs, removing those small delays add up over the day (incidentally, adding a third display is marginal for me; I find myself not using it very much - I usually dock IMs and project logs there)
Few years ago I actually had all three issues simultaneously at the same company. I complained until they were resolved, and only then I started to feel that it's me who's the limiting factor in my productivity. As it should be.
Re: Bullshit Jobs
#363Earlier 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.
I was a "research assistant" for several years and my senior colleagues were "staff scientists". I think you'll need some evidence to support the claim that research assistants are being considered administrators because I really doubt that.
The answer depends on the university.
Most universities only distinguish between "academic" positions and "staff" positions.
At most universities, "Academic" positions are something rather specific: usually only the faculty proper, Ph.D.-holding researchers, and maybe a few other student-facing roles (e.g., librarians).
Here is my quick two-part litmus test that's probably pretty accurate for most universities. Assuming you don't know for certain that you are in the "academic" or "staff" bucket, consider these two questions:
0. Are you a Ph.D. student with some funny title like "research assistant"? You are a student. You are not "staff". You are not "academic". You are a student.
1. Do you hold a Ph.D. AND listed as a co-PI on grants? If yes, you're most likely in an "academic" role. If not, you're most likely in a "staff" role (unless you're working with someone who has a shitload of clout).
What happens often in reporting is that "academic" and "staff" numbers are reported, and we assume "staff = administrative".
See the Stanford numbers, for example. Notice how there's no category for "non-administrative non-academic staff". You're either a member of the "academic" group or you're an "other", and the "other" group is not broken out into "administrative" and "not administrative".
Hopefully, this helps. It's all rather confusing and political and, in many cases, institution-specific :)
Re: Bullshit Jobs
#364Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are no bullshit jobs. I like David Graeber very much, but he is wrong on this. If you believe that we operate in a market economy, then by definition bullshit jobs would be removed. Government or public institutions may be less subject to the market, but even they are subject to it. Procedures and rules are critical. Most tech people make the fundamental mistake of thinking that because their companies are smal…
>If you believe that we operate in a market economy, then by definition bullshit jobs would be removed. That's the theory, but we all know that theoretical capitalism and what we have today are very different beasts. Bullshit jobs are not literally companies paying people to do nothing, but more systemic problems. My local shop wants to sell a banana to me. The intrinsic complexity of this task is: A small group of p…
You have this completely wrong.
The advertisers are hired to increase demand for and sell more bananas. If banana demand is actually fixed and the advertisers don't work out (are bullshit jobs), the banana company is not going to keep using the advertisers and cut out the bullshit jobs.
Re: Bullshit Jobs
#365Earlier quoted context omitted.
But what was there to do with this free time?
There is no way to say this without sounding smug, but I'm reminded of talking with new roommates in San Jose about 10 years ago * them: "we all split the tv bill, it's $45 a person" * me: (gasping at a $220 per month tv bill) I actually don't watch tv * them: (in disbelief) but what do you do after work??? Nowadays this would probably be less weird since we have more streaming options but this whole idea that time i…
Sort of tangential, but I have a similar thought whenever someone says they don't want to have kids because they don't want to "give up their freedom." No one bats an eye at the idea of spending 60 hours a week between work and commuting. A lot of young people don't even particularly care that much where they work, as long as the pay is ok, as opposed to say, starting their own business and making less money but having far fewer demands on their time.
Obviously people have got to make a living and it's not my place to say when people should have kids, but I don't think a lot of people have a very clear idea of what freedom means.
Re: Bullshit Jobs
#366Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not criticizing competition itself. It's wasteful, but it's also necessary because this is how we solve resource allocation problems - we're too dumb to do it directly, so we use market dynamics to implicitly compute it for us. I'm criticizing runaway negative-sum games. Like where companies are competing for a fixed-size market - any marginal effort to win more of the market will be cancelled out by equivalent e…
> competition itself. It's wasteful, but it's also necessary > we're too dumb to do it directly citation needed. Humanity is planning the colonization of Mars, nuclear fusion and so on and yet, somehow, managing our own resources is always an unsolvable problem? > I'm criticizing runaway negative-sum games. They are inevitable with competition.
