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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

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
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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
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