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posted by janrinok on Monday November 13 2023, @02:55PM   Printer-friendly
from the I-just-want-to-bang-on-me-drum-all-day dept.

Employees in financial, sales and management occupations are more likely to conclude that their jobs are of little use to society:

In recent years, research showed that many professionals consider their work to be socially useless. Various explanations have been proposed for the phenomenon. The much-discussed "bullshit jobs theory" by the American anthropologist David Graeber, for example, states that some jobs are objectively useless and that this occurs more frequently in certain occupations than others.

Other researchers suggested that the reason people felt their jobs were useless was solely because they were routine and lacked autonomy or good management rather than anything intrinsic to their work. However, this is only one part of the story, as a recent study by sociologist Simon Walo of the University of Zurich shows. It is the first to give quantitative support to the relevance of the occupations.

[...] "The original evidence presented by Graeber was mainly qualitative, which made it difficult to assess the magnitude of the problem," says Walo. "This study extends previous analyses by drawing on a rich, under-utilised dataset and provides new evidence. This paper is therefore the first to find quantitative evidence supporting the argument that the occupation can be decisive for the perceived pointlessness." Walo also found that the share of workers who consider their jobs socially useless is higher in the private sector than in the non-profit or the public sector.

However, Walo's study also confirms other factors that influence employees' perceptions of their own work, including, e.g., alienation, unfavorable working conditions and social interaction. "Employees' assessment of whether their work is perceived as socially useless is a very complex issue that needs to be approached from different angles," the author therefore concludes. "It depends on various factors that do not necessarily have anything to do with the actual usefulness of work as claimed by Graeber. For example, people may also view their work as socially useless because unfavorable working conditions make it seem pointless."

Journal Reference:
Simon Walo: 'Bullshit' After All? Why People Consider Their Jobs Socially Useless. Work, Employment and Society. 21 July 2023. DOI:10.1177/09500170231175771

Related:
    Bullshit Jobs and the Yoke of Managerial Feudalism
    Why Capitalism Creates Pointless Jobs


Original Submission

Related Stories

Why Capitalism Creates Pointless Jobs 125 comments

On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber.

In the year 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that technology would have advanced sufficiently by century's end that countries like Great Britain or the United States would achieve a 15-hour work week. There's every reason to believe he was right. In technological terms, we are quite capable of this. And yet it didn't happen. Instead, technology has been marshalled, if anything, to figure out ways to make us all work more. In order to achieve this, jobs have had to be created that are, effectively, pointless. Huge swathes of people, in Europe and North America in particular, spend their entire working lives performing tasks they secretly believe do not really need to be performed. The moral and spiritual damage that comes from this situation is profound. It is a scar across our collective soul. Yet virtually no one talks about it.

Why did Keynes' promised utopia – still being eagerly awaited in the '60s – never materialise? The standard line today is that he didn't figure in the massive increase in consumerism. Given the choice between less hours and more toys and pleasures, we've collectively chosen the latter. This presents a nice morality tale, but even a moment's reflection shows it can't really be true. Yes, we have witnessed the creation of an endless variety of new jobs and industries since the '20s, but very few have anything to do with the production and distribution of sushi, iPhones, or fancy sneakers.

[...] And these numbers do not even reflect on all those people whose job is to provide administrative, technical, or security support for these industries, or for that matter the whole host of ancillary industries (dog-washers, all-night pizza deliverymen) that only exist because everyone else is spending so much of their time working in all the other ones. These are what I propose to call "bullshit jobs."

It's as if someone were out there making up pointless jobs just for the sake of keeping us all working. And here, precisely, lies the mystery. In capitalism, this is exactly what is not supposed to happen.

http://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/

David Graeber is a Professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics.


Ed Note: Link to John Maynard Keynes was NOT in the original article.

Original Submission

Bullshit Jobs and the Yoke of Managerial Feudalism 37 comments

In an interview, anthropologist David Graeber answers questions about the modern workplace and the purposeless jobs that fill it.

Not since Dilbert has truth been spoken to power in soulless work settings. But the cartoon character's successor may be David Graeber. In 2013 he achieved viral fame with cubicle zombies everywhere after he published a short essay on the prevalence of work that had no social or economic reason to exist, which he called "bullshit jobs". The wide attention seemed to confirm his thesis.

Mr Graeber, an anthropologist at the London School of Economics, has expanded on the ideas in a recent book. He responded to five questions from The Economist's Open Future initiative. He rails against "feudal retinues of basically useless flunkies." As he puts it: "People want to feel they are transforming the world around them in a way that makes some kind a positive difference."

[...] One thing it shows is that the whole "lean and mean" ideal is applied much more to productive workers than to office cubicles. It's not at all uncommon for the same executives who pride themselves on downsizing and speed-ups on the shop floor, or in delivery and so forth, to use the money saved at least in part to fill their offices with feudal retinues of basically useless flunkies.

From The Economist : Bullshit jobs and the yoke of managerial feudalism


Original Submission

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  • (Score: 4, Touché) by RedGreen on Monday November 13 2023, @03:01PM (21 children)

    by RedGreen (888) on Monday November 13 2023, @03:01PM (#1332710)

    I agree and would add advertiser to the list and am sure if I started thinking could think of countless more additions.

    --
    "I modded down, down, down, and the flames went higher." -- Sven Olsen
    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Opportunist on Monday November 13 2023, @03:17PM (5 children)

      by Opportunist (5545) on Monday November 13 2023, @03:17PM (#1332717)

      Most people who are actually useless don't feel that way, most of them consider themselves mighty important.

      • (Score: 2) by krishnoid on Monday November 13 2023, @04:38PM

        by krishnoid (1156) on Monday November 13 2023, @04:38PM (#1332729)

        Then there's this bit [youtu.be]. I mean, his point is right in the title. I'd love to see a graph of employment statistics by job title over the centuries to see which sectors and positions come into and exit existence over time.

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by HiThere on Monday November 13 2023, @05:35PM (2 children)

        by HiThere (866) on Monday November 13 2023, @05:35PM (#1332750) Journal

        Not necessarily. A lot of this may be because of places where the status of a manager increases as the number of folks that work under him. This gives a clear incentive to increase the number of jobs without regard to whether or not they are useful.

        --
        Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
        • (Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday November 13 2023, @05:44PM

          by JoeMerchant (3937) on Monday November 13 2023, @05:44PM (#1332756)

          > This gives a clear incentive to increase the number of jobs without regard to whether or not they are useful.

          They are useful to the manager seeking increased status.

          My first employer was an ex big-time M.D. and after a couple of years I started referring to the place as "Dr. X's toy shop" - because, basically, he had enough money from the medical practice he retired from to pay us to make things for him... things that seemed outwardly to be beneficial for healthcare, but ultimately they were just whatever he found interesting (and potentially explosively popular / valuable) at the moment. Were they useful? The commercial market would seem to say: mostly not. But they were useful to at least entertain our M.D. with dreams of inventing "the next big thing" like the last big thing he did 30 years earlier that generated much of the royalty stream that we now enjoyed as market-competitive engineering salaries.

          Imagine a tale of two Egyptian Pharaohs, one builds a big pyramid, the other wants to build a bigger pyramid (because the Pharoah-Gods are just as petty as humans, after all) - was the labor of all the pyramid constructors useful? Is a middle-manager building his employee empire within a large corporation any different? The workers still get to have a beer at night after they knock off from a long day's toil under the pyramid builders... so that's useful to them.

          --
          🌻🌻 [google.com]
        • (Score: 2) by Opportunist on Monday November 13 2023, @07:29PM

          by Opportunist (5545) on Monday November 13 2023, @07:29PM (#1332779)

          In such places it's pretty easy to find the most useless person.

          Hint: It's the one on the top of that rubbish pile.

      • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday November 14 2023, @06:21AM

        by Reziac (2489) on Tuesday November 14 2023, @06:21AM (#1332853) Homepage

        "Walo also found that the share of workers who consider their jobs socially useless is higher in the private sector than in the non-profit or the public sector."

        Yep... the ones in the public sector, who get to be little tin gods over the rest of us, they consider themselves high and mighty important.

        Ask anyone who has ever had to argue with the DMV.

        --
        And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
    • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday November 13 2023, @04:18PM (14 children)

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Monday November 13 2023, @04:18PM (#1332724)

      Advertising actually serves the purpose of communication, from a certain perspective. Advertisement of good things gets those things into the hands of people who benefit from them.

      Of course, advertising as practiced today is a deep commercial perversion of anything resembling "good" for anything other than the bottom lines of all participants, except the consumers. If consumers were to act on advertising for their own good, they should usually shun anything they see advertised in favor of similar things that don't invest in advertising, but this is not the way of human nature.

      I have a similar view of the stock markets... the main benefit of publicly traded companies is the required transparency into their business and the intrinsic incentive for traders to dig into that business and learn what's going on: many outside eyes openly comparing and critiquing the traded companies and ultimately giving them a sort of group-consensus score-card (stock price.) Since around 2010 (the broad dominance of retail investor sentiment over anything resembling professional analysis of fundamentals) the markets have gone a little crazy, not as crazy as politics, but a big leap in that direction. Still, the underlying drive for transparency and people actually learning from what is shared and thinking at least a little about it, is a mostly good thing for all involved.

      --
      🌻🌻 [google.com]
      • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday November 13 2023, @09:59PM (3 children)

        by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Monday November 13 2023, @09:59PM (#1332802) Journal

        Advertising cannot work at global scale. It is unworkable for every advertiser on the planet to pitch their product at me. It is better if I can search for vendors when I am shopping for something.

