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> Nobody ever reads these reports, they’re just there to flash around. It’s the equivalent of a feudal lord — I have some guy whose job is just to tweeze my mus

> Nobody ever reads these reports, they’re just there to flash around. It’s the equivalent of a feudal lord — I have some guy whose job is just to tweeze my mustache, and another guy who’s polishing my stirrups, and so forth. Just to show that I can do that. I imagine that there are some poorly-run larger companies that have elements of this, but this seems cartoonish for the most part.

xapata 8y ago
Ever worked in a megacorp? It's exactly like that. Working at one of the world's most respected companies, I met someone who had been doing the same job for 8 years, the sole responsibility was to create a quarterly report (in PowerPoint) which was the aggregation of a couple hundred other reports. She spent every day copy-pasting from one document into another. Every day, for years. Seemed happy enough. Arrived at 7am, left at 4pm. Earned reasonably well, since she had an MBA from a good school. When I was a management consultant, the cynical joke was that we stole your watch and told you the time. I learned that, yes, that was my job, but also that most companies are so incompetent that I was providing a useful service.
- ACow_Adonis 8y ago
  Our joke when hiring management consultants is that we gave them the watch and asked them to tell us the time :P Its incredibly disheartening to everyone else in the company who already has the watch and can already tell the time and have already been telling everyone the time, but as people experience, that's everyday existence in large corporations.
  - nickpsecurity 8y ago
    "Its incredibly disheartening to everyone else in the company who already has the watch and can already tell the time and have already been telling everyone the time, but as people experience, that's everyday existence in large corporations." A guy I met consulted on improving company performance. He told me he went to the people on top to ask them what they thought and promised to investigate further to solve their problems. Then, he went straight to the workers in production and supportive positions asking what they thought about their job, what it entailed, what was needed, and what wasn't. He then asked the middle managers about their thoughts. He said the workers he asked usually had all the good ideas that he was paid to deliver to the higher-ups. Almost everyone doing that sort of thing knows that. One other thing he said that some people have to learn is that the people on the top couldn't use their workers' innovations. The way things work at lots of these organizations is that the people on the top want to look superior and control things top down. The visible effects have to look like that. If they let workers tell them, their model and egos break where they probably should let workers do a lot more. Instead, they often asked a consultant who invisibly asked workers. Then, they can say they solved the problem hiring a consultant who gave them options that they would enforce in a top down way. They get to feel in control while grabbing credit. Another way that helps when the situation isn't that bad is a tie-breaker between people or groups that can't agree. The consultant doesn't find the real solution. The consultant is just there to be the person that decides and gets the blame if it's bad. The consultant is cutting through the political bullshit that really run the company instead of the rational, economic, strategic choices that many folks pretend companies run on.
    - xapata 8y ago
      Consultants create the veneer of objectivity. Reality is that the executive who hired us decides who we speak with, subtly pre-determining our conclusion.
cup-of-tea 8y ago
I wouldn't have believed it either before spending some time in a financial company. One time I was sitting with a colleague who had been there many years and he received an email like a newsletter but with more flashy graphics than the newsletter that already went out on Friday. He immediately groaned and said "that's one more email to ignore then". And ignore it we did. But someone somewhere decided we needed another newsletter, some team wrote the "news" and some other team designed the shiny new graphics. All just to be ignored and deleted by everyone. The financial sector is rife with this. It is surely the most inefficient part of the economy. Most things are automated now, yet the number of people employed has actually grown and it's mostly bullshit. There are people who literally spend all day creating what can only be described as entertainment for other people in the same company. I wish everyone could see it first hand.
- xapata 8y ago
  That's not just the financial industry. One company I was at built themselves a TV studio to broadcast the occasional C-suite roundtable. Executives love to see themselves in print (and video).
- paulie_a 8y ago
  I probably actually fully read about 1-2 percent of my email...skim upwards of 10 percent and ignore the rest.
- Rjevski 8y ago
  Speaking of newsletters, this is probably one of the most useless and delusional industries there is. They consider a 20% "open rate" on their garbage as "good" and anything above is exceptional. I don't know about you, but if I was running a restaurant and only 20% of people actually bothered to eat my food, I would close up shop and rethink my life choices. But the newsletter/spam-letter guys apparently think 20% is good.
- repolfx 8y ago
  It's not finance specific. Any company that's highly profitable will experience this. It's just that finance is full of highly profitable companies. The classical solution is more competition. Unfortunately finance is also full of factors that make it an uncompetitive market (e.g. the old joke that if you want to get into banking you start by buying a bank).
ACow_Adonis 8y ago
I'd go so far as to say no. It is not just "some" poorly-run larger companies. In my experience, i'd go so far as to say its all of them. To draw an analogy in biological terms, its a direct consequence of: a) company/organism complexity and size b) successfully being able to draw in sufficient nutrients (operating revenue and profit) while experiencing a lack of existentially threatening evolutionary competition in that particular ecosystem. It allows such things to naturally develop. I haven't even thought about it until now, but perhaps one substantial part of the rise of bullshit jobs is the increased size and dominance of the large company as a proportion of the economy :\