> citation needed.
Every attempt of doing it in the past, like e.g. centrally planned economy? Internals of every large company? Self-evident if you look around?
Also http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/. In a way, coordination problems are the root of all problems of human society. We're planning Mars colonies in spite of that, not thanks to it.
> They are inevitable with competition.
They can be limited, though. Think of market economy as internal combustion engine. Burning fuel is inevitable - because that's how the engine works. But that doesn't imply you have to set your gas tank on fire.
Re: Bullshit Jobs
#367Okay, I wasn't going to comment, but I thought this would be extremely relevant : I've been getting paid for free for the past four months. I've been turning up to work, reading novels all fucking day, eating at the company cafeteria, and leaving. I generally spend 4-6 hours at the office. For 4 months now. Let that sink in. What happened is that I transferred from a 'public' team to a 'private' team, which means tha…
Reminds of something I read here not too long ago. From what I understand, it makes the rounds every now and then. https://sites.google.com/site/forgottenemployee/
That was hilarious
Re: Bullshit Jobs
#368Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is no way to say this without sounding smug, but I'm reminded of talking with new roommates in San Jose about 10 years ago * them: "we all split the tv bill, it's $45 a person" * me: (gasping at a $220 per month tv bill) I actually don't watch tv * them: (in disbelief) but what do you do after work??? Nowadays this would probably be less weird since we have more streaming options but this whole idea that time i…
Sort of tangential, but I have a similar thought whenever someone says they don't want to have kids because they don't want to "give up their freedom." No one bats an eye at the idea of spending 60 hours a week between work and commuting. A lot of young people don't even particularly care that much where they work, as long as the pay is ok, as opposed to say, starting their own business and making less money but havi…
I just had a kid, and I understand this idea completely. I like being a parent but among other things, it means that major life decisions are MUCH more constrained.
Want to live somewhere else? Hope the schools are decent. Want to live in the city? Hope you can afford a bigger flat. Want to go on a holiday? Hope you're ok with a pissed off kid (and neighbours) on a flight, or lots of time spent entertaining them on a train, etc. Also your choice of destination will be different.
It works for bigger decisions too. It's harder to take huge risks (start a company, etc) when a kid is counting on you.
Also, we've considered changing country someday and now it feels like there's this weird deadline where it's not so bad if she's 2,3, or 4 when we do it but hugely disruptive if she's 10 or 12. We wouldn't have had those concerns before.
And time. My god, it's so time consuming. All of my side coding projects, including ones I've thought might turn in to a business, have ground to an utter and complete halt. As well they should - she's more important, but it's still frustrating. Life is pretty much {"bare necessities to keep a career going", "child care", "nowhere near enough sleep"} - though I hear this gets easier as they get older.
Re: Bullshit Jobs
#369Two mutually-reinforcing reasons why bullshit jobs exist in companies:
* managers are of the power-seeking kind. to expand your power base, hire hire hire
* employees on average tend to underperform to their potential and tout the important of their work as there's incentive to look busy and look good
The result: an army of folks doing mediocre or meaningless work
Re: Bullshit Jobs
#370Earlier quoted context omitted.
I fail to see why not having advertisement would lead to monopolies.
Burger King stops advertising on Tv and loses even more market share to McDonalds. McDonalds then spends less on advertising because it realizes it doesn't need to because Burger Kind gave up. You're left with a "monopoly", McDonalds whose shareholders/top management make even more money, rather than it being redistributed to employees of Burger King.
Feels like a chicken and egg problem.
McDonalds would only have that dominance thanks to years of advertising. If the mass advertising game never existed, those companies would have to have grown through their own merits instead of advertising dollars, and BK might have a chance (opinions of their food nonwithstanding). I think that's what the person meant by "but they can't [agree not to advertise]", because now we're at a point where removing advertising from the equation would favor those who have already advertised the most.