        And my frequently repeated saying that Advertising ruins every medium it ever touches. [soylentnews.org]

        --
        Satin worshipers are obsessed with high thread counts because they have so many daemons.
        • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday November 14 2023, @01:39AM (2 children)

          by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday November 14 2023, @01:39AM (#1332827)

          Yes, and no. Witness: Super Bowl commercials.

          Also: targeted advertising on the Internet...

          --
          🌻🌻 [google.com]
          • (Score: 2) by kazzie on Tuesday November 14 2023, @06:01AM (1 child)

            by kazzie (5309) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 14 2023, @06:01AM (#1332847)

            I know you're at the home of the "World Series" (different sport, I know), but the world does extend beyond the reach of NFL finals coverage.

            • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday November 14 2023, @11:13AM

              by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday November 14 2023, @11:13AM (#1332872)

              So: they don't play beer ads during the World Cup?

              --
              🌻🌻 [google.com]
      • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday November 14 2023, @06:23AM (9 children)

        by Reziac (2489) on Tuesday November 14 2023, @06:23AM (#1332855) Homepage

        "...critiquing the traded companies and ultimately giving them a sort of group-consensus score-card (stock price.)"

        I'd say this died the same day as Google's IPO.

        --
        And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
        • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday November 14 2023, @11:17AM (8 children)

          by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday November 14 2023, @11:17AM (#1332873)

          I think it was mortally wounded at Google's IPO, in ICU for the iPhone, hospice for the iPad, and TSLA gave the eulogy.

          You bet your ass I invested in TSLA.

          Perception is all there is.

          --
          🌻🌻 [google.com]
          • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday November 14 2023, @02:05PM (7 children)

            by Reziac (2489) on Tuesday November 14 2023, @02:05PM (#1332890) Homepage

            "Stock market: glorified loansharking. You lend companies money in return for what you hope will be a usorious interest rate.

            And that 'interest rate' is actually set by what other investors think of the stock.

            Consider it an experiment in mob psychology, with your money riding on the outcome. "

            -- me, in 2007

            --
            And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
            • (Score: 1, Disagree) by khallow on Tuesday November 14 2023, @03:29PM (4 children)

              by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 14 2023, @03:29PM (#1332908) Journal
              You can talk it down, but stock markets work. And they're way more stable these days than in the glorious past.
              • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday November 14 2023, @04:27PM (3 children)

                by Reziac (2489) on Tuesday November 14 2023, @04:27PM (#1332916) Homepage

                True. But the all-important stock price is also a direct driver of the short-sightedness (next quarter's bottom line takes priority over everything else) that has in turn driven a lot of the monopolizing consolidations and cost cutting at customer expense that we all gripe about. And I say that as a shareholder. I wish for a better system, tho one has not come along.

                --
                And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
                • (Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Tuesday November 14 2023, @04:54PM (2 children)

                  by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 14 2023, @04:54PM (#1332918) Journal

                  But the all-important stock price is also a direct driver of the short-sightedness (next quarter's bottom line takes priority over everything else) that has in turn driven a lot of the monopolizing consolidations and cost cutting at customer expense that we all gripe about.

                  I think rather the safe environment that has been created for the short-sighted combined with a huge pile of OPM (other peoples' money) is what drives that. We've eliminated a lot of business risk and there's a bunch of funds and other institutional investors playing with OPM that aren't accountable (for example, Black Rock, PIMCO, CalPERS). They would find a way to reward the short-sighted anyway with or without stock markets. And without the sting of occasional loss, they don't have incentive to change their ways.

                  • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday November 14 2023, @07:17PM (1 child)

                    by Reziac (2489) on Tuesday November 14 2023, @07:17PM (#1332939) Homepage

                    That too, and probably equally important. But the OPM might be less of a factor if next quarter's stock price wasn't so all-critical.

                    Maybe if stock prices were a running annual average, rather than This Instant. Tho I'm sure that notion has its own problems (for one it would kill short-term trading, tho I'm not sure that's a drawback).

                    --
                    And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
                    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday November 14 2023, @09:43PM

                      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 14 2023, @09:43PM (#1332963) Journal

                      Maybe if stock prices were a running annual average, rather than This Instant.

                      Imagine all the investors who would be on a cliff for a whole year every time there was a major incident or problem like Russia invading Ukraine. Because stock prices are immediately responsive, then we can use those markets to respond instantly to important news and other changes.

                      Even if you made this law, someone would route around the damage in an international market beyond the reach of national law. Then only the wealthy would be able to play this game.

            • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday November 14 2023, @03:46PM (1 child)

              by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday November 14 2023, @03:46PM (#1332909)

              It's not loan sharking, it's straight up Casino. There are more low-risk low-return options than the flashy Vegas games, but you can leverage and get into just about as high a risk as you can tolerate on Wall Street.

              --
              🌻🌻 [google.com]
              • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday November 14 2023, @04:30PM

                by Reziac (2489) on Tuesday November 14 2023, @04:30PM (#1332917) Homepage

                Yeah, I've seen some that aren't stocks, they're Russian Roulette.

                Me, I'm invested all in stodgy stuff like Borg-Warner. Which grows more slowly, but never loses.

                --
                And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
  • (Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday November 13 2023, @03:01PM (10 children)

    by Freeman (732) on Monday November 13 2023, @03:01PM (#1332711) Journal

    Places like Twitter exist. Talk about jobs that don't matter. At least the trash man knows he's doing something useful for people. Even, if his job is likely to be relegated to the robots as soon as possible. They already have systems here, where the driver doesn't need a buddy or to get out of the truck. They just use this arm thing to grab the barrel and dump it.

    --
    Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
    • (Score: 2, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday November 13 2023, @04:27PM (1 child)

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Monday November 13 2023, @04:27PM (#1332728)

      Twitter is no more, but even X is a communication platform. Communication is generally a good thing, with plenty of bad to point out, but on average it's better to be communicating than isolated.

      Better still, people who still use X, and especially those users who enthusiastically defend its new directions, they're openly communicating things about themselves just in those acts, regardless of what they are saying. It was like walking up to a stranger in 2020 and within the first minute of conversation them dropping the term "That China Virus," thanks, now I know much more clearly who I am dealing with. It's almost as distinctive a label as driving a modified diesel pickup truck and actively "rolling coal" while driving around town - the owner/driver of said vehicle has emblazoned themselves with a strong indicator of their beliefs, much more so than wearing a black armband or similar...

      --
      🌻🌻 [google.com]
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 13 2023, @05:06PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 13 2023, @05:06PM (#1332742)

        (e)X-Twitter

    • (Score: 3, Touché) by VLM on Monday November 13 2023, @04:50PM (6 children)

      by VLM (445) on Monday November 13 2023, @04:50PM (#1332735)

      Places like Twitter exist. Talk about jobs that don't matter.

      Its the classic "what they say its for" vs "what its really for"

      For example twitter is a containment zone for kosher hyper censored communication for church of the current thing acolytes. Keeps those people heads down on their phone and out of the real world where they'd get in the way of the rest of us. That's it's real purpose. True, twitter does a bad job of doing what they "say its for" but that doesn't mean it doesn't matter or its useless.

      • (Score: 4, Interesting) by crafoo on Monday November 13 2023, @05:34PM (3 children)

        by crafoo (6639) on Monday November 13 2023, @05:34PM (#1332749)

        plenty of very good things happening on twitter, and it's a matter of what you look into, who you follow. book clubs hang out on there, have discussion spaces. amateur wildlife photographers posting their images. people into writing weird shaders and discussion non-linear, chaotic systems. all kinds of cool things.

        as far as politics, it's taught me one thing quite effectively: democracy is a social game where winning is measured by who can collect the most retards around their public personality. most people shouldn't be voting.

        • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday November 13 2023, @05:47PM

          by JoeMerchant (3937) on Monday November 13 2023, @05:47PM (#1332759)

          >winning is measured by who can collect the most retards voters around their public personality.

          FTFY. While the correlation between retards and voters is strong, it's not a completely overlapped Venn diagram.

          --
          🌻🌻 [google.com]
        • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 13 2023, @09:02PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 13 2023, @09:02PM (#1332794)

          > most people shouldn't be voting.

          Which is why the Founders and Framers of the USA made it a Republic. Still have the problem of mass stupidity voting in idiots in Congress. Maybe worse, the brightest want nothing to do with politics. So, ...

          People are mostly stupid because they only know what they're being told by biased "news". When the 10/7 attacks happened to the Israelis, I went straight to certain video sites and saw what was going on. I didn't need news corporations' rushed and cherry-picked slant.

          • (Score: 3, Insightful) by crafoo on Wednesday November 15 2023, @06:28PM

            by crafoo (6639) on Wednesday November 15 2023, @06:28PM (#1333068)

            yeah. The 1780s are a great illustration. That weird lost decade. Hamilton lamented that the 13 colonies were an absurd mix of various forms of direct-democracies to varying degrees. They couldn't get anything done. It was a complete and utter mess. Later, his 4 years in congress smashed the young, optimistic, but naive feeling of liberalism and democracy.

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by ElizabethGreene on Tuesday November 14 2023, @01:28PM (1 child)

        by ElizabethGreene (6748) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 14 2023, @01:28PM (#1332886) Journal

        twitter is a containment zone for kosher hyper censored communication for church of the current thing acolytes

        This very much used to be the case, but no longer. There is pro-hamas/pro-Israel propaganda, Pro-Russia/Pro-Ukraine, pro-abortion/anti-abortion, every religion imaginable, cat pictures, workplace safety failures, everything under the sun. Some content gets tagged behind NSFW/sensitive labels or requires some digging, but it is nothing like old Twitter at all.

