4 ms·

I think you misunderstand the premise of the book. What they call a BS job is not the one you dislike, or find it a drudgery. It's rather the one you don't unde

I think you misunderstand the premise of the book. What they call a BS job is not the one you dislike, or find it a drudgery. It's rather the one you don't understand the purpose of.

anm89 6y ago
I don't misunderstand the premise at all. Whether your job has purpose or not isn't for the employee to decide. Thats for the employer to decide. It's your job to decide whether you want to trade your time for their money. If they decide they want to pay you to do something, and you decide that you want to take their money, than your subjective evaluation of whether the job has purpose is irrelevant as long as you keep the job.
- kennyadam 6y ago
  keep licking dem boots
  - anm89 6y ago
    By understanding the nature of the system I work in, i make a set off tradeoffs that work for me and its treated me very well over my life. I promise you I do a whole lot less boot licking than average and I'm happy to bootlick when I decide the trade off is in my favor on a case by case basis. The people who end up licking boots are the ones who can't see the reality of their situations and go in with unrealistic expectations. Then they complain when things aren't working out for them.
- thomaslord 6y ago
  I think the idea here is that employers are paying people for something because they believe it provides value, but it isn't actually providing value. In terms of "should this position exist at the company" the employer gets final say, but if my boss pays me to sit alone in a room and do nothing all day that's objectively purposeless regardless of what my boss says. An employee's perception of a job not having purpose can have a large impact on their productivity (humans in general tend to do badly when they're expected to do tasks they see as pointless for too long). Because of this, it's in the employer's interest to either explain the value an employee provides to the company sufficiently well that the employee doesn't feel that their job is pointless. If there is no way to convince the employee of that, the employee is likely either unqualified to understand their duties or genuinely doing a job that doesn't need to be done.
  - anm89 6y ago
    I don't really disagree with anything here. Lots of jobs are probably counterproductive to the employer, and probably equally suck from the employees perspective. But the only entity which gets to make the call for if that job should exist at the end of the day is the employer. If you don't believe any malicious intent to provide intentionally purposeless jobs on the side of the employer (and while you could say many bad things about modern corporations, I don't think they have any incentives to do this specific bad thing) , the only rational assumption is that their organizational structure, to the best of its decision making ability, thinks the existence of that job does benefit their bottom line. I think people are reading my response as being some kind of corporate apologetics, and from my opinion that couldn't be further from the case. I intentionally stay far away from large corporate entities in terms of jobs because I think they suck. My point is that is the only vote any off us get and that is the way it should be at the end of the day. Complaining that some big Corp isn't providing purpose to you is the same as complaining about gravity. I mean you have a right to do it, but you aren't changing anything.
    - anm89 6y ago
      edit: I'll make one exception here. If a corporation was trying to rent seek in the sense that hiring a person who does literally nothing gave them a tax incentive or something, you could end up with an employee who has literally no functional purpose within the organization. They would still be serving a purpose as a proxy for the rent seeking but from their perspective they would be doing nothing. This is still not a believable scenario in my mind as they employer would already be paying them and would probably have them do some other thing as well. Also the job would still have purpose it would just be very abstract.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- perfunctory 6y ago
  > Whether your job has purpose or not isn't for the employee to decide. Thats for the employer to decide. Says who? The point is, we are free to define what a BS job is anyway we want. This book simply postulates that the job is BS if a person performing the job thinks it is. You are free to come up with alternative definitions. - A job is BS if a congress committee designates it as such. - A job is BS if NYTimes editorial board says it is. - A Job is BS if employer files for bankruptcy. For me, the definition adopted by the book is at least not worse than the alternatives. Once we defined it we can talk about how many BS jobs there are etc. Or, to rephrase, how many people think they have a BS job. > It's your job to decide whether you want to trade your time for their money. And yes, I can trade my time for their money and still have freedom to call their job BS.
  - anm89 6y ago
    > Says who? Says the company who created the job. They created the job you think is bullshit. They have the right to do so. If you want to make this bullshit job not exist, they are the one you'd have to convince. What is your goal here? Sure I think a lot of these jobs are BS too. The point is it doesn't matter at all what you or I think unless you're advocating for some specific change. Congress as far as I know has never outlawed a job for being pointless nor do they have any authority as far as I know to do so. The NY Times can say whatever they want about any job in the world but they don't have any say in the issue. If the company goes out of business than the problem resolves itself. So is your goal to complain to the internet that you don't like the fact that some job exists. If so, sure, scream to the skies about how dumb these jobs are. If you are saying something should change, that's when the stuff I'm talking about is relevant because you are going to find that your perception of them being bullshit does not give you any avenue to make them not exist.

