Comment by johnisgood
5 days ago
Most jobs are really not important either, they just keep people busy. Do you need sources for this claim, too?
5 days ago
Most jobs are really not important either, they just keep people busy. Do you need sources for this claim, too?
Yes. Who are these people paying for jobs that don't do anything, and why are they more concerned about "keeping people busy" than their own profits?
I’m not the one you were referring to, but I have similar experiences. I’m living in Germany, and most bigger companies here have such issues. I also worked for companies in Netherlands and Island, so I assume it’s an European, if not global problem. No one is concerned about keeping people busy. It’s a systemic problem. And there are multiple reasons for it. One reason is that the bigger a company grows, the more hierarchy is necessary. But increasing hierarchy will lead to people doing the work are not the people that are most responsible for it. So we have people that should do the work but they aren’t too motivated because they are not responsible enough - they are too low in hierarchy level. And we have people that are responsible but don’t do the work. They delegate. If something goes wrong or takes too long, they will have enough time and skill to find an excuse. Another issue is that you need more people to get specific things done. At some point in time these things have been done, and you actually don’t need the amount of people anymore. But you can’t quit them because of worker’s laws. You maybe even don’t want to quit them because you think you still need them. People, of course, tend to find reasons why their own work is important. And they will communicate that. And the chance is good you’ll believe that and don’t question it enough. There are more reasons for that. But it’s a fact that in many, many companies the economical results of a lot of employees is almost zero. If you don’t believe this, just google the biggest companies in Germany, pick one, apply for an office job and start to work there. It won’t take a month until you’ll find out. Btw. I don’t want to criticize the situation too much. Probably it’s good that people are employed, even if they don’t work efficiently. Otherwise the unemployment rate would be much higher. Then again, Germany‘s economy is flatlining and a crash is not unlikely.
Sounds like you're describing the principal-agent problem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal–agent_problem
> But you can’t quit them because of worker’s laws
This is generally not a problem in the US.
It's like saying "if you know half of your advertising dollars are wasted, why don't you just cut your ad buy in half?"
I still remember the joke from my first job:
Q: How many people work at this office?
A: About half.
An apt analogy. Circling back to scientific research, I'm sure an investigator would be more than happy not to spend the time, effort, and grant money on a project that wasn't going to produce worthwhile results. If only we could know in advance without doing the work.
That does not, of course, mean that "most research being produced isn't really research, just people keeping busy" or whatever other nonsense an uninformed outsider feels like spewing.
Most people involved like hiring more people.
Workers generally like jobs where the workload is low. Managers gain status by having bigger teams, whether they need the extra people or not. Even investors often prefer hiring (a sign of growth) to layoffs, and executives are mostly concerned with pleasing investors.
Even well run tech companies with money to burn hired more people than they needed.
Companies can lay off thousands of employees and not have it affect growth, profits or, really, the workload of remaining employees. How could that be possible if everyone's work is so crucial?
Everyone (eh, most) believes their work is crucial.
There are cognitive biases like the self-serving bias, or the IKEA effect, which leads individuals to overvalue their own contributions, as well as subjective importance derived from their immediate impact and daily responsibilities. And of course limited visibility into the broader organizational priorities often obscures how different roles contribute to overall growth and success.
The people doing the hiring are typically not the people concerned about profits at medium and large sized companies. Sure someone has to approve the headcount numbers, but realistically this is an extremely flawed process.
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Why do you think profits are important?
I would think that profits are important to investors, since that's why they invest in the first place. Maybe not though.
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Ever since I first read this theory, I have always been wondering how credible is this. Where have you heard it from ?
I am not sure, but probably related: https://evonomics.com/why-capitalism-creates-pointless-jobs-....
The Bullshit Jobs jobs theory has been widely discredited by researchers, but you probably won't believe them. Consider that most business is B2B so it makes sense that the casual observer would not know what it's for. Additionally, the Bullshit Jobs book relies on a magazine survey, actual studies shows that the percent of people who consider their jobs meaningless is very low and also decreasing over time
> the percent of people who consider their jobs meaningless
Worth to point out that there is a huge difference between people considering their jobs meaningless AND their job being meaningless, though.
No, but it's a core part of the Bullshit Jobs theory, that the jobs are obviously bullshit to everyone involved. I would suggest that most jobs that aren't particularly valuable are probably not locally recognised as such (i.e. by the person or by their manager).
(In general I think while plenty of people are familiar with varying levels of pointless effort in their jobs, it's rare that a whole job consists of that, at least as far as the person doing it and the person hiring for it are concerned)
I think you're right, but it's not how I remember it for some reason.
I didn't read the book "Bullshit Jobs" [1] as an attempt to quantify how many jobs were bullshit. The author was an anthropologist with no interest in quantifying the economic impact. It's lots of amusing anecdotes from frustrated workers and a nudge for people to question the efficiency of capitalism.
At least that's how I read it. But reading the wikipedia page it sounds like a lot of people fixated on the idea that society could double its efficiency. Hard to know if there's a correct interpretation of the book's claims, and unfortunately we can't ask: the author David Graeber died in 2020.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs
> while he claims that 50% of jobs are useless, less than 20% of workers feel that way, and those who feel their jobs are useless do not correlate with whether their job is useless. (Garbage collectors, janitors, and other essential workers more often felt like their jobs were useless than people in jobs classified by Graeber as useless.)
Well, again, there is a huge difference between one's own perception of their job being useful or not. I believe garbage collectors, janitors, and nurses, are not examples of useless jobs. Useless jobs are mainly in the office, called "paper pushers". I mean come on, have you not been to any jobs (nor heard of any) where you had to pretend you were busy just to get paid? I saw plenty of cases.
>The Bullshit Jobs jobs theory has been widely discredited by researchers, but you probably won't believe them. Consider that most business is B2B so it makes sense that the casual observer would not know what it's for.
I'm not sure how it's possible that anyone over the age of 30 can say something like this with a straight face. Have you ever worked anywhere? I'd love to know how the "researchers" have discredited this. I'd also love to see their other papers (likely, also, bullshit).