        A specific case in point, the Nashville police blocked publication of the documents left by a peron that killed a bunch of kids in an elementary school. Those documents leaked and were published on Twitter. Facebook, Reddit, Instagram, TikTok, and even f*ing iFunny blocked sharing them, but not Twitter.

        It has the freedom of 4chan now, with the racism and porn turned down from 11 to like a 6. I don't live the engagement farming people do, but I very much like being able to find perspectives radically different than my own.

        (Special thanks to Community Notes. They are out doing the Lord's work.)

        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday November 14 2023, @02:39PM

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 14 2023, @02:39PM (#1332902) Journal

          A specific case in point, the Nashville police blocked publication of the documents left by a peron that killed a bunch of kids in an elementary school. Those documents leaked and were published on Twitter. Facebook, Reddit, Instagram, TikTok, and even f*ing iFunny blocked sharing them, but not Twitter.

          It's interesting how so many social media sites respected this shifty suppression of knowledge. I don't think release of these pages is very high value to society, but it helps us understand the motives behind the shooting (since the shooter is dead, there are few other sources) and that's good enough a justification for their release.

    • (Score: 4, Funny) by kazzie on Tuesday November 14 2023, @06:03AM

      by kazzie (5309) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 14 2023, @06:03AM (#1332849)

      Places like Twitter exist. Talk about jobs that don't matter. At least the trash man knows he's doing something useful for people. Even, if his job is likely to be relegated to the robots as soon as possible.

      It took me a while to work out that you weren't referring to Elon Musk there.

  • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday November 13 2023, @03:08PM (7 children)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Monday November 13 2023, @03:08PM (#1332712) Journal

    While there is some value produced by people who work in finance, I would agree that sales and management are mostly but maybe not entirely useless.

    How common of a tale is it to hear of managers who don't even understand what they manage. They are mostly someone in a job that is a placeholder for who gets the blame when something blows up.

    How much do we need sales people? Especially those who work on commission. People whose job it is to convince you that you need something that you never realized you needed, and you need it badly and right now! If I need something, I will seek it out. I don't need sales people (or ads for that matter) to pop up in my face.

    --
    Satin worshipers are obsessed with high thread counts because they have so many daemons.
    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Monday November 13 2023, @04:55PM (3 children)

      by VLM (445) on Monday November 13 2023, @04:55PM (#1332737)

      I don't need sales people

      I did work for awhile at a really big confuseopoly where the management and procedures were so out of touch with modern reality that the primary job of the sales team was helping customers navigate the disaster.

      True you're correct you don't need salespeople for something like retail sales logistics where people fill out their own order forms online at Amazon to get product. But there are confuseopolies where the providers are so dysfunctional you'd need a hired guide to navigate them if "salespeople" didn't exist.

      For something like the electric company or the local phone company you can get away with 'customer service' doing that work but larger more custom projects eventually need someone to translate human speech into corporate speech, or translate one dialect of corporatespeak into another.

      • (Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Tuesday November 14 2023, @01:35PM

        by ElizabethGreene (6748) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 14 2023, @01:35PM (#1332888) Journal

        I like the term "Confusopoly". I helped a customer save $30k this year by clarifying dumb licensing and Confusopoly is a perfect fit for the term.

        It's not even malicious bureaucracy, it just accumulates over time until one day you realize you need help piloting through it like the reefs around a coral island.

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by istartedi on Tuesday November 14 2023, @11:54PM (1 child)

        by istartedi (123) on Tuesday November 14 2023, @11:54PM (#1332977) Journal

        It sounds like what you've just described is a Sales Engineer [wikipedia.org]. I first heard about it in school. I knew some people who were not only capable of passing the technical stuff, but also very sociable. They seemed cut out for such a position and perhaps that's where a few of them ended up.

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        • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday November 15 2023, @12:32PM

          by VLM (445) on Wednesday November 15 2023, @12:32PM (#1333031)

          Oh they had those on the team, also the paperwork was so painful they hired coordinator non-technical folks to navigate that minefield.

          That was the problem, those companies (unfortunately not just one) had competitors that were better run where one salesperson could do it all, but having to fight the company meant they needed a small team of sales dude, coordinator to fight the paperwork, and a sales engineer to fight the technical stuff.

          I knew some people who were not only capable of passing the technical stuff, but also very sociable

          I think they make more money on Youtube now LOL.

    • (Score: 5, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday November 13 2023, @05:30PM

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Monday November 13 2023, @05:30PM (#1332747)

      >How common of a tale is it to hear of managers who don't even understand what they manage.

      You know, I used to feel this way. I watched a partner company of ours employ a revolving door of "marketing managers" every 12-18 months they'd have a new one. But, I failed to appreciate the importance of one key message that a few of them delivered over the years: "One of your widgets is worth about $7500 to the market it sells in." We spun a new improved generation of widget, it cost us $600 per copy to make. We had a competitor making "simpler, cheaper" widgets who sold about 4x as many of them as we did, their price was $4000 each. So, with our new, better in all objective measures, easier to use, ready drop-in replacement for our competitors' $4K widgets and our own $7.5K widgets, I thought from my engineering perspective: "Drop our price to $3500, sell 5x as many widgets!" And we did, drop the price. And we sold exactly as many widgets as we did previously at $7500, but now we were making $2900 profit per unit sold instead of the $6900 profit we could have been making. Turns out that our customers were loyal to us, and the competitor's customers were loyal to them, and a $500 price advantage wasn't nearly enough to get them to give up their clunky old metal boxes for a sleek new better performing smaller plastic box. They continued to outsell us 4-1, without dropping their price.

      Marketing guys knew this would happen. They didn't know how to compute a tip on a dinner check without a calculator, but they knew that our market was based on loyalty, not price, price was just a ceiling - and having lowered our price from $7500 to $3500, we could never go back up again.

      If you remember the "Ginger" hype before the Segway came out... the inventor, a brilliant and very successful mechanical engineer, convinced himself and a whole lot of other similar highly successful people that "Ginger" would change the world. From his very logical, very correct, perspective it all made sense. What he didn't appreciate was that the vast majority of the world will never fork out $5K for a personal mobility scooter, no matter how practical and ultimately cost-saving in the big picture it might be. Even more so: his "standing wheelchair" precursor to the Segway made even more sense: give the handicapped population $20K wheelchairs capable of safely climbing stairs and otherwise accessing existing infrastructure: save hundreds of millions in building renovations for accessibility. Problems: A) nobody wants to "give" anyone a $20K wheelchair, and the vast majority of the handicapped who need one can't afford it B) the construction industry doesn't want to "save" millions on anything, they want all the work they can get, C) politicians listen to the construction industry a lot closer than they listen to poor disabled people.

      Big circle back to large companies full of "useless" middle managers. I mostly agree, except: there is power in diversity of perspective. If even some of those middle managers aren't afraid to occasionally speak their mind, and their bosses are occasionally willing to listen, the big companies can avoid big investments on "incorrect assessments of how the world will react" projects like the Segway and standing wheelchair. In rare happy accidents, actual good ideas might even bubble up to the top through the ranks of infighting silos to be heard and acted on.

      >How much do we need sales people? Especially those who work on commission.

      With no income, there is no money for salaries, therefore no employees (beyond volunteers, which do exist but are rare), and therefore no business.

      I worked for 12 years for a company that made the best "mouse trap" in the world, it most certainly did not sell itself. CEO was not interested in doing "real" sales, so we skipped from one investment to the next pursuing inventive technologies, until 9-11 shifted our investment income away from medical devices into homeland security, where we could not follow - not because we were incapable - but because the world perceived us as "Medical Device" experts and would literally have hired a strung out meth head ex-Marine with a security clearance to do their homeland security project before us, because: perception is everything.

      --
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    • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday November 13 2023, @05:41PM (1 child)

      by HiThere (866) on Monday November 13 2023, @05:41PM (#1332754) Journal

      Management is a truly necessary specialization. This doesn't mean that there isn't a whole lot of bad and self-serving management. And even good managers have a tendency to decide things in a way that favors them and folks like them. But it's necessary anyway. It just needs to be properly managed.

      --
      Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday November 13 2023, @05:53PM

        by JoeMerchant (3937) on Monday November 13 2023, @05:53PM (#1332762)

        A big part of the U.S. success in WW I and II was: management. Logistics underpinning a large chain of command where everything worked toward a singular purpose with at least cooperative strategies.

        A single General can't command a million man army by himself. Even if 2/3 of that army is "lost" to the front lines as middle-management officer ranks, that's still over 300,000 fighting men acting together toward the goal. If they are up against an army led by a single man without effective middle management, they will absolutely destroy them because: one man cannot effectively command and control 100,000 men. Not even if he has Twitter.

        --
        🌻🌻 [google.com]
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by looorg on Monday November 13 2023, @03:29PM (18 children)

    by looorg (578) on Monday November 13 2023, @03:29PM (#1332720)

    Is my own work worthwhile for society or humanity as a whole? No. Not at all. Very little redeeming value I would say. For me the value is in large that I get $ that I can do things I like or need with that.

    That said the paper appears to be more about how you feel about your job. You find value in your job if you like doing it. If the management is shit, the tasks are shit etc etc then you find that your job is shit. Even if perhaps you are contributing a valuable service to society as a whole. You are making a sacrifice so that others can have it better. It doesn't seem to be reflected very well in the study tho.

    Employees in financial, sales and management occupations are more likely to conclude that their jobs are of little use to society.

    That is hardly a surprise as none of these groups actually do or create anything, see table one in the article or paper.