xapata 8y ago

Ever worked in a megacorp? It's exactly like that. Working at one of the world's most respected companies, I met someone who had been doing the same job for 8 years, the sole responsibility was to create a quarterly report (in PowerPoint) which was the aggregation of a couple hundred other reports. She spent every day copy-pasting from one document into another. Every day, for years. Seemed happy enough. Arrived at 7am, left at 4pm. Earned reasonably well, since she had an MBA from a good school. When I was a management consultant, the cynical joke was that we stole your watch and told you the time. I learned that, yes, that was my job, but also that most companies are so incompetent that I was providing a useful service.

ACow_Adonis 8y ago
Our joke when hiring management consultants is that we gave them the watch and asked them to tell us the time :P Its incredibly disheartening to everyone else in the company who already has the watch and can already tell the time and have already been telling everyone the time, but as people experience, that's everyday existence in large corporations.
- nickpsecurity 8y ago
  "Its incredibly disheartening to everyone else in the company who already has the watch and can already tell the time and have already been telling everyone the time, but as people experience, that's everyday existence in large corporations." A guy I met consulted on improving company performance. He told me he went to the people on top to ask them what they thought and promised to investigate further to solve their problems. Then, he went straight to the workers in production and supportive positions asking what they thought about their job, what it entailed, what was needed, and what wasn't. He then asked the middle managers about their thoughts. He said the workers he asked usually had all the good ideas that he was paid to deliver to the higher-ups. Almost everyone doing that sort of thing knows that. One other thing he said that some people have to learn is that the people on the top couldn't use their workers' innovations. The way things work at lots of these organizations is that the people on the top want to look superior and control things top down. The visible effects have to look like that. If they let workers tell them, their model and egos break where they probably should let workers do a lot more. Instead, they often asked a consultant who invisibly asked workers. Then, they can say they solved the problem hiring a consultant who gave them options that they would enforce in a top down way. They get to feel in control while grabbing credit. Another way that helps when the situation isn't that bad is a tie-breaker between people or groups that can't agree. The consultant doesn't find the real solution. The consultant is just there to be the person that decides and gets the blame if it's bad. The consultant is cutting through the political bullshit that really run the company instead of the rational, economic, strategic choices that many folks pretend companies run on.
  - xapata 8y ago
    Consultants create the veneer of objectivity. Reality is that the executive who hired us decides who we speak with, subtly pre-determining our conclusion.

cup-of-tea 8y ago

I wouldn't have believed it either before spending some time in a financial company. One time I was sitting with a colleague who had been there many years and he received an email like a newsletter but with more flashy graphics than the newsletter that already went out on Friday. He immediately groaned and said "that's one more email to ignore then". And ignore it we did. But someone somewhere decided we needed another newsletter, some team wrote the "news" and some other team designed the shiny new graphics. All just to be ignored and deleted by everyone. The financial sector is rife with this. It is surely the most inefficient part of the economy. Most things are automated now, yet the number of people employed has actually grown and it's mostly bullshit. There are people who literally spend all day creating what can only be described as entertainment for other people in the same company. I wish everyone could see it first hand.

xapata 8y ago
That's not just the financial industry. One company I was at built themselves a TV studio to broadcast the occasional C-suite roundtable. Executives love to see themselves in print (and video).
paulie_a 8y ago
I probably actually fully read about 1-2 percent of my email...skim upwards of 10 percent and ignore the rest.
Rjevski 8y ago
Speaking of newsletters, this is probably one of the most useless and delusional industries there is. They consider a 20% "open rate" on their garbage as "good" and anything above is exceptional. I don't know about you, but if I was running a restaurant and only 20% of people actually bothered to eat my food, I would close up shop and rethink my life choices. But the newsletter/spam-letter guys apparently think 20% is good.
repolfx 8y ago
It's not finance specific. Any company that's highly profitable will experience this. It's just that finance is full of highly profitable companies. The classical solution is more competition. Unfortunately finance is also full of factors that make it an uncompetitive market (e.g. the old joke that if you want to get into banking you start by buying a bank).

ACow_Adonis 8y ago

I'd go so far as to say no. It is not just "some" poorly-run larger companies. In my experience, i'd go so far as to say its all of them. To draw an analogy in biological terms, its a direct consequence of: a) company/organism complexity and size b) successfully being able to draw in sufficient nutrients (operating revenue and profit) while experiencing a lack of existentially threatening evolutionary competition in that particular ecosystem. It allows such things to naturally develop. I haven't even thought about it until now, but perhaps one substantial part of the rise of bullshit jobs is the increased size and dominance of the large company as a proportion of the economy :\