I think you misunderstand the premise of the book. What they call a BS job is not the one you dislike, or find it a drudgery. It's rather the one you don't understand the purpose of.

anm89 6y ago

I don't misunderstand the premise at all. Whether your job has purpose or not isn't for the employee to decide. Thats for the employer to decide. It's your job to decide whether you want to trade your time for their money. If they decide they want to pay you to do something, and you decide that you want to take their money, than your subjective evaluation of whether the job has purpose is irrelevant as long as you keep the job.

kennyadam 6y ago
keep licking dem boots
- anm89 6y ago
  By understanding the nature of the system I work in, i make a set off tradeoffs that work for me and its treated me very well over my life. I promise you I do a whole lot less boot licking than average and I'm happy to bootlick when I decide the trade off is in my favor on a case by case basis. The people who end up licking boots are the ones who can't see the reality of their situations and go in with unrealistic expectations. Then they complain when things aren't working out for them.
thomaslord 6y ago
I think the idea here is that employers are paying people for something because they believe it provides value, but it isn't actually providing value. In terms of "should this position exist at the company" the employer gets final say, but if my boss pays me to sit alone in a room and do nothing all day that's objectively purposeless regardless of what my boss says. An employee's perception of a job not having purpose can have a large impact on their productivity (humans in general tend to do badly when they're expected to do tasks they see as pointless for too long). Because of this, it's in the employer's interest to either explain the value an employee provides to the company sufficiently well that the employee doesn't feel that their job is pointless. If there is no way to convince the employee of that, the employee is likely either unqualified to understand their duties or genuinely doing a job that doesn't need to be done.
- anm89 6y ago
  I don't really disagree with anything here. Lots of jobs are probably counterproductive to the employer, and probably equally suck from the employees perspective. But the only entity which gets to make the call for if that job should exist at the end of the day is the employer. If you don't believe any malicious intent to provide intentionally purposeless jobs on the side of the employer (and while you could say many bad things about modern corporations, I don't think they have any incentives to do this specific bad thing) , the only rational assumption is that their organizational structure, to the best of its decision making ability, thinks the existence of that job does benefit their bottom line. I think people are reading my response as being some kind of corporate apologetics, and from my opinion that couldn't be further from the case. I intentionally stay far away from large corporate entities in terms of jobs because I think they suck. My point is that is the only vote any off us get and that is the way it should be at the end of the day. Complaining that some big Corp isn't providing purpose to you is the same as complaining about gravity. I mean you have a right to do it, but you aren't changing anything.
  - anm89 6y ago
    edit: I'll make one exception here. If a corporation was trying to rent seek in the sense that hiring a person who does literally nothing gave them a tax incentive or something, you could end up with an employee who has literally no functional purpose within the organization. They would still be serving a purpose as a proxy for the rent seeking but from their perspective they would be doing nothing. This is still not a believable scenario in my mind as they employer would already be paying them and would probably have them do some other thing as well. Also the job would still have purpose it would just be very abstract.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
perfunctory 6y ago
> Whether your job has purpose or not isn't for the employee to decide. Thats for the employer to decide. Says who? The point is, we are free to define what a BS job is anyway we want. This book simply postulates that the job is BS if a person performing the job thinks it is. You are free to come up with alternative definitions. - A job is BS if a congress committee designates it as such. - A job is BS if NYTimes editorial board says it is. - A Job is BS if employer files for bankruptcy. For me, the definition adopted by the book is at least not worse than the alternatives. Once we defined it we can talk about how many BS jobs there are etc. Or, to rephrase, how many people think they have a BS job. > It's your job to decide whether you want to trade your time for their money. And yes, I can trade my time for their money and still have freedom to call their job BS.
- anm89 6y ago
  > Says who? Says the company who created the job. They created the job you think is bullshit. They have the right to do so. If you want to make this bullshit job not exist, they are the one you'd have to convince. What is your goal here? Sure I think a lot of these jobs are BS too. The point is it doesn't matter at all what you or I think unless you're advocating for some specific change. Congress as far as I know has never outlawed a job for being pointless nor do they have any authority as far as I know to do so. The NY Times can say whatever they want about any job in the world but they don't have any say in the issue. If the company goes out of business than the problem resolves itself. So is your goal to complain to the internet that you don't like the fact that some job exists. If so, sure, scream to the skies about how dumb these jobs are. If you are saying something should change, that's when the stuff I'm talking about is relevant because you are going to find that your perception of them being bullshit does not give you any avenue to make them not exist.