    Sales people are just trying to sell as many things as possible to others, no matter the need -- it's just about creating a want. Perhaps the people become happy with more things but it's doubtful. As noted very low value to society and it's probably then reflected on the people in these jobs. But it could also be a difference in what are you are of sales, what you sell and to whom. Basic needs things like food are perhaps more important or worthwhile compared to some other fields.

    The finance people are these days almost trying to create money from money but not really providing anything of worth -- degenerate gamblers the lot of them. But with a fancy title and a nice office at the bank.

    Managers as noted do nothing but manage, trying to make other people do things. Quite often useless things with no redeeming quality to society. No wonder they feel worthless. Considering now that one of the last bastions of management have fallen and people don't even have to come into the office -- their job is now even more worthless. Then don't even have peon to lord over at the office building.

    https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/09500170231175771 [sagepub.com]

    They don't really go into which groups or people have useful jobs, figure 1 gives some indication of it. People at libraries and in education apparently feel that their jobs are worthwhile. Oddly people in transportation does not. Bringing things to people and places should be fairly important, it would be hell if we all had to go to places and pick them up ourselves. Still perhaps not a feeling of worth to them, but a very useful service to society as a whole. They might just have to suffer for our benefit.

    I guess it could also be that people higher up then management on the useless figure are just not people that have responded in large enough quantities. After all lots of mangement people answered, very few people in construction did.

    • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday November 13 2023, @04:46PM (17 children)

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Monday November 13 2023, @04:46PM (#1332733)

      There is intrinsic value to society in being gainfully employed, because of how society is structured if you aren't gainfully employed (or somehow gifted with inheritance, lottery win, etc.) you are soon homeless, a burden on community services, negative input to the tax base, etc. This is, of course, entirely artificial and optional, see: UBI.

      If there's a company in your town paying winos to piss on their gardens, well, that may be too valuable a service, how about: paying idiots to stand on street corners spinning signs advertising god-knows-what... if that pays well enough to keep the idiot out of the welfare lines... that's a valuable service to the community as a whole.

      Or, we can just line up all the winos and idiots and turn them into organ donors... I believe it was Niven who wrote a short story about repeat offender traffic violators and organ donation...

      --
      🌻🌻 [google.com]
      • (Score: 4, Insightful) by VLM on Monday November 13 2023, @04:58PM (16 children)

        by VLM (445) on Monday November 13 2023, @04:58PM (#1332739)

        because of how society is structured

        Also see the political authoritarian aspect of getting people used to and comfortable with doing whatever the boss says.

        Retired or rich or self employed folks are a huge thorn in the side of authoritarian politicians because they don't mindlessly obey.

        That's one of the motivations of "everyone must have a job" so they all have a boss they're used to obeying, so they get used to the idea of mindlessly obeying whomever is in charge.

        • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday November 13 2023, @05:35PM (15 children)

          by JoeMerchant (3937) on Monday November 13 2023, @05:35PM (#1332752)

          I wonder, with the WWII vets almost all dead, and the Korean and Vietnam war draftee veterans (and those who narrowly escaped serving) mostly bitter about their experience, and basically 50 years of no military draft now... is it time for that authoritarian structure to wither away? Do we have a viable replacement yet? Legalizing marijuana would seem to be a slight pendulum swing back from the peak of "do as we say because we say so" - but... it feels almost hollow, like a token thrown to the masses to keep them feeling like they're making progress when they really aren't.

          And where do we go from here?
          Which is the way that's clear

          Still looking for that blue jean, baby queen
          Prettiest girl I ever seen
          See her shake on the movie screen, Jimmy Dean

          --
          🌻🌻 [google.com]
          • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday November 14 2023, @06:36AM (14 children)

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 14 2023, @06:36AM (#1332857) Journal

            I wonder, with the WWII vets almost all dead, and the Korean and Vietnam war draftee veterans (and those who narrowly escaped serving) mostly bitter about their experience, and basically 50 years of no military draft now... is it time for that authoritarian structure to wither away?

            Why would that happen? The problem with this scenario is that it wouldn't be replaced with something better, right? Even if all the existing authoritarian structures withered away, some new authoritarian structure would appear and eat the lunches of whatever got left behind. Show us this better system before fantasizing about the ending of the existing systems.

            Legalizing marijuana would seem to be a slight pendulum swing back from the peak of "do as we say because we say so" - but... it feels almost hollow, like a token thrown to the masses to keep them feeling like they're making progress when they really aren't.

            Compare [soylentnews.org] the market sizes of the semi-legal marijuana market (remember marijuana remains illegal at the federal level!) to the illegal drug market. The latter is about an order of magnitude larger. There's still a long way to go, but it's remarkable how much progress has been made on that front.

            • (Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday November 14 2023, @11:26AM (13 children)

              by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday November 14 2023, @11:26AM (#1332875)

              >some new authoritarian structure would appear

              Modern technology, instant global communication, literacy, all good reasons for authoritarianism to wither and die.

              >Show us this better system

              It looks just like the current system, with incrementally increasing transparency, financial liberty (aka equality), and reduction of tolerance for violence particularly as social control (police/military).

              --
              🌻🌻 [google.com]
              • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday November 14 2023, @02:16PM (12 children)

                by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 14 2023, @02:16PM (#1332895) Journal
                Growing regulation of society - huge reason for authoritarianism to rear its ugly head. Plus, I was also thinking of businesses. A lot of hierarchical structures in the business world thrive despite the long standing presence of potential replacements for them.
                • (Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday November 14 2023, @03:55PM (11 children)

                  by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday November 14 2023, @03:55PM (#1332910)

                  >Growing regulation of society - huge reason for authoritarianism to rear its ugly head.

                  A. as if any "Western" society of the past 500 years was ever un-regulated

                  B. as if authoritarianism is anything but regulation at the whim of the authorities

                  The one "good" sound bite that ever came from the Orange Donald was his: "For every new regulation passed, we need to strike two existing ones from the books." It was completely decoupled from reality, but the sentiment was good and it's the kind of thing that we should continue to strive for.

                  >A lot of hierarchical structures in the business world thrive despite the long standing presence of potential replacements for them.

                  I wouldn't call it thriving, I would call it surviving in spite of itself by virtue of stranglehold advantages in the marketplace. Barriers to competition, access to the creation of regulations, simple mind-share saturation control by virtue of superior size / financial capability. Those things make the inefficient multi-layer middle management structures possible to continue to dominate over more efficient newcomers to the playing field.

                  --
                  🌻🌻 [google.com]
                  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday November 14 2023, @04:24PM (10 children)

                    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 14 2023, @04:24PM (#1332915) Journal

                    A. as if any "Western" society of the past 500 years was ever un-regulated

                    Regulation is not a bit flag. It's a matter of degree. Some were considerably less regulated than others.

                    B. as if authoritarianism is anything but regulation at the whim of the authorities

                    It is BTW. But my point here is that when you have a huge amount of regulation, then that's where the centralized power structures thrive. Because there's considerable economies of scale to that environment for the big players.

                    I wouldn't call it thriving, I would call it surviving in spite of itself by virtue of stranglehold advantages in the marketplace. Barriers to competition, access to the creation of regulations, simple mind-share saturation control by virtue of superior size / financial capability. Those things make the inefficient multi-layer middle management structures possible to continue to dominate over more efficient newcomers to the playing field.

                    In other words, thriving.

                    • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday November 14 2023, @06:15PM (9 children)

                      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday November 14 2023, @06:15PM (#1332929)

                      >Some were considerably less regulated than others.

                      When you live in an uncrowded village on the edge of a seemingly infinite forest, there would seem to be less need for regulation.

                      >Because there's considerable economies of scale to that environment for the big players.

                      Which is why the big population needs to wield regulation against the big players, instead of submitting [youtube.com].

                      >In other words, thriving.

                      At the expense of efficiency, meaningful work for those employed therein, the livelihood of better organizations that simply lack the scale to benefit from their advantages... yeah, they thrive in the current highly regulated environment, which is why the regulations need to be reshaped.

                      --
                      🌻🌻 [google.com]
                      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday November 14 2023, @09:24PM (8 children)

                        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 14 2023, @09:24PM (#1332960) Journal

                        When you live in an uncrowded village on the edge of a seemingly infinite forest, there would seem to be less need for regulation.

                        And if nobody lived in that non sequitur, then there would be no need for regulation at all!

                        Which is why the big population needs to wield regulation against the big players, instead of submitting.

                        It's like that old dude in Star Wars. The more you wield regulation against the big players with the very regulatory environment they thrive in, the stronger they get.

                        At the expense of efficiency, meaningful work for those employed therein, the livelihood of better organizations that simply lack the scale to benefit from their advantages... yeah, they thrive in the current highly regulated environment, which is why the regulations need to be reshaped.

                        In other words, thriving. Perhaps there's some misconception here? Does anyone think that the environment that only big companies thrive in would be exactly the same as the environment that employees would thrive in? Sure, there's probably some overlap - like not being in the middle of a nuclear war, for example - but interests don't coincide perfectly in this case.

                        I find it interesting how little thought there is to why problems are problems. I gather there is some sort of assumption that greedy people suddenly discovered greed a few decades ago. But even with that, connecting the dots seems a bit difficult. My take here is that the very tools we've used to make a magnificent civilization are being misused by us. Here, we have the ability to regulate the bad actors in our society, so we heavily regulate everyone for a variety of reasons, some purely imaginary. There's no understanding of what works and what doesn't.

                        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday November 14 2023, @09:47PM (7 children)

                          by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday November 14 2023, @09:47PM (#1332964)

                          >The more you wield regulation against the big players with the very regulatory environment they thrive in, the stronger they get.

