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Common Jobs in a Medieval City
- everyone 5y agoI wonder what the most common jobs are in a modern city. Probably all bullshit.
- technothrasher 5y agoHealthcare and retail/restaurant work I would imagine.
- bruce343434 5y agobullshit in whose opinion? As someone who does not believe in god, are all of the church related jobs bullshit? Or are they not, since a lot of people want churches and their services? If a job exists, there's apparently at least one person who wants it done.
- thedailymail 5y agoI think the parent quote may be in reference to David Graeber's commentary on "bullshit jobs".
- bruce343434 5y agoI figured as much. But I don't agree with the premise of the book. Sure, we all "know" the jobs are bullshit, and yet they aren't. Let's go over the wikipedia summary at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs >flunkies, who serve to make their superiors feel important, e.g., receptionists, administrative assistants, door attendants, makers of websites whose sites neglect ease of use and speed for looks; They serve, hence, not a bullshit job. We might look down on it, but they are providing value to their employer. Sadly perhaps, humans are just deeply subjective. See again my religion example. Also, this seems really dismissive of receptionists/PAs. These people do a lot of real work. >goons, who act to harm or deceive others on behalf of their employer, e.g., lobbyists, corporate lawyers, telemarketers, public relations specialists, community managers; Not very nice no, but again they provide value to their bosses. Probably to themselves too. >duct tapers, who temporarily fix problems that could be fixed permanently, e.g., programmers repairing bloated code, airline desk staff who calm passengers whose bags do not arrive; This just seems to be naïve idealism. >box tickers, who create the appearance that something useful is being done when it is not, e.g., survey administrators, in-house magazine journalists, corporate compliance officers, quality service managers; Here it gets interesting. These people may actually be the first that don't provide value, but trick others into thinking they do. >taskmasters, who manage—or create extra work for—those who do not need it, e.g., middle management, leadership professionals. This is a mix of dumb (mis)managers, and malicious time wasters. I think it's obvious that a lot of resources of all kinds are wasted by inefficiencies caused by stupidity. That's a human (as in, we as a species) problem. Then there's malice, which fits into the "tricks others into believing they provide value" category. Anyway, that's just my take on it.
- watwut 5y ago> flunkies, who serve to make their superiors feel important, e.g., receptionists, administrative assistants, door attendants, makers of websites whose sites neglect ease of use and speed for looks; Imo, receptionists, administrative assistant and "makers of websites whose sites neglect ease of use and speed for looks" are all actually useful. Their function is not just to make someone feel superior. Instead, I would argue that whoever wrote that was caught in own feeling of superiority over service staff.
- bruce343434 5y agoExactly. I can't imagine running a doctors office without a reception. Or really any public facing company/office without a reception. Would anyone like to have the dentist use his time to answer the phone rather than fix teeth? Seems like that would under utilize the dentist's degree.
- kwhitefoot 5y agoReception at my doctor's in Norway are all qualified nurses. My sister on the other hand goes to a surgery in the UK has a dedicated receptionist. My sister's experience of visiting the surgery is considerably worse than mine. At the dental practice that I use the hygienists take turns to run the reception desk. > Would anyone like to have the dentist use his time to answer the phone rather than fix teeth? I don't care who answers the telephone as long as they are competent to answer questions and have authority to solve problems.
- brianwawok 5y agoWouldn't that raise prices, to use a nurse as a reception? In the US it would be something like: Receptionist: 30k / year Nurse: 80k / year. So you have: Doctor's office 1: 3x Nurse, 240k per year in salary Doctor's office 2: 2x Nurse, 1x Receptionist, 190k pear year. That 50k in extra cost has to come from somewhere. Lower paid doctors, higher costs, ???
- smitty1e 5y agoChurch worker; social worker: what's the difference?
- watwut 5y agoThat they are two massively different occupations, with different goals, different processes and different regulations they fall under. Just about the only thing they have the same is low salary.
- PeterisP 5y agoThe point is that there's more overlap than how it looks like on the surface level. E.g. part of what a A.D. 1500 village pastor does is what's done nowadays by psychotherapists and marriage counselors; the role in filling the people's needs is similar even if the processes and regulations are wildly different, just as the processes and regulations of A.D. 1500 shoemaker or surgeon are wildly different than the modern shoe factory worker or surgeon.
- agumonkey 5y agoThat's ignoring a lot of structure induced jobs. Often nobody wants it done but you can't fire a person so you invent a role. Or sometimes the need is mostly a factor of higher rank carelessness or incompetence.. fix the tooling and there's no need to hire 5 more guys to grind through endless papers or mails.
- s5300 5y agoSomething related to Wal-Mart. Seriously.
