Bullshit Jobs • Hacker News Board

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#411

Post by briandear » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 5:10 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #140

Jaruzel wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is what frustrated me after reading the "E-myth" book. Apparently, the recipe for successful business is to enshrine everything in superdetailed Book of Procedures, and have employees follow its content like they were programmable automatons. Now maybe this works , but eliminating human agency like this doesn't sit well with me for some reason.

I don’t want the cook at In and Out applying their “human agency” to a product I expect to be consistent. I wouldn’t want some minimum wage high school kid deciding on the fly what food safety guidelines are important or not.

It’s ok to have non-scalable businesses; but E-myth isn’t about that kind of business.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#412

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 5:16 PM UTC

Chathamization wrote: post #410

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it would be. I think if everyone stopped advertising unit sales would crash. Coke vs Pepsi is much less of a thing than the constant reinforcement that you would really, really enjoy one or the other right now. The constant reinforcement drives absolute sales, not just relative market share. I think the problem is more that a lot of heavily advertised products are incredibly harmful to personal and envi…

> It's not just about bullshit jobs but about bullshit consumption, and the curious moral frameworks that support it. I've been thinking about this a lot lately. Many jobs seem to have a net negative value for society - soda, highly processed food, credit cards, car dealerships, (most) sales people, etc. We'd probably be better of as a society paying these people to do nothing than to do what they do now; we'd be eve…

> Like you said, we have a curious moral framework at play here. For instance, a highly paid person who has a job with a net negative impact on society is often considered more moral than a beggar on the street (and it should be noted that the former is going to be consuming more resources from society as well).

More than that, we also have very peculiar standards between jobs. I like to pick on marketing/advertising, because I'm absolutely baffled by it. Somehow the profession that often dabbles in lying, scamming and generally making other people's lives worse off (by dragging them towards suboptimal choices) became a respectable occupation, even though if a typical salesman applied their skills to their friends and family, he'd eventually end up punched in the face. It's not even an issue of impact on society at large - we've legitimized, and even glorified, acting maliciously towards random strangers.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#413

Post by ryandrake » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 5:20 PM UTC

ekianjo wrote: post #190

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some times in history, folks worked more. In other times, less. Some folks still work a lot , even though they'd rather just work 35-40 hours a week. Sometimes folks had more holidays and vacation time in the past as well. Not everywhere has a culture of paid vacation time (or medical leave at all). Sure, there are interesting jobs, but only a small portion of folks have those sorts of jobs. Lots of folks work in…

I am not glossing over things. Nobody would want to live in the world like 100 years ago or even way before in time. We are just acting as spoiled brats.

I know plenty of people who would rather live as we did back in the 1950s than as we live today. I happen to disagree, but there is a growing pervasive sense that society (at least the US) peaked decades ago, and our best days are solidly behind us.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#414

Post by asmithmd1 » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 5:22 PM UTC

rout39574 wrote: post #382

TeMPOraL wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One, bullshit jobs may exist as loops that can be hard to spot if they're multi-step. Department A generates work for department B, which generates work for department C, which - after couple more steps - generates work for department A. Second, "bullshit" in "bullshit jobs" doesn't mean useless from market's short-sighted POV. A competitive market is prone to formation of negative-sum games between companies, and fu…

I've got a favorite hobby horse which is an example of this dynamic: The competing administrative bureaucracies in the health care administration, and health insurance, industries. Both of these classes of (so I claim) drones think they're doing good work: health care drones are trying to navigate the regulations and get care for their patients. Insurance drones are trying to navigate regulations and keep costs down.…

That is absolutely a great example of bullshit jobs. It gets even worse when each side outsources this function to other companies. If they outsourced to the same company, then maybe some genuine efficiencies could be realized.

When single payer healthcare comes up, free marketeers ask, "Do you want an unelected bureaucrat to decide if you get healthcare?" They must have never been in the situation where someone at the insurance company my employer picked - an unelected bureaucrat with a profit incentive - has denied coverage.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#415

Post by TheCoelacanth » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 5:23 PM UTC

jbrun wrote: post #174

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…

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…

This is obviously incorrect.

Jobs are paid for based on the value they provide to the person paying for the job, not based on the value they create.

A job which takes value from other people and destroys some of it in the process will get paid for just as readily as a job that creates value ex nihilo as long as the person paying for the job ends up with the same amount of value.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#416

Post by skybrian » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 5:24 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #402

skybrian wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A while back I took flying lessons. They have a procedure and checklists for most things. This is decidedly a good thing. Checklists are great for reducing errors and should be used in more situations. Of course there is also a question of whether these procedures can be updated. And whether you can improvise in an emergency. You need more training for that. But this doesn't mean checklists are bad. Another example:…

Totally not against checklists, especially in aviation. It's just something is rubbing me with the recipe for business involving such degree of micromanagement. > Another example: when cooking a new dish, if you start with a recipe you'll probably get up to speed faster than just winging it. This doesn't mean there's no creativity. Fair, but a recipe is about as far from a checklist as you can get while still retaini…

Yes, and that looks like another argument in favor of very detailed procedures for beginners. (Better than typical recipes.)

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#417

Post by TheCoelacanth » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 5:25 PM UTC

frebord wrote: post #364

annabellish wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Creating demand for bananas is not creating value for banana companies. It is taking value from companies with competing products.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#418

Post by advertising » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 5:25 PM UTC

Makes me think of every 1st tier support interaction I’ve ever had where a person can’t answer a single question and just refers you to online resources you’ve already read and couldn’t find the answer to.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#419

Post by voidhorse » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 5:26 PM UTC

Proceedures are like a web of safety nets. Companies want to avoid risk, so they focus on making the nets tighter and tighter. Eventually, the nets are so densely woven that the possibility of injury for any tightrope walker dancing on the line becomes nil. You can see while this is only for the best interests of the circus as a whole (they can’t afford to replace tightrope walkers all the time) and for the tightrope walker himself (he won’t get injured) it saps his vocation of any risk, excitement, and thrill, and effectively eradicates everything that made the circus a circus and exciting place to be in the first place.

Such is the field of pencil-pushing work today—except the massive corporations have captive audiences, so in spite of the incredibly flaccid shows they put on, the crowd can’t help but pay for a ticket anyway.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#420

Post by davidivadavid » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 5:31 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #371

davidivadavid wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh I'm sure Marlboro, who spent decades building a brand, wouldn't really care about newcomers not being able to advertise. That makes sense.

I don't think Marlboro cared about newcomers, a big company can usually buy out the small one if it gets dangerous. Consumers usually don't even notice. Unrestricted advertising is basically Red Queen's race; capping it levels the playing field, so it's better for newcomers as well.

They especially don't care when they have no chance of growing to a level where they can get dangerous (because they can't advertise).