                          The single most asinine statement yet, I'm sure you can get worse, but there is absolutely nothing that guarantees the perpetual growth of income inequality on personal or corporate levels. It happens because we have let it happen, in a big way since the Trickle Down speech. From the late 1920s up until then, there was a dramatic reversal of power concentration away from the hands of the wealthiest and it was driven in large part by: regulations.

                          >Does anyone think that the environment that only big companies thrive in would be exactly the same as the environment that employees would thrive in?

                          When companies serve people instead of the other way around, absolutely.

                          >I gather there is some sort of assumption that greedy people suddenly discovered greed a few decades ago.

                          As usual, you gather incorrectly again. Greed has been around since long before the pyramids were raised. What I often lament about the past few decades is that the progress my parents enjoyed has been largely erased with what amounts to a slow slide toward poverty for those below the top 20-ish percentile of income in this country.

                          >There's no understanding of what works and what doesn't.

                          Everybody has different perspectives. From mine, I don't lick the boots of "my betters" hoping for some crumbs to fall.

                          --
                          🌻🌻 [google.com]
                          • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday November 20 2023, @04:56PM (6 children)

                            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday November 20 2023, @04:56PM (#1333624) Journal
                            Sorry, forgot about this.

                            The more you wield regulation against the big players with the very regulatory environment they thrive in, the stronger they get.

                            The single most asinine statement yet, I'm sure you can get worse, but there is absolutely nothing that guarantees the perpetual growth of income inequality on personal or corporate levels.

                            Was anyone looking for such guarantees? Not I. And truth is an absolute defense here. Whatever regulation is frequently intended to do, it also creates an economy of scale favoring large businesses. That creates a large barrier to entry which is exactly what a low competition environment needs in order to succeed.

                            Does anyone think that the environment that only big companies thrive in would be exactly the same as the environment that employees would thrive in?

                            When companies serve people instead of the other way around, absolutely.

                            You don't get that with government bureaucracy which has a less tenuous connection to "serve people" than a business does.

                            I gather there is some sort of assumption that greedy people suddenly discovered greed a few decades ago.

                            As usual, you gather incorrectly again. Greed has been around since long before the pyramids were raised. What I often lament about the past few decades is that the progress my parents enjoyed has been largely erased with what amounts to a slow slide toward poverty for those below the top 20-ish percentile of income in this country.

                            Fix zoning and health care then. Don't bother tilting at the big corp windmill, especially when you're just making that problem worse.

                            Everybody has different perspectives. From mine, I don't lick the boots of "my betters" hoping for some crumbs to fall.

                            I have yet to see anyone on SN express even a slight desire to lick corporate boots. Government boots? Well, that's different.

                            • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday November 26 2023, @02:33PM (5 children)

                              by JoeMerchant (3937) on Sunday November 26 2023, @02:33PM (#1334218)

                              >You don't get that with government bureaucracy which has a less tenuous connection to "serve people" than a business does.

                              -1 disagree. Government bureaucrazy, as bad as it is, does ultimately serve people much more directly, and even efficiently, than big business does. Lacking regulation, we don't get a marvelous fabric of mom and pop shops who know and care about their customers and employees, we get a scattering of WalMart SuperCenters every 100 miles.

                              >I have yet to see anyone on SN express even a slight desire to lick corporate boots. Government boots? Well, that's different.

                              Read your own posting history, then look in the mirror and stick out your tongue - that black stripe is certainly corporate boot polish.

                              I agree about Government boot lickers, especially those backing the NeoFascists.

                              --
                              🌻🌻 [google.com]
                              • (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday November 26 2023, @05:58PM (4 children)

                                by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday November 26 2023, @05:58PM (#1334252) Journal

                                Government bureaucrazy, as bad as it is, does ultimately serve people much more directly, and even efficiently, than big business does. Lacking regulation, we don't get a marvelous fabric of mom and pop shops who know and care about their customers and employees, we get a scattering of WalMart SuperCenters every 100 miles.

                                Except, of course, when government bureaucracy doesn't meet even the low standards of big business. There are so many counterexamples to the above, one wonders why you bother making the assertion.

                                There is no "lacking regulation". This is not even on the table, unless society collapses.

                                As to Walmart, marvelous fabrics of overpriced mom and pop shops who might know and care about their customers or might not, is overrated. Walmart does that stuff too. Even a family business.

                                I have yet to see anyone on SN express even a slight desire to lick corporate boots. Government boots? Well, that's different.

                                Read your own posting history, then look in the mirror and stick out your tongue - that black stripe is certainly corporate boot polish.

                                In other words, yet another JoeMerchant narrative divorced from reality. You apparently have yet to run into genuine corporate bootlickers - pretty strange given your work history and numerous anecdotes.

                                • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday November 26 2023, @06:25PM (3 children)

                                  by JoeMerchant (3937) on Sunday November 26 2023, @06:25PM (#1334259)

                                  What is your personal experience on the inside of government and big business?

                                  I have done state Dept. Of Transportation, planning division, and my current post of 10 years in a Billion dollar annual sales division of a 30+ B$ sales company. Crazy both places for sure, but in terms of wasted man hours (which is where the real money goes) the private company surpasses the state by a wide margin. Then we can compare travel budgets, sales/advertising budgets, etc and the state wins by a factor of 10 or more...

                                  >divorced from reality.

                                  Divorced from your reality. Thanks for the window into your fantasy world.

                                  --
                                  🌻🌻 [google.com]
                                  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday November 27 2023, @02:01PM (2 children)

                                    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday November 27 2023, @02:01PM (#1334336) Journal

                                    What is your personal experience on the inside of government and big business?

                                    I have done state Dept. Of Transportation, planning division, and my current post of 10 years in a Billion dollar annual sales division of a 30+ B$ sales company. Crazy both places for sure, but in terms of wasted man hours (which is where the real money goes) the private company surpasses the state by a wide margin. Then we can compare travel budgets, sales/advertising budgets, etc and the state wins by a factor of 10 or more...

                                    I've worked jobs in both spheres too. I however can figure out what a corporate bootlicker looks like.

                                    First, let's Godwin this thread. We have real world examples of governments so hostile to their societies and the common good that they committed huge acts of genocide and initiated wars that left hundreds of millions dead last century. No analogue in big business unless you choose to count the Congo Free State (I choose to blame Belgium instead, the corporation was just an implementation detail).

                                    At the federal level, we have numerous examples: the above mentioned war on drugs, agricultural subsidy policy that wastes food and makes it more expensive, the pretext of bald lies t for the Iraq invasion, NASA's obstruction of human progress in space for 30 years [soylentnews.org], the huge social programs that are financially unviable (Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid), the routine hostility to businesses for political gain (such as the massive attacks on the gig economy and other politically unpopular business innovations), and the huge amount of corporate welfare to the well connected big businesses.

                                    Information is out there, should you choose to look.

                                    • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday November 27 2023, @03:07PM (1 child)

                                      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Monday November 27 2023, @03:07PM (#1334346)

                                      > We have real world examples of governments so hostile to their societies and the common good that they committed huge acts of genocide and initiated wars that left hundreds of millions dead

                                      Thus: dictatorships and fascism are bad, let's try to discourage that in government. Also, total KIAs in WWII: 53M, a bit short of "hundreds".

                                      >No analogue in big business unless you choose to count the Congo Free State

                                      East India Company, Forbes' Opium empire, Union Carbide in Bhopal and so many similar industrial travesties in so many other places, the current oxycontin/opioid situation in the US (750K+ deaths by overdose in the past 10 years, and continuing to accelerate) and elsewhere, you might also put the Colombian FARC situation in the lap of the unregulated drug industry (a huge business onto itself) and lack of competent government rather than lying it at the feet of their weak democracy.

                                      > the huge social programs that are financially unviable

                                      Much like your view of "the non-event that is climate change," those huge social programs have been viable from their inception through the present and likely can adapt without serious social upheaval. Sure, I'd like to re-write all those policies to something I think makes sense, but the basic thrust of those programs are likely to continue until well after my children are dead and buried. And, as long as we're touching on Climate Change, that's got the potential to kill Billions if it's handled poorly - which is how such things have historically been handled.

                                      >the routine hostility to businesses for political gain (such as the massive attacks on the gig economy and other politically unpopular business innovations), and the huge amount of corporate welfare to the well connected big businesses.

                                      I'm sorry, are you pro or con for those items? Do you see how they're different characterizations of the exact same events? Massive attacks on the gig economy are one way to characterize advancement of worker protections from predation by the profit makers - I can see how taking advantage of mass quantities of workers for the enrichment of a few is, and should be, politically unpopular. In the next breath, you're bashing corporate welfare? Like deregulation of environmental and worker protections? Or, is it only bad when you see a direct paper trail from your tax bill to some incentive program? When I see the deregulation of environmental protections in my back yard, I feel much more victimized by the system than when $0.37 of my $30K annual tax bill is handed over to a corporation as incentive/compensation for them NOT raping the land, polluting the groundwater and air, etc. Business thrives on predictability, businesses make plans then execute them for profit. If, in the course of execution of a legal business plan it becomes apparent that the greater good will be served by compensating the business for their investments to-date and changing the laws to make their previously legal plans no longer legal... that's good government.

                                      Now, straight up pork to big business is also quite popular, and that's where we should be steering our government away from dictatorship / fascist / oligarchy: one dollar one vote, more toward: one citizen one vote. Not that average voting citizens are the brightest bulbs among us, but they are better than dollars at deciding what does the most good for the most people.

                                      Unless you think we should all be serving the dollars?

