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No, we are moving from jobs that are actually productive, to bullshit jobs. Advertising doesn't produce anything useful in itself, it simply shifts and amplifi

No, we are moving from jobs that are actually productive, to bullshit jobs. Advertising doesn't produce anything useful in itself, it simply shifts and amplifies demand, and yet, Google, Facebook, and a vast slice of the rest of the economy is dedicated to producing ads. Even companies which are nominally dedicated to producing things of importance (eg pharmaceuticals) are mostly focussed on marketing. Then there's the entire middle management strata of the the economy. Mostly a useless but noisy zero-sum jockeying for a rungs on the socio-economic ladder. The economy is already large enough to produce plenty for everybody, guarantee food, housing and healthcare for all, and with shorter working hours at that. Unfortunately we're trapped in this bizarre economic system that works us to the bone in pointless jobs we hate, and can't even guarantee us the basics.

paulpauper 9y ago
This bullshit job argument has never made much sense to me, but I see the argument a lot. If companies care about maximizing productivity and profits, and given America's hyper-competitive economy and super-fickle stock market where the difference between meeting the earnings estimate versus missing it by a penny can make the difference between a stock being up 10% or down 10%, why would a company waste money on jobs that are bullshit. Obviously, they (the company) derive value from these jobs or else such jobs would not exist (or at least not for long).
- tonyedgecombe 9y ago
  Yet large companies often have hugely bureaucratic and wasteful practices. When I was contracting I would go from one business with an IT department of 100 to another employing 1,000. They were broadly similar organisations, yet there was plenty of variance in their efficiency.
- eeZah7Ux 9y ago
  Companies are far from all-knowing and perfectly rational agents. They are made of people. Also, growing from a lean company into a too-big-to-fail behemoth (which happens all the time) is very valuable to CEOs & co. It what makes you graduate from billionaire to billionaire with political power.
- djrobstep 9y ago
  Spoken like somebody who has never actually worked in a large company. Picture a stereotypical manager who does nothing but attend pointless meetings all day. (S)he attends reliably, and is good at appearing busy and authoritative and otherwise managerial. This manager will not be fired, as (s)he's outwardly doing work duties and not doing anything specifically incompetent or negligent. Other management-layer folk like this person as they confirm to middle class white collar norms socially. Nevertheless, this person is useless. Every company is full of people like this.
- Fricken 9y ago
  The parent argues that it's "a useless but noisy zero-sum jockeying for a rungs on the socio-economic ladder" And you argue "If companies care about maximizing productivity and profits, and given America's hyper-competitive economy and super-fickle stock market where the difference between meeting the earnings estimate versus missing it by a penny can make the difference between a stock being up 10% or down 10%, why would a company waste money on jobs that are bullshit" This is the same argument, just with a different spin. In the instance of Facebook, it was able to provide it's core utility with some software cobbled together by one guy in his dorm room over a couple weeks. So what are the other 25,000 employees for? It's not to make Facebook more useful, it's to prevent some other college kid from building a social media network that displaces it. It's all just a silly game that isn't very fun to play. One could argue that Facebook's core utility is now in delivering ads, but nobody likes looking at ads, and companies would rather not spend on ads if they didn't need to to compete, so again, it's all just a silly game. Very little of it is doing anything that is either useful or wanted.
