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There is no such thing as a "bullshit job". If you work in the private sector, where the primary reason for existing is to make a profit, your job directly or i

• rubber_duck 10y ago
  >If you work in the private sector, where the primary reason for existing is to make a profit, your job directly or indirectly contributes to that goal That's assuming people who are responsible for managing your work know what they are doing. I've seen plenty of net loss jobs, and especially in big corporations, it's easy for such losses to go undetected for years as long as the sum is positive.
  • notahacker 10y ago
    I'd be the first to say that people make bad economic decisions and companies are full of bloat, and even layers of management who attempt to demonstrate how they add value by laying off people more productive than themselves to achieve short term cost-reductions. But as a general rule, I think "someone else thinks your job is worth doing to the extent they're willing to pay you more than you could earn in other jobs to do it" is a better metric for the usefulness of a job than "do you resent the fact people would rather pay you for long hours pushing paperwork than for the sex, drugs and rock and roll lifestyle of being a poet-musician", which is Graeber's preferred yardstick. (And if he's not spoken to any corporate lawyers that think what they're doing is very important, he probably hasn't spoken to enough corporate lawyers. Some successful songsmiths get sick of touring and consider their more successful songs to be sellout shite too.) And the idea that jobs which probably don't add value to their business exist as part of some sinister "ruling class" plot because of the "mortal danger" of too many people dropping out to become poet musicians, as opposed to because the less useful employees are good enough at promoting themselves to protect their salaries from a shareowning class that would happily reap the rewards of firing them if it understood its business a little better is just silly...
• parenthephobia 10y ago
  > If you work in the private sector, where the primary reason for existing is to make a profit, your job directly or indirectly contributes to that goal. I work in the private sector. I meet many people whose contribution to profit is, at best, indeterminable. The primary reason for existing in the private sector is whatever the directors decide it is. That need only align with profit-making to the extent required to keep the company afloat. Not only are directors not necessarily single-mindedly committed to profit above all else, even when they are they aren't omniscient. One way pointless jobs could come about is because directors are just wrong about how much manpower a project requires. Another way pointless jobs arise is empire building. I think anyone who has worked in a company with more than a few managers has encountered employees who exist solely for the purpose of bolstering a manager's team. Perhaps the manager straight-up doesn't care about the interests of the company and just wants the largest team. Or, perhaps they're forced to hire N people even if they don't need them lest they lose budget for when they do need N people.