                                      --
                                      🌻🌻 [google.com]
                                      • (Score: 1, Disagree) by khallow on Tuesday November 28 2023, @12:50AM

                                        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 28 2023, @12:50AM (#1334443) Journal

                                        Thus: dictatorships and fascism are bad, let's try to discourage that in government. Also, total KIAs in WWII: 53M, a bit short of "hundreds".

                                        More like 70 million, plus another 30 million from World War One, plus way too many genocides and government imposed famines. They get into the hundreds of millions easily.

                                        No analogue in big business unless you choose to count the Congo Free State

                                        East India Company, Forbes' Opium empire, Union Carbide in Bhopal and so many similar industrial travesties in so many other places, the current oxycontin/opioid situation in the US (750K+ deaths by overdose in the past 10 years, and continuing to accelerate) and elsewhere, you might also put the Colombian FARC situation in the lap of the unregulated drug industry (a huge business onto itself) and lack of competent government rather than lying it at the feet of their weak democracy.

                                        See? Not a one on your list comes remotely close. And for the only one that you bothered throw numbers out (the opioid thing) you just mentioned a US government war on drugs issue not a business issue. FARC is a government BTW. I got this.

                                        As to "lack of competent government", when you get a similarly lack of competent business, you get bankruptcy and life moves on.

                                        the huge social programs that are financially unviable

                                        Much like your view of "the non-event that is climate change," those huge social programs have been viable from their inception through the present and likely can adapt without serious social upheaval. Sure, I'd like to re-write all those policies to something I think makes sense, but the basic thrust of those programs are likely to continue until well after my children are dead and buried. And, as long as we're touching on Climate Change, that's got the potential to kill Billions if it's handled poorly - which is how such things have historically been handled.

                                        "and likely can adapt without serious social upheaval." Sure, by cutting benefits. Last I heard, 25%

                                        Let's keep in mind the problem here isn't so much the benefits programs, but that more was promised than would be delivered. Private business plays this game all the time, but at least they can be sued and any money recovered from those businesses comes from the owners/shareholders, not from the taxpaying public.

                                        "Much like your view of "the non-event that is climate change,"" A few months back I asked [soylentnews.org] a question:

                                        Who in this discussion has consistently gotten the science right?

                                        Not much point to complaining about my opinions on climate change, when I'm the one in the room who actually bothers to understand it.

  • (Score: 2) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Monday November 13 2023, @04:19PM (11 children)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane (4757) on Monday November 13 2023, @04:19PM (#1332725)

    All the bullshit and pointless jobs will soon be taken over by AI, and the formerly unhappy workers will soon be happily unemployed.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by HiThere on Monday November 13 2023, @05:47PM (8 children)

      by HiThere (866) on Monday November 13 2023, @05:47PM (#1332758) Journal

      Sorry, but it doesn't work that way. Many of the jobs that AI will take are socially beneficial, and many of them are liked by the folks doing them.

      The sets of "Jobs that an AI can or soon will be able to do" and "Jobs that are socially beneficial" have a rather large intersection.

      --
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      • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday November 13 2023, @05:56PM (7 children)

        by JoeMerchant (3937) on Monday November 13 2023, @05:56PM (#1332764)

        I'm looking to AI to boost the medical profession. A good General Practitioner armed with a good AI diagnostics tool can get you more accurately diagnosed, referred and treated for your actual condition than the current hit-or-miss "seen dozens of specialists over 10+ years before one finally got lucky and fixed my problem" experience that I have heard far too many times in my life.

        An AI diagnostics tool without a GP driving it... that's Google M.D. and it only feeds hypochondriacs with paranoia fuel.

        --
        🌻🌻 [google.com]
        • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday November 13 2023, @09:19PM (6 children)

          by HiThere (866) on Monday November 13 2023, @09:19PM (#1332796) Journal

          What you're talking about is the "just a tiny bit better than the current state" AI. That should be possible within 5 years. Expect to be pushed by the insurance companies, since it should cut costs.

          When you get 10-15 years from now, though, it's really hard to predict. Everybody's adopting a short time horizon, because that's what's relatively easy to predict. (Some people seem to have a "2 years ago" time horizon, though...or maybe longer.)

          --
          Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
          • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday November 13 2023, @09:26PM (5 children)

            by JoeMerchant (3937) on Monday November 13 2023, @09:26PM (#1332798)

            AI was "5 years out" since the mid 1980s.

            I expect continued progress to be equally unpredictable, anywhere from a major breakthrough next month to 100 years from now.

            Arguably, that 1980s AI barely just arrived... Still lacking in many areas predicted to be "less than 5 years out" for the last 40+.

            --
            🌻🌻 [google.com]
            • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 13 2023, @10:38PM (4 children)

              by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 13 2023, @10:38PM (#1332807)

              AI was "5 years out" since the mid 1980s.

              If you're talking about the medical assistant AI, that has been effective and functional since the eighties. It was simply a question/answer/decision tree program that was good enough that a mediocre doctor and the program could out-perform a team of very highly rated diagnosticians.

              It was quickly stomped on by the AMA. I don't see them doing any less to a real AI that could help even more.

              • (Score: 2) by canopic jug on Tuesday November 14 2023, @09:14AM (3 children)

                by canopic jug (3949) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 14 2023, @09:14AM (#1332864) Journal

                It was simply a question/answer/decision tree program that was good enough that a mediocre doctor and the program could out-perform a team of very highly rated diagnosticians.

                Those were called expert systems and were highly effective and accurate, and should have been the direction that hospitals and clinics moved. Expert systems are an excellent example of how a computer can amplify human abilities, when wielded properly. Sometime back then, one MD/PhD commented to me about them saying that if the is a decision process behind a diagnosis then a computer program can walk through that process. What the computer could not do is actually observe and note which symptoms were present or absent in a patient. That observation required an actual doctor with at least some skills and experience.

                Instead, what we have now is the computer programs steering the MDs through a soul-crushing bureaucracy and eating up all their time with busy-work or make-work so that there is no time to collect and analyze constellations of symptoms. Thus instead of making decisions through a logical, rational process the MDs are now ordered by those representing the companies they work for to simply take a statistical guess, which is not medicine it is coin flipping. Ironically, MDs could improve both speed and accuracy by deploying expert systems, but they are not the ones calling the shots in the medical industry.

                --
                Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
                • (Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday November 14 2023, @09:39PM (2 children)

                  by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday November 14 2023, @09:39PM (#1332962)

                  Our previous General Practitioner retired a couple of years ago, lambasting the bureaucratic system on his way out to run a "pay what you can afford, insurance not processed by us" practice with a friend - which, BTW, only works when the physicians involved are independently wealthy, zero need of income, and can float the (dramatically reduced due to no bureaucracy to keep up with) cost of office staff salaries.

                  Our new General Practitioner directly replaced him and applauds his decision, but cannot follow due to mortgages, childrens' tuitions, etc. The local hospital's overlord system that his office runs under (a typically broken instance of Epic [epic.com]) obviously occupies at least 40% of his time and attention while he is seeing us, and likely much more when no patients are present.

                  The AMA is evil incarnate, from their dogged stance on undersupplying M.D.s to practice (oh, we can't accelerate the residency program - like hell they can't, they don't want to: low supply = high demand = stratospheric salaries), through to their bashing of anything else that might lower the pedestals they have crafted for their M.D.s. I firmly believe that the current medical education system actively corrupts M.D.s to become more self-aggrandizing assholes than they likely already were due to the selection process in pre-med undergrad. After we put the lawyers up against the wall, the AMA should come next.

                  --
                  🌻🌻 [google.com]
                  • (Score: 2) by canopic jug on Wednesday November 15 2023, @02:49PM (1 child)

                    by canopic jug (3949) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday November 15 2023, @02:49PM (#1333046) Journal

                    The AMA remains the single largest barrier between the US and a single-payer system, let alone universal health care.

                    --
                    Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
                    • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday November 15 2023, @02:54PM

                      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Wednesday November 15 2023, @02:54PM (#1333049)

                      And they still recognize medical degrees from offshore schools like the one on Saba (among many others...)

                      --
                      🌻🌻 [google.com]
    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Monday November 13 2023, @10:56PM (1 child)

      by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Monday November 13 2023, @10:56PM (#1332811) Journal

      Some people say that AI will create enough wealth to feed the unemployed.

      I think the AI will create enough unemployed to fee the robots.

      --
      Satin worshipers are obsessed with high thread counts because they have so many daemons.
      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday November 14 2023, @02:21PM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 14 2023, @02:21PM (#1332897) Journal

        I think the AI will create enough unemployed to fee the robots.

        I saw what you did there.

  • (Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Monday November 13 2023, @04:22PM (25 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday November 13 2023, @04:22PM (#1332726) Journal

    The much-discussed "bullshit jobs theory" by the American anthropologist David Graeber, for example, states that some jobs are objectively useless and that this occurs more frequently in certain occupations than others.

    Ugh, this garbage again. When one actually looks [soylentnews.org] at Graeber's complaints, one quickly sees that bullshit jobs are merely jobs that Graeber neither understands nor appreciates. At the above link, I actually considered Graeber's argument and noted several things. First , Graeber failed at that time to come up with even a single bullshit job. It's just jobs he doesn't value. Second, he misses the big point about job value. Jobs aren't "objectively useless" (as the story claims). That's merely blowhardspeak for jobs not being subjectively valuable to the blowhard. It fails to answer the question: if a job is bullshit, then why does the employer pay the wages? Jobs are subjectively valuable to the employer and that's all they need to be. They don't need to have even the slightest value to a clueless external observer.

    And there's the motive for all this flimflam. It's just a thin rationalization for reduced workweek and UBI and completely ignores the immense amount of work we actually need and want in the world today.

