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The trick "bullshit jobs" uses is to switch between two definitions of bullshit. One definition is "useless, of no benefit to the employer," and the other is "r

The trick "bullshit jobs" uses is to switch between two definitions of bullshit. One definition is "useless, of no benefit to the employer," and the other is "revolving around selling bullshit" (which is absolutely beneficial to the employer). The first definition is sort of ridiculous (no company is going to assign budget to something that's clearly useless), but when challenged it reverts to the second definition, which is trivially obvious (of course most companies are trying to hawk crap). Read the comments on this post - most of the arguments are just people switching between the two definitions.

Ecstatify 5y ago
(no company is going to assign budget to something that's clearly useless) A bit naive to think that companies are 100% efficient and don’t make mistakes. Companies aren’t robots, they’re a collection of people, people make mistakes. I’ve seen executives in the past identify an issue and hire someone to solve that problem, executive didn’t understand the problem, person left the company position wasn’t filled again.
- MillenialMan 5y ago
  I think they make mistakes, and as with your example, those mistakes tend to get fixed. Net negative jobs are the exception, not the rule, and completely useless jobs are the vast exception.
Nextgrid 5y ago
> no company is going to assign budget to something that's clearly useless That would be true only if leadership was 100% omniscient and knowledgeable in all topics. The problem is that ultimately only leadership and shareholders are incentivized by company profits. People on a salary care more about their personal salary and benefits, and while those should theoretically correlate with company profits, the feedback loop is extremely long and can be affected by external factors, potentially concealing inefficiencies, ultimately allowing people on a flat salary to prioritize their personal gains at the detriment of the company's gains. And the above still assumes good faith and mere lack of skill. When you include fraud or mis-selling into the mix (such as big consulting companies charging insane sums for unkept promises then outsourcing the actual work to incompetent people) the problem becomes so much bigger.
FatalLogic 5y ago
>no company is going to assign budget to something that's clearly useless On the contrary, companies do this frequently. Sometimes it's simply because the job is not "clearly useless" in the eyes of the management, even if it's obvious to other people. More often, the usefulness of the job to the organization itself, or to people inside it, has become disconnected from its actual usefulness. For example, jobs may be created as a placeholder for otherwise unused staffing budget.
- heisenbit 5y ago
  Exactly. User story: As a manager I want to make decisions but maintain a layer of isolation from consequences. Being the fall guy is a bullshit job but having fall guys to sacrifice is imensely useful.
  - MillenialMan 5y ago
    You have people who's entire role, not just part of it, is to be a fall guy? They do nothing but pretend to work and act as a scapegoat when you fail? Or do you have people who are still productive, but you keep around as insurance?
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- MillenialMan 5y ago
  This strikes me as a narrative that's much easier to state and nod along to, than to demonstrate. Companies are ruthless about cutting fat. They have departments dedicated to isolating unnecessary employees and firing them. Beurocracy is inefficient, but it's rarely completely wrong. It's very easy to tell when an employee is contributing nothing, even for a monolith. What I think actually happens is that companies hire more people for a particular role than they need, because load balancing is difficult, or they have a structure that extracts productivity from the workforce in a way that's inefficient. But that's not the same as outright non-productivity. Those people are not useless - they're still productive, they just provide suboptimal (and maybe negative) return on investment. > For example, jobs may be created as a placeholder for otherwise unused staffing budget. I don't think it works like that. They may invest the excess staffing budget in a productive worker they otherwise wouldn't have hired, but that's not the same as hiring someone who provides no benefit. The return that employee brings may even be negative but it's very, very unlikely to be -100%.
JackFr 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy
djrobstep 5y ago
> no company is going to assign budget to something that's clearly useless The only way somebody can say this is if they haven't actually worked for any real company.
- courtf 5y ago
  Companies are the most rational and levelheaded of God's creations, and so could never engage in any activity so at odds with their raison d'etre, like wasting budget on useless endeavors. Why, with all the well-trained MBAs filling out the bureaucrat ranks these days, I'm sure business has never been more efficient!
- MillenialMan 5y ago
  I was careful with my words. "Completely useless" is not the same as "a net loss".

Ecstatify 5y ago

(no company is going to assign budget to something that's clearly useless) A bit naive to think that companies are 100% efficient and don’t make mistakes. Companies aren’t robots, they’re a collection of people, people make mistakes. I’ve seen executives in the past identify an issue and hire someone to solve that problem, executive didn’t understand the problem, person left the company position wasn’t filled again.

MillenialMan 5y ago
I think they make mistakes, and as with your example, those mistakes tend to get fixed. Net negative jobs are the exception, not the rule, and completely useless jobs are the vast exception.

Nextgrid 5y ago

> no company is going to assign budget to something that's clearly useless That would be true only if leadership was 100% omniscient and knowledgeable in all topics. The problem is that ultimately only leadership and shareholders are incentivized by company profits. People on a salary care more about their personal salary and benefits, and while those should theoretically correlate with company profits, the feedback loop is extremely long and can be affected by external factors, potentially concealing inefficiencies, ultimately allowing people on a flat salary to prioritize their personal gains at the detriment of the company's gains. And the above still assumes good faith and mere lack of skill. When you include fraud or mis-selling into the mix (such as big consulting companies charging insane sums for unkept promises then outsourcing the actual work to incompetent people) the problem becomes so much bigger.

FatalLogic 5y ago

>no company is going to assign budget to something that's clearly useless On the contrary, companies do this frequently. Sometimes it's simply because the job is not "clearly useless" in the eyes of the management, even if it's obvious to other people. More often, the usefulness of the job to the organization itself, or to people inside it, has become disconnected from its actual usefulness. For example, jobs may be created as a placeholder for otherwise unused staffing budget.

heisenbit 5y ago
Exactly. User story: As a manager I want to make decisions but maintain a layer of isolation from consequences. Being the fall guy is a bullshit job but having fall guys to sacrifice is imensely useful.
- MillenialMan 5y ago
  You have people who's entire role, not just part of it, is to be a fall guy? They do nothing but pretend to work and act as a scapegoat when you fail? Or do you have people who are still productive, but you keep around as insurance?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
MillenialMan 5y ago
This strikes me as a narrative that's much easier to state and nod along to, than to demonstrate. Companies are ruthless about cutting fat. They have departments dedicated to isolating unnecessary employees and firing them. Beurocracy is inefficient, but it's rarely completely wrong. It's very easy to tell when an employee is contributing nothing, even for a monolith. What I think actually happens is that companies hire more people for a particular role than they need, because load balancing is difficult, or they have a structure that extracts productivity from the workforce in a way that's inefficient. But that's not the same as outright non-productivity. Those people are not useless - they're still productive, they just provide suboptimal (and maybe negative) return on investment. > For example, jobs may be created as a placeholder for otherwise unused staffing budget. I don't think it works like that. They may invest the excess staffing budget in a productive worker they otherwise wouldn't have hired, but that's not the same as hiring someone who provides no benefit. The return that employee brings may even be negative but it's very, very unlikely to be -100%.

JackFr 5y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy

djrobstep 5y ago

> no company is going to assign budget to something that's clearly useless The only way somebody can say this is if they haven't actually worked for any real company.

courtf 5y ago
Companies are the most rational and levelheaded of God's creations, and so could never engage in any activity so at odds with their raison d'etre, like wasting budget on useless endeavors. Why, with all the well-trained MBAs filling out the bureaucrat ranks these days, I'm sure business has never been more efficient!
MillenialMan 5y ago
I was careful with my words. "Completely useless" is not the same as "a net loss".