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I don’t think I’ve said all jobs will be rockstar you’re the boss type of jobs, but there are certainly a huge amount of inefficiencies in lots of business. I t

by xzel 7y ago

I don’t think I’ve said all jobs will be rockstar you’re the boss type of jobs, but there are certainly a huge amount of inefficiencies in lots of business. I think asking people if they feel like their work is needed or could be automated away is probably the only gauge one might have until actually removing them or trying to automate it. I agree it’s not a perfect metric but it’s got to be correct within some boundary, right? I think that’s the bigger question here, as well if people are qualified to judge (which I would hope since it’s their job). I actually think we need more “horseshit jobs” (great phrase and pun btw I’m going to steal this) in America where in the last 20 years we’ve pushed a lot of them to China and others, such as recycling.

prepend 7y ago
I think the problem with asking people this question is that most don’t understand automation, almost all are biased toward themselves, and employees frequently think their job is stupid given their imperfect information. I remember years ago I was talking with a friend of a friend who worked for a small 3-4 person software company. In the same conversation ve said ver job was bullshit because the software was written years ago by the two owners, who did nothing now, leaving all customer service to the friend of friend. So the argument was that ve should be paid more since ve creates all the value. So the argument was that the owners had bullshit jobs. There was a counter argument that small bugs had to be fixed, not by owners, but by the friend of friend who thought vis job was bullshit because the owner should fix it since the owner knows the software well. I think it’s hard to get a straight answer because of this limited perspective as well as the natural falseness in responses to “is your job bullshit and we’ll pay you UBI so you can do something cool?” Or “is your job bullshit and we’ll fire you?”

by xzel 7y ago

prepend 7y ago

I think the problem with asking people this question is that most don’t understand automation, almost all are biased toward themselves, and employees frequently think their job is stupid given their imperfect information. I remember years ago I was talking with a friend of a friend who worked for a small 3-4 person software company. In the same conversation ve said ver job was bullshit because the software was written years ago by the two owners, who did nothing now, leaving all customer service to the friend of friend. So the argument was that ve should be paid more since ve creates all the value. So the argument was that the owners had bullshit jobs. There was a counter argument that small bugs had to be fixed, not by owners, but by the friend of friend who thought vis job was bullshit because the owner should fix it since the owner knows the software well. I think it’s hard to get a straight answer because of this limited perspective as well as the natural falseness in responses to “is your job bullshit and we’ll pay you UBI so you can do something cool?” Or “is your job bullshit and we’ll fire you?”