    What does "provide for the human race" mean? For example, are we presently providing a high quality developed world standard of living for everyone? No. Does everyone live as long as they would like? No. Do we have lots of spaceships and cool things happening in space? That's my thing right now. How about extending and elevating human awareness and intellect? We doing enough of that? At some point, we have to recognize that we aren't providing for the human race, even for low lying fruit like a developed world standard of living. There is a huge amount of work that needs to be done.

    As a final thing here, I think this entire discussion is a case of the Bike Shed [wikipedia.org] effect. Figured out the problems in the above quote is hard. Talking about waste in jobs you can see is easy. What's missed here is that most waste is just not worth that much to remove. There's some really spectacular waste, such as Russia entering into a pointless war because they have some large domestic problems that they can't do anything about. That's worth ending. But most waste is just minor stuff that's more than compensated by better technology - an inefficient system that works many times faster with less manpower even with the inefficiency is better than an extremely efficient but very slow system (unless you have a relatively exotic need, like extremely high quality, required).

    There is some minor value to making our work more valuable to us (in actuality and perception), but this isn't that solution. Graeber's answers would just destroy our ability to do work and make our real problems worse.

    • (Score: 5, Touché) by Tork on Monday November 13 2023, @04:53PM (16 children)

      by Tork (3914) Subscriber Badge on Monday November 13 2023, @04:53PM (#1332736)

      First , Graeber failed at that time to come up with even a single bullshit job.

      I'm gonna be up front and admit that I haven't had my coffee yet, but isn't this entire article about the workers perceiving their jobs as worthless?

      --
      🏳️‍🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️‍🌈
      • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday November 13 2023, @05:04PM

        by JoeMerchant (3937) on Monday November 13 2023, @05:04PM (#1332741)

        As the President of my first company often repeated "Perception is all there is." Truth, scientific repeatability, reality, none of that matters to people - people will act based on what they perceive.

        --
        🌻🌻 [google.com]
      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by SomeRandomGeek on Monday November 13 2023, @06:52PM (2 children)

        by SomeRandomGeek (856) on Monday November 13 2023, @06:52PM (#1332778)

        I'm gonna be up front and admit that I haven't had my coffee yet, but isn't this entire article about the workers perceiving their jobs as worthless?

        I think Graeber was just trying to provoke a conversation. https://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/ [strikemag.org]
        And then he ducked out and left the conversation for us to finish. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/04/books/david-graeber-dead.html [nytimes.com]

        With that said, it is up to us to decide what makes a job bullshit. There are at least four obvious definitions: (The worker or society) does not feel that the job is of value to (society or the employer).
        The article focuses on one definition, but I think the conversation is about all of them.

        • (Score: 2) by Tork on Monday November 13 2023, @07:58PM

          by Tork (3914) Subscriber Badge on Monday November 13 2023, @07:58PM (#1332786)
          That was more-or-less how I read it. In my experience it's not even limited to management, clients can be a source of toxicity as well. There's a couple of times I watched a client make a talented employee ask themselves "why am I even here?". Once that happens you really really really start hoping they're 'professional' and finish their task. On the flip side I try to make sure an employee hears praise from the client, or at least that their contribution was appreciated. When that happens employees become more like a partner than a disposable tool. The result of that is a better chance of the client returning with more work. It is important that the client wants it, but the value of that work outside of what the client wants just never comes up in my experience.

          I don't really see how some tangible measurement of a 'bullshit job' is actually helpful, here. I was paid $500 once to put an animated gif on a website within fifteen minutes. (i mean it was a rush-job, 911 task...) It was for an advertisement. And it generated a LOT more than that for my client. It wouldn't take most people long to pick apart that task and make fart noises about it, but when ya measure the money coming in from it...
          --
          🏳️‍🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️‍🌈
        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday November 14 2023, @09:51PM

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 14 2023, @09:51PM (#1332965) Journal

          With that said, it is up to us to decide what makes a job bullshit.

          Really, there's only one party that matters: the employer. Nobody else needs to care whether the job does anything or not. That includes the employee. I think it's healthier overall for the employee to be in the loop and feel good about their work, but there's plenty of people like this AC [soylentnews.org] who are fine with their poor perception of their jobs.

      • (Score: 2) by deimtee on Monday November 13 2023, @11:03PM

        by deimtee (3272) on Monday November 13 2023, @11:03PM (#1332813) Journal

        Not only that, but Graeber's main argument was not that the entire job was bullshit, but that a percentage of the work they did was.
        He translated figures like "60% of people doing x job think 40% of the work they do is bullshit" into "24% of the people doing x job are doing bullshit work".
        Not mathematically incorrect, but people then erroneously think he was arguing that 24% of the jobs were entirely bullshit and the other 76% were not.

        Really, Graeber was arguing for a reduction in the work week (and possibly a UBI). If you could eliminate the 40% of useless work you could drop a 40 hour week to 24 hours. Work three days and have a four day weekend.

        --
        If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday November 14 2023, @12:18AM (10 children)

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 14 2023, @12:18AM (#1332820) Journal

        I'm gonna be up front and admit that I haven't had my coffee yet, but isn't this entire article about the workers perceiving their jobs as worthless?

        No, it was also about the Graeber take as well which I think deeply flawed. Moving on...

        My take is that worker perception of their jobs as worthless is a workplace inefficiency. That doesn't mean that their jobs are bullshit, but rather that the employer does an extremely poor job of communicating why the job is valuable to the employer. Inefficiencies of this sort are not bullshit jobs. There's some reason the employer pays the bills and it's not because they love paying good money for nothing.

        Further, I routinely run across people who just can't get other points of view. Sometimes people just can't grok this stuff. There's plenty of reasons a job can appear to be bullshit to the worker themselves without being so.

        • (Score: 2) by Tork on Tuesday November 14 2023, @12:24AM (9 children)

          by Tork (3914) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 14 2023, @12:24AM (#1332821)

          My take is that worker perception of their jobs as worthless is a workplace inefficiency. That doesn't mean that their jobs are bullshit, but rather that the employer does an extremely poor job of communicating why the job is valuable to the employer.

          I don't think anybody's disagreeing with you about that, including Graeber.

          --
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          • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday November 14 2023, @05:23AM (8 children)

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 14 2023, @05:23AM (#1332844) Journal

            I don't think anybody's disagreeing with you about that, including Graeber.

            I disagree, of course. Graeber made it clear he thought there was a vast amount of genuinely useless jobs out there and this story in turn uncritically quotes him on that.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 15 2023, @11:00PM (7 children)

              by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 15 2023, @11:00PM (#1333086)

              You want an example?
              One place I worked at in the nineties had a policy that everyone below manager level had to fill out a timesheet each day. Depending on their job complexity this took up somewhere between 5 to 30 minutes per day per employee, and covered about six hundred employees. We also had a department of six "girls" and their manager, whose sole job was to key all those handwritten timesheets into the computer system.

              That data was never looked at again. The whole system was a hangover from when they used to do some "cost plus" work and needed to document time. Sometime in the eighties (years before I worked there) they had transitioned entirely into fully quoted work. That department was still there when I left, at least fifteen years after it was last needed.

              By Graeber's math, that would be about 27 useless jobs.
              1 manager
              6 "girls"
              approx 600 employees * approx 15 minutes each = about 20 fulltime equivalents.

              • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 16 2023, @05:44AM (6 children)

                by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday November 16 2023, @05:44AM (#1333120) Journal

                By Graeber's math, that would be about 27 useless jobs.
                1 manager
                6 "girls"
                approx 600 employees * approx 15 minutes each = about 20 fulltime equivalents.

                By my math, that would be zero useless jobs since paying employees is an essential employer function. An inefficient job is not a useless job. And it certainly isn't the "bullshit jobs" of which he wrote.

                The key problem is that you can't easily separate useful from useless, when it is a job inefficiency. For example, we can't just fire the 27 useless people, because nobody actually is useless.

                • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 16 2023, @09:36AM (5 children)

                  by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 16 2023, @09:36AM (#1333130)

                  Did you even read what I wrote?
                  The data was never looked at again. It was entirely useless. 27 people (equivalents) doing entirely useless work.

                  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 16 2023, @01:19PM (4 children)

                    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday November 16 2023, @01:19PM (#1333145) Journal

                    Did you even read what I wrote?

                    Perhaps you should do that yourself? And then maybe read what I wrote?

                    The data was never looked at again. It was entirely useless. 27 people (equivalents) doing entirely useless work.

                    "Equivalents". In other words, job inefficiency not bullshit jobs.

                    And what happens when there's a dispute over wages? Say in court? Just because something is "never looked at again" isn't the high value point when you have to legally CYA. The ability to be able to pull the physical paper and verify what actually was recorded is valuable in its own right - even if you never do.

                    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2023, @11:02PM (3 children)

                      by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2023, @11:02PM (#1333339)

                      Ah, so you didn't read Graeber.

                      That was the most of the point of his work. It wasn't that a certain entire jobs jobs were useless (although he did have some examples of that), it was that many jobs incorporated significant quantities of useless work, which added up to being useless jobs.
                      The example above was entirely consistent with his work, 7 useless jobs and the equivalent of another 20 wasted across the rest of the organization.

                      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday November 18 2023, @01:08AM (2 children)

                        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday November 18 2023, @01:08AM (#1333347) Journal

                        Ah, so you didn't read Graeber.

                        Before you make more imaginary assertions, it would do to show actual evidence of lack of reading rather than just breezy and false assertions. My take is that you will fail in this because I underwent the reading exercise you claim I didn't undergo.

                        That was the most of the point of his work. It wasn't that a certain entire jobs jobs were useless (although he did have some examples of that), it was that many jobs incorporated significant quantities of useless work, which added up to being useless jobs.