- pbhjpbhj 9y ago
  The jobs are useful to the company, they're not useful to society.
- petra 9y ago
  Adding complexity often makes it harder for others to compete. So companies do that(via regulation, or technology, or contracts, or ad campaigns,etc...). And than complexity breeds complexity.
- zanny 9y ago
  To be fair, the stock market is bullshit. Its legalized professional gambling where some participants have way more information than others. The fact the vast majority of business exists to try to "win" the stock market game than provide real productive returns to the economy reaffirms the bullshit economics involved. IE, vast amounts of effort from major globalcorps is dedicated towards tax avoidance. You spend tremendous amounts of resources to avoid taxes, which is only beneficial to the shareholders in the short term, because the long term economic damage of tax fraud and avoidance cripples economies and stunts growth. But the stockholders need not care since they already made their dividends off all the smuggled money as the country burns around them.
  - jeffreyrogers 9y ago
    I think you're a bit too cynical. The financial system isn't optimal, and the stock market is less important now than it used to be (because it's easier to raise private capital), but it's not gambling. The rate of return is positive over pretty much any long-term horizon, and it allows companies to raise money when necessary. I agree that many companies engage in unproductive, but short-term profit maximizing behavior though.
  - bllguo 9y ago
    the whole point of capitalism is to align incentives s.t. when businesses act selfishly to "win" in the markets, they are producing real returns to the economy
- LarryDarrell 9y ago
  Companies are awful at culling bullshit jobs when the economy is good. That's why they never hire back as many as they laid off during recessions.
- icantdrive55 9y ago
  "why would a company waste money on jobs that are bullshit. Obviously, they (the company) derive value from these jobs or else such jobs would not exist (or at least not for long)." I don't agree with parent post, but I have a feeling he's looking at a lot Tech jobs in particular? Yes--Technology/start-ups. Repeat, most companies are scalping any human they can get their greedy mits on. Their will be no bullshit jobs soon. I don't think there's a huge amount of BS jobs now in the private sector. He looked at all the essentially free money the fed provided to the wealthy investors this past decade. And all the investors who wanted to build the next FB. All the rediculious start-ups, that are getting decimated by the monopolies. Hell---I see so many jobs that will be just stuff of "Hay--remember the old days. The warm office? Getting hired because you knew the owner's newphew. Hired with a dubious set of skills? Or, hired because you were a seemingly good fit for the company?" I don't know where he's located, but living in the Bay Area; I have seen some people with some seemilgly fantasy jobs. It's almost cute they think it will last. I do have a bit of a problem with the arrogant ones. There's something that Willie Brown quipped years ago that stayed with me. 'What will San Francisco do when the tech party ends. The homeless problem will be massive. I don't know what SF is going to do with them.' (Most of you come from loving/understanding homes, so their will always be a bed somewhere to retret to, so I don't worry about a huge spike in homelessness.)
- timdavila 9y ago
  It is a little counter intuitive, but it's real. Check this article out: http://evonomics.com/why-capitalism-creates-pointless-jobs-david-graeber/ http://evonomics.com/why-capitalism-creates-pointless-jobs-d...

