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From the definition given in another comment: 'a form of paid employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cann

by Gys 8y ago

From the definition given in another comment: 'a form of paid employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence' The 'Senior Manager Pizza deliver car inspector' might think his job is safety related and take that very serious. So then its not a BS job at all. Others might think his daily checkups (just making this up) are over the top and BS, but he himself thinks is neccessary. Seems to me it comes down to the extend you think your job can be winged. For example a marketing research job. Because you feel your reports are not read by your superiors, you just make up stuff and think its BS. But you could also write very good reports, go up a higher level, ask your boss for better work, etc. The BS is mainly in your mind. I am still not convinced there is a good definition for BSJ (BS jobs).

TeMPOraL 8y ago
> Seems to me it comes down to the extend you think your job can be winged. For example a marketing research job. Because you feel your reports are not read by your superiors, you just make up stuff and think its BS. But you could also write very good reports, go up a higher level, ask your boss for better work, etc. The BS is mainly in your mind. So a litmus test: what's the delta of impact on company performance between you making a lousy, half-assed job and working your ass off to deliver best results? If the answer is "not much", then your job is most likely pointless. The person spending 80% of the time making cat memes is an obvious bullshit-job holder, but so is the "Senior Manager Pizza deliver car inspector" iff his inspections don't have a meaningful impact on health&safety. (Then there's also an aspect of how people in general are qualified to do a job. Take my favourite pick, social media marketer/analyst - unless you are a good statistician and are working with decent data, your job is most likely pointless regardless of your efforts, by the virtue of you not understanding what you're doing, and taking inferences from random noise. But if you actually know what you're doing, you can probably make your customers a lot of money.)
kamaal 8y ago
A car inspector might think his job is safety related. Then the inspector who inspects the car inspector could start thinking the same. Then you arrive at a senior manager who is the boss of the inspector who inspects the car inspector. | senior manager who manages inspector who inspects car inspector | inspector who inspects car inspector | car inspector | pizza delivery guy As the hierarchy expands people keep moving away from the real producer. And at some point have nothing to do with the producer. Now you could say the senior manager might think his job is valid. Well guess what, if you get paid well, and paid well as you go up, doing as little job as nothing, you aren't exactly going to complain about it.

by Gys 8y ago

TeMPOraL 8y ago

> Seems to me it comes down to the extend you think your job can be winged. For example a marketing research job. Because you feel your reports are not read by your superiors, you just make up stuff and think its BS. But you could also write very good reports, go up a higher level, ask your boss for better work, etc. The BS is mainly in your mind. So a litmus test: what's the delta of impact on company performance between you making a lousy, half-assed job and working your ass off to deliver best results? If the answer is "not much", then your job is most likely pointless. The person spending 80% of the time making cat memes is an obvious bullshit-job holder, but so is the "Senior Manager Pizza deliver car inspector" iff his inspections don't have a meaningful impact on health&safety. (Then there's also an aspect of how people in general are qualified to do a job. Take my favourite pick, social media marketer/analyst - unless you are a good statistician and are working with decent data, your job is most likely pointless regardless of your efforts, by the virtue of you not understanding what you're doing, and taking inferences from random noise. But if you actually know what you're doing, you can probably make your customers a lot of money.)

kamaal 8y ago

A car inspector might think his job is safety related. Then the inspector who inspects the car inspector could start thinking the same. Then you arrive at a senior manager who is the boss of the inspector who inspects the car inspector. | senior manager who manages inspector who inspects car inspector | inspector who inspects car inspector | car inspector | pizza delivery guy As the hierarchy expands people keep moving away from the real producer. And at some point have nothing to do with the producer. Now you could say the senior manager might think his job is valid. Well guess what, if you get paid well, and paid well as you go up, doing as little job as nothing, you aren't exactly going to complain about it.