On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs

[turar]

I thought that this article would be interesting to some here: http://www.strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/

 

[west]

No offense, but it seemed like a typical hard left "I'm frustrated!  Why does the world work the way it works!  It must be because of the ruling class!" style article.  No real solutions.  Just pointing and complaining.

 

[oddballstocks]

Read this article this morning, so dead on. Ended up emailing it out.

 

The article is very company specific, I've worked at a number of large caps and this rings true. My work at startups didn't resemble the article at all.

 

I sit next to a guy who has at most 3-5 hours of work a week. He is there because they didn't want to lose the money in their budget, the choice was smaller departmental budget or hire a person to keep a seat warm. There are thousands of employees like this, it's unfortunate, but the hoards of middle managers making these decisions are playing with someone else's money.

[mranski]

You've inspired me to watch the movie "Office Space" again.

 

 

[matjone]

I think both of you are right.  He brings up a good question, but then he just grabs at a simple answer.  I don't think it's that simple, and the idea that a handful of rich guys are having a meeting somewhere to decide our fates is preposterous to me. 

[Guest longinvestor]

Read this article this morning, so dead on. Ended up emailing it out.

 

The article is very company specific, I've worked at a number of large caps and this rings true. My work at startups didn't resemble the article at all.

 

 

+1

 

Spot on and easy to bucket it as socialist. I can totally relate to my own career, I find myself in the position of doing truly value adding work (worth doing) for a much smaller part of the day. Some days, I'm totally productive and those are the best days, tiring as they are. Was not the case earlier, I'm an engineer and my pride is driven by not doing BS work.

During the recent crisis, when Obama used the term "shovel ready" with the stimulus initiatives, I had a friend who works in the financial industry commented "that's back breaking work". That about summed it up for me.

 

This is so spot on. Read the book "Enough" by Jack Bogle, he says the same thing. If all the BS jobbers were to be shipped off into oblivion, surely we will miss them but the world will be a better place without the BS jobs we're stuck with.

 

And this is not just a western issue. I see this ramping in India and China. Everyone reads the same book, I suppose. In my corporate roles, I had big incentives tied to shipping jobs overseas and the BS went along with it.