paulpauper 9y ago

This bullshit job argument has never made much sense to me, but I see the argument a lot. If companies care about maximizing productivity and profits, and given America's hyper-competitive economy and super-fickle stock market where the difference between meeting the earnings estimate versus missing it by a penny can make the difference between a stock being up 10% or down 10%, why would a company waste money on jobs that are bullshit. Obviously, they (the company) derive value from these jobs or else such jobs would not exist (or at least not for long).

tonyedgecombe 9y ago
Yet large companies often have hugely bureaucratic and wasteful practices. When I was contracting I would go from one business with an IT department of 100 to another employing 1,000. They were broadly similar organisations, yet there was plenty of variance in their efficiency.
eeZah7Ux 9y ago
Companies are far from all-knowing and perfectly rational agents. They are made of people. Also, growing from a lean company into a too-big-to-fail behemoth (which happens all the time) is very valuable to CEOs & co. It what makes you graduate from billionaire to billionaire with political power.
djrobstep 9y ago
Spoken like somebody who has never actually worked in a large company. Picture a stereotypical manager who does nothing but attend pointless meetings all day. (S)he attends reliably, and is good at appearing busy and authoritative and otherwise managerial. This manager will not be fired, as (s)he's outwardly doing work duties and not doing anything specifically incompetent or negligent. Other management-layer folk like this person as they confirm to middle class white collar norms socially. Nevertheless, this person is useless. Every company is full of people like this.
Fricken 9y ago
The parent argues that it's "a useless but noisy zero-sum jockeying for a rungs on the socio-economic ladder" And you argue "If companies care about maximizing productivity and profits, and given America's hyper-competitive economy and super-fickle stock market where the difference between meeting the earnings estimate versus missing it by a penny can make the difference between a stock being up 10% or down 10%, why would a company waste money on jobs that are bullshit" This is the same argument, just with a different spin. In the instance of Facebook, it was able to provide it's core utility with some software cobbled together by one guy in his dorm room over a couple weeks. So what are the other 25,000 employees for? It's not to make Facebook more useful, it's to prevent some other college kid from building a social media network that displaces it. It's all just a silly game that isn't very fun to play. One could argue that Facebook's core utility is now in delivering ads, but nobody likes looking at ads, and companies would rather not spend on ads if they didn't need to to compete, so again, it's all just a silly game. Very little of it is doing anything that is either useful or wanted.
pbhjpbhj 9y ago
The jobs are useful to the company, they're not useful to society.
petra 9y ago
Adding complexity often makes it harder for others to compete. So companies do that(via regulation, or technology, or contracts, or ad campaigns,etc...). And than complexity breeds complexity.
zanny 9y ago
To be fair, the stock market is bullshit. Its legalized professional gambling where some participants have way more information than others. The fact the vast majority of business exists to try to "win" the stock market game than provide real productive returns to the economy reaffirms the bullshit economics involved. IE, vast amounts of effort from major globalcorps is dedicated towards tax avoidance. You spend tremendous amounts of resources to avoid taxes, which is only beneficial to the shareholders in the short term, because the long term economic damage of tax fraud and avoidance cripples economies and stunts growth. But the stockholders need not care since they already made their dividends off all the smuggled money as the country burns around them.
- jeffreyrogers 9y ago
  I think you're a bit too cynical. The financial system isn't optimal, and the stock market is less important now than it used to be (because it's easier to raise private capital), but it's not gambling. The rate of return is positive over pretty much any long-term horizon, and it allows companies to raise money when necessary. I agree that many companies engage in unproductive, but short-term profit maximizing behavior though.
- bllguo 9y ago
  the whole point of capitalism is to align incentives s.t. when businesses act selfishly to "win" in the markets, they are producing real returns to the economy
LarryDarrell 9y ago
Companies are awful at culling bullshit jobs when the economy is good. That's why they never hire back as many as they laid off during recessions.
icantdrive55 9y ago
"why would a company waste money on jobs that are bullshit. Obviously, they (the company) derive value from these jobs or else such jobs would not exist (or at least not for long)." I don't agree with parent post, but I have a feeling he's looking at a lot Tech jobs in particular? Yes--Technology/start-ups. Repeat, most companies are scalping any human they can get their greedy mits on. Their will be no bullshit jobs soon. I don't think there's a huge amount of BS jobs now in the private sector. He looked at all the essentially free money the fed provided to the wealthy investors this past decade. And all the investors who wanted to build the next FB. All the rediculious start-ups, that are getting decimated by the monopolies. Hell---I see so many jobs that will be just stuff of "Hay--remember the old days. The warm office? Getting hired because you knew the owner's newphew. Hired with a dubious set of skills? Or, hired because you were a seemingly good fit for the company?" I don't know where he's located, but living in the Bay Area; I have seen some people with some seemilgly fantasy jobs. It's almost cute they think it will last. I do have a bit of a problem with the arrogant ones. There's something that Willie Brown quipped years ago that stayed with me. 'What will San Francisco do when the tech party ends. The homeless problem will be massive. I don't know what SF is going to do with them.' (Most of you come from loving/understanding homes, so their will always be a bed somewhere to retret to, so I don't worry about a huge spike in homelessness.)
timdavila 9y ago
It is a little counter intuitive, but it's real. Check this article out: http://evonomics.com/why-capitalism-creates-pointless-jobs-david-graeber/ http://evonomics.com/why-capitalism-creates-pointless-jobs-d...