Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Bullshit Jobs

slatestarcodex.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

521–530 of 576 posts

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#521

Post by pdonis »

valesco wrote: post #157
TeMPOraL wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That is because companies are now considered as money-making black boxes. Human agency at execution level isn't relevant. However if you consider a company as a means to a shared endeavour, then human agency becomes extremely important.

A company is a shared endeavor--for those that own shares in it. But for most companies, most people that execute the work are not shareholders; they're just employees. The interests of employees are simply not the same as the interests of shareholders, so any company that has employees will have to deal with that. The larger the company, the more they will have to deal with it.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#522

Post by pdonis »

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.

Actually, we have: a free market. The problem is keeping it.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#523

Post by browsercoin »

jakidud wrote: post #518
browsercoin wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just would like to add a bit of a warning to anybody reading parent's comment and thinking it's the life-it really isn't what it's cracked up to be. After like a year of doing nothing, like around the 9th month mark, it starts to take a toll. Since my manager was constantly telling me there's not much I need to do other than explain lines of code and what they do in business terms. Often I would prepare something b…

Yes, definitely. If I made it sound like I was having the time of my life, I'm sorry. If you're just starting out in your career, four months of experience is too valuable to pass by. Besides, you'll get bored of all the shit pretty quickly. You'll have nobody to talk to because everyone will have work, and all the websites you can visit will start getting boring and repetitive after a while. And when the time comes…

Ah no apologies necessary!

I can definitely attest to refreshing HN and Reddit too often to the point it was causing anxiety....

I don't know why I do it? I keep refreshing the page for some new comment and keep tabs on my karma points....

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#524

Post by ak39 »

mikehollinger wrote: post #230
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…

> People who actually know how to do their job, having learned it well, or had previous skills, get frustrated that most of their workload is 'make-work' following all the extra procedures, and the people who have no skill, just follow the The Book, because they know no different, and it keeps them out of trouble. That’s actually an intermediate step. The interesting side effect of “the book” is that any sufficiently…

“Don’t just automate, obliterate.” Michael Hammer and James Champy. (1990s)

If my memory serves me correctly.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#525

Post by analog31 »

ambicapter wrote: post #430
groestl wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're right, but I have a somewhat less dire view on this. I think that large companies optimize for a fundamentally different outcome than smaller companies, like startups. Large companies became large by applying a successful business model, something that startups are still lacking. If you have a working business model and stable cashflow, any change is potentially dangerous and can take down the company.…

Are you saying that as a company grows larger its business model becomes MORE precarious such that they can no longer afford experimentation or optimization of any kind?

One possible view is that a company grows to the point where it goes from being a recipient of investment, to a source of investment. Also, the managers get too far removed from innovation, to directly engage in or direct it.

I work for a F500. The top brass of the company sincerely want us to move into new areas. So they just buy companies that are already innovating.

People recognize the problem of big companies trying to innovate. One solution is to create isolated innovation teams that function more like smaller companies. I work in one of those teams.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#526

Post by arbitrary_name »

dvasdekis wrote: post #515
arbitrary_name wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is the supposition that fewer lives is good controversial? What do we owe the unborn and non existent? Surely in any moral framework, if one could prove that additional organisms in an environment degrade the quality of life for all organisms, then it would be a moral decision (in principle) to reduce by attrition the number of new organisms? I am not arguing for population control as the mechanisms to achieve it…

A moral framework is inherently subjective, so it should be no surprise that the rights of the unborn are considered more important in some than others. Christianity arguably disagrees with you - see the tale of Onan. Buddhists likewise consider all life as sacred, in that an animal may previously/subsequently be a human soul. Lastly, many atheist progressives would argue that preservation of the human race is a mora…

I would argue that a strictly rationalist or at least secular morality should be applied given the sheer religious or spiritual diversity of the global population.

And regarding your latter point,it is as you say simplistic - much like the proverbial bacterium on an agar plate, our growth imperative will destroy our future if we overrun the bounds of our environment. I think we will see the issue become more important as the consequences of overpopulation (with respect to resource consumption and carrying capacity) begin to bite.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#527

Post by retsibsi »

bena wrote: post #294
wool_gather wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plumbing and other trades like it are the opposite of bullshit jobs, though. They require specific training and skill. They have tangible results that clearly improve the world (even if they're reactionary and small-scale, i.e., fixing a broken sink drain).

Yeah, don't dump on the trades. When you get down to the real nitty-gritty, most jobs are technically bullshit. If everything were reduced to rubble and ash tomorrow, CxOs, lawyers, programmers, HR, police, teachers, entertainers, salesmen, advertisers, and countless others become useless occupations. Even doctors lose some of their cachet. Farmers, carpenters, engineers, plumbers, electricians, etc all become way mo…

I don't think 'would be useful in a post-apocalyptic wasteland' is the usual definition (or a very good one) of a non-bullshit job. It's more about how much genuine value the job creates in the real world today.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#528

Post by jl6 »

For all the talk about bullshit jobs, I don’t recall seeing a single example of one that made me think “yep, that job is clearly creating no value for anyone”.

Dog washer is mentioned. Sure it’s a luxury, but bullshit? There are clearly people willing to pay for that service.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#529

Post by Lorkki »

analog31 wrote: post #525
ambicapter wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying that as a company grows larger its business model becomes MORE precarious such that they can no longer afford experimentation or optimization of any kind?

One possible view is that a company grows to the point where it goes from being a recipient of investment, to a source of investment. Also, the managers get too far removed from innovation, to directly engage in or direct it. I work for a F500. The top brass of the company sincerely want us to move into new areas. So they just buy companies that are already innovating. People recognize the problem of big companies tr…

Let's not forget, that's essentially how much of the IT industry as we know it got started: companies like Western Electric, AT&T and Xerox hired people specifically to innovate.

Re: Bullshit Jobs

#530

Post by TeMPOraL »

dvasdekis wrote: post #515
arbitrary_name wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is the supposition that fewer lives is good controversial? What do we owe the unborn and non existent? Surely in any moral framework, if one could prove that additional organisms in an environment degrade the quality of life for all organisms, then it would be a moral decision (in principle) to reduce by attrition the number of new organisms? I am not arguing for population control as the mechanisms to achieve it…

A moral framework is inherently subjective, so it should be no surprise that the rights of the unborn are considered more important in some than others. Christianity arguably disagrees with you - see the tale of Onan. Buddhists likewise consider all life as sacred, in that an animal may previously/subsequently be a human soul. Lastly, many atheist progressives would argue that preservation of the human race is a mora…

> Lastly, many atheist progressives would argue that preservation of the human race is a moral imperative, and having more total humans rather than less ensures preservation in at least a simplistic mathematical sense.

It doesn't, because what I've essentially explained in my example. Too much population, and you collapse the environment, and human race suffers and then dies. I hope even smart atheist progressives would realize that meaningful ways to preserve human race are things like building a Mars colony, or ensuring the Earth's ecosystem does not collapse (such collapse would likely lead to great wars, possibly nuclear).

Post reply on HN