                        Then he should have said and wrote something different, if that really was his argument. I disagree, of course, with your characterization.

                        A glaring example of this gap between your spin and what he actually wrote is his support for shorter work weeks. Just because work is inefficient doesn't mean that we should be working less. It takes a peculiar ignorance of work in the first place to come to that conclusion.

                        Another glaring example of this gap is his insistence in words that some work outright is useless. For example, in my link above, I discussed actual writing [strikemag.org] by Gaeber. In it, he makes the assertion that certain jobs were bullshit jobs:

                        But rather than allowing a massive reduction of working hours to free the world's population to pursue their own projects, pleasures, visions, and ideas, we have seen the ballooning of not even so much of the ‘service’ sector as of the administrative sector, up to and including the creation of whole new industries like financial services or telemarketing, or the unprecedented expansion of sectors like corporate law, academic and health administration, human resources, and public relations. And these numbers do not even reflect on all those people whose job is to provide administrative, technical, or security support for these industries, or for that matter the whole host of ancillary industries (dog-washers, all-night pizza delivery) that only exist because everyone else is spending so much of their time working in all the other ones.

                        Not a single job in what was mentioned above was an actual bullshit job. As I noted before, he wasn't merely saying that work is inefficient.

                        The example above was entirely consistent with his work, 7 useless jobs and the equivalent of another 20 wasted across the rest of the organization.

                        And I noted otherwise. That there wasn't a useless job in that count. Unless, of course, paying your employees isn't useful. /sarc

                        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 18 2023, @11:18PM (1 child)

                          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 18 2023, @11:18PM (#1333465)

                          And I noted otherwise. That there wasn't a useless job in that count. Unless, of course, paying your employees isn't useful. /sarc

                          "telemarketing."

                          But seriously, I took that to be a decrying of the growth of those sectors. "the ballooning"
                          Yes, administration is necessary, and you obviously need payroll. What your CEO doesn't need is six assistants who's job it is to look pretty, and four who's job it is to make him look important.

                          Also he was against the growth of industries that were necessary only because of the amount of time people spent at work. Who doesn't have time to wash their dog? - Someone working themselves to death with an 80 hour week.

                          I guess I mostly agreed with him because I have seen so much useless work. I have, several times over my career, automated/streamlined myself (and sometimes others) out of a job simply because I eliminated unnecessary or redundant work. "I shall replace you with a small shell script".

                          • (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday November 19 2023, @04:25AM

                            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday November 19 2023, @04:25AM (#1333480) Journal
                            Let's look at that quote in context.

                            [AC:] The example above was entirely consistent with his work, 7 useless jobs and the equivalent of another 20 wasted across the rest of the organization.

                            [khallow:] And I noted otherwise. That there wasn't a useless job in that count. Unless, of course, paying your employees isn't useful. /sarc

                            [AC:] "telemarketing."

                            Not a telemarketing job in that group.

                            What your CEO doesn't need is six assistants who's job it is to look pretty, and four who's job it is to make him look important.

                            Your hypothetical CEO disagrees. And "look pretty" and "look important" is not useless.

                            Also he was against the growth of industries that were necessary only because of the amount of time people spent at work. Who doesn't have time to wash their dog? - Someone working themselves to death with an 80 hour week.

                            This falls solidly under the "you don't understand jobs" category. I'm fine with people "working themselves to death" with a high paying 80 hour work week. That means they're being extremely productive by choice. In the real world, we need some of that. I see no reason to care that you have bad feels about the choice or the growth of secondary jobs like washing pets that help make that a viable lifestyle.

                            I guess I mostly agreed with him because I have seen so much useless work.

                            Which you have yet to mention, let us note.

                            "I shall replace you with a small shell script".

                            Good, the business has now freed up resources to employ someone in a better and more valuable way.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 13 2023, @10:46PM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 13 2023, @10:46PM (#1332808)

      In khallows view they are not bullshit jobs because they serve the important purpose of keeping the peasants occupied and not bothering their betters or getting uppity about their position in society.

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by khallow on Tuesday November 14 2023, @05:16AM (2 children)

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 14 2023, @05:16AM (#1332843) Journal

        In khallows view they are not bullshit jobs because they serve the important purpose of keeping the peasants occupied and not bothering their betters or getting uppity about their position in society.

        Boy, I hope you're not so deluded you actually believe that! My real view is that work in today's society is a key way we escape the idea of "station". Seriously, how can you rise above your station if the only economic resources you generate or have access to are meager wages from a low hour work week and a similarly measly UBI?

        What I find particularly perverse about this discussion is that the people crying the most about the supposed coming of feudalism are the ones coming up with policies to create and enforce that feudalism - nobody else is trying to shoehorn most of society into rigid classes enforced with tools like UBI (recall the phrase "bread and circuses"). It seems to me that one shouldn't be the problem one claims to be trying to fix!

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 15 2023, @10:34PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 15 2023, @10:34PM (#1333085)

          Nobody is going to rise above their "station" without ambition, brains, opportunity and luck. Varying quantities of each, and sufficient excess of one may stand in for another.

          What a UBI does is increase opportunity, by reducing the risk of trying. Even if your business idea doesn't work you won't end up starving on the street.

          The other thing a UBI does is increase the power of the working class in negotiations with the employer class. This results in a fairer deal and generally improves the GINI index.

          • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 16 2023, @05:50AM

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday November 16 2023, @05:50AM (#1333121) Journal

            What a UBI does is increase opportunity, by reducing the risk of trying.

            The risk is already pretty low in the developed world. You're not adding much benefit with this. And in return, you're conducting a huge misallocation of resources from people who take such risks and succeed to people who don't.

            The other thing a UBI does is increase the power of the working class in negotiations with the employer class. This results in a fairer deal and generally improves the GINI index.

            And again, something which just isn't a significant problem. For example, should we "improve" the GINI when some people try for more income and wealth, while others don't? If you choose to have four kids, for example, your contribution to GINI metrics will suck and I'm fine with that.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 15 2023, @12:46AM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 15 2023, @12:46AM (#1332982)
      > And there's the motive for all this flimflam. It's just a thin rationalization for reduced workweek and UBI and completely ignores the immense amount of work we actually need and want in the world today.

      For a recent example, consider all the political extremists who are absolutely certain that the Other Side is going to destroy society or worse. The real reason is just to rationalize why one refuses to listen to other viewpoints.
      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday November 15 2023, @01:17AM (2 children)

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday November 15 2023, @01:17AM (#1332987) Journal
        I see you copied me here [soylentnews.org]. You have a point to that?
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 15 2023, @01:18AM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 15 2023, @01:18AM (#1332988)
          im certain you got it.
  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by VLM on Monday November 13 2023, @04:40PM (2 children)

    by VLM (445) on Monday November 13 2023, @04:40PM (#1332732)

    My experience with big companies is our biggest competitor and enemy was always another department. This happens whenever there's "too much" middle management so they fight it out. Most labor was spent trying to push work and/or blame away or onto other departments. A side dish is the classic empire building activity where management always competes internally to control more resources (human resources...) so there's no motivation to be the exec or director or manager with the smallest department / office / staff.

    The inherent dysfunction of large orgs balances out the economies of scale such that often small firms outperform larger firms.

    I've gleefully cashed many large checks (w2 and 1099) to replicate other department's work because either defensive silo over there or NIH syndrome here, or automate harassing other departments, automate deflecting harassment from other departments, automate massaging (so to speak) the data, etc.

    Sometimes its funny. "Hey watch this we're going to screw over that dept by demanding insane detailed metrics, which will not be actionable but will be a punishment" then I replace their hundreds of hours of lost manual labor with some shell scripts and SQL queries and a little Perl/Python/BF/WTF and ha ha instead of costing hundreds of hours it cost like one of my hours.

    People who say all this office politics shit will get replaced by AI are missing the point. For any company larger than a certain threshold, the point of the company IS the office politics, the supposed line of business is just a side issue. AI isn't going to give a director the largest office with the most direct reports, LOL, and being either able or unable to solve "everything" in 30 seconds is not going to be a useful weapon of war against other departments.

    I would theorize that all non-frontline jobs at a company larger than "tribal" size eventually turn into BS jobs. I've worked at tribal and smaller orgs and those orgs are at least sometimes functional and successful, never the larger orgs.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday November 13 2023, @04:49PM

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Monday November 13 2023, @04:49PM (#1332734)

      >The inherent dysfunction of large orgs balances out the economies of scale such that often small firms outperform larger firms.

      This is a classic. Luckily the large org that bought out my smaller firm (and me in the process) lets us "technical contributors" steer clear of the turf wars and still pull down a decent salary while watching the pointlessness from the bleachers.

      --
      🌻🌻 [google.com]
    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday November 13 2023, @06:03PM

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Monday November 13 2023, @06:03PM (#1332765)

      >all non-frontline jobs at a company larger than "tribal" size eventually turn into BS jobs.

      We have a lot of people who sort of "devolve" into "subject matter experts." They're the ones you go to when you have a question about X. They putter along doing new stuff related to X and contribute as they can, but their true value to the organization is being able to answer questions that would take days to weeks of research with a simple e-mail or phone call.

      Now, when they retire, directly replacing them is nearly pointless. Better to "promote" into their positions from the front-lines and fill in with some fresh blood in the trenches. But, a lot of big-corporate operations think they need to fill those positions from the outside with even more experienced people than the ones who retired - which in my experience is a total crap shoot, low odds of a payoff, and slightly higher odds of net negative value from putting the new team member in an influential position.

      --
      🌻🌻 [google.com]
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