- baud147258 5y agoor maybe Amazon now
- thorin 5y agoI guess a recent pandemic would have shown which jobs were important these days: Farmers Truck Drivers Shop Staff Medical Specialists Teachers Infrastructure specialists (power,fuel,extending into IT work) --- Purveyors of leisure activities, bars/brewing, restaurants/takeaways, online gaming, gambling --- Venture capitalists and financial experts Consultants specializing in skimming and offshoring Sales, marketing and influencers I'll let you assign the weightings
- agumonkey 5y agoIt all boils down to what a good job means for a human. I may be special but I find a few axis that I need: - skillful - useful - well organized enough Today people don't do much, they don't master much, most of it is done far away in large shops or plants. It's rarely that useful (we're overwhelmingly comfy) and recent management practices are surreal most of the time. I talked to a few people that prefered low wage in exchange for more skills or usefulness, even if the job might look less impressive in the first place.
- dmurray 5y agoProbably not. Of course, it's highly dependent on how you group related professions, but according to [0], which has a granularity similar to our medieval source, the three most common occupations in New York in 2020 were retail salespeople, nurses and labourers. You need to get to 4 and 5 before the office and management jobs usually associated with the "bullshit jobs" epithet start to appear. [0] https://stacker.com/new-york/new-york-city/most-common-jobs-new-york-city https://stacker.com/new-york/new-york-city/most-common-jobs-...
- Cthulhu_ 5y agoDunno about major cities, but there's national statistics for these things: https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/employment-by-major-industry-sector.htm https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/employment-by-major-industry-...
- gullywhumper 5y agoBLS has the OEWS (occupational employment and wage statistics) at the national, state, and metropolitan/CBSA levels. https://www.bls.gov/oes/home.htm https://www.bls.gov/oes/home.htm
- errcorrectcode 5y ago"Executive communication facilitator" ranks up there in terms of BS, but not that common. Most common would be truck driver, for-hire driver, salesperson, lawyer, or janitor.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- izzymiller 5y agoI grabbed some public data and took a quick look in comparison: https://app.hex.tech/hex-public/app/fffe29ce-a5b2-42b7-92d5-76ab7e239ddf/latest https://app.hex.tech/hex-public/app/fffe29ce-a5b2-42b7-92d5-...
- MikeTaylor 5y agoStriking that there were more shoemakers than tailors.
- lordnacho 5y agoYou can keep wearing clothes that are messed up, broken shoes will stop you being able to do a lot of stuff.
- lqet 5y agoI would expect that. Clothes last significantly longer than shoes (you can wear a cheap T-Shirt for way over 5 years, but even good midrange shoes start to fall apart after 2 years). It is also fairly easy to repair or even make clothes at home. But shoes?
- agumonkey 5y agoI'd say one would suffer a lot more with borked shoes than torn upper clothing.
- bluedino 5y agoShoes might fall apart in 2 years if you wear them every day. Do you wear the same t-shirt every day?
- Cthulhu_ 5y agoYeah, false equivalence. If you wear a dozen shoes on rotation, they will also last for 5 years.
- dmurray 5y ago4% of the workforce being shoemakers seems enormous. One person working full time making shoes for every fifty-ish adults? I don't know what the right comparison is today. According to [0], the fashion industry accounts for about 3% of world GDP. Perhaps shoes are a quarter of that? [0] https://fashinnovation.nyc/fashion-industry-statistics/ https://fashinnovation.nyc/fashion-industry-statistics/
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- mastazi 5y ago6th to 10th place are interesting: 6 – Tailors 7 – Notaries 8 – Barbers 9 – Retailers 10 – Stonemasons More notaries than barbers, retailers and stonemasons!
- drcode 5y agoLikely not too surprising, given that most people were illiterate. Probably they also helped with letter writing/reading?
- bluGill 5y agoI've seen arguments that most people were literate. Learning to read and write is not hard, and it is a useful skill. Of course literate was relative: before the printing press there wasn't much to read (book took months to copy by hand). You were reading and writing short notes. Spelling wasn't standardized so you phonetically spelled things and had to figure out what the other person meant. Good enough for letters, but nobody was writing books on anything since teaching in person was (or seemed to be) more efficient. I'm not a historian, but the above seems like a good argument. Does anyone have a real reference as to the truth?
- LegitShady 5y agoIt kind of seems like your job as someone making the claim to come up with a reference?
- bluGill 5y agoI don't know how to do that.
- catlikesshrimp 5y agoLearning to write is difficult. You need paper and pen, and free time, and some reference, and probably a teacher
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- dejj 5y agoBypass broken ad-blocker detection: https://web.archive.org/web/20211128175917/https://www.medievalists.net/2021/11/most-common-jobs-medieval-city/ https://web.archive.org/web/20211128175917/https://www.medie...
- StupidOne 5y agoI'm surprised blacksmiths didn't cut to the top 10. Almost everyone would need some kind of metal tool(s) to do their job in medieval time.
- duxup 5y agoMy grandfather was a doctor in WWII and at one point traveled up through China and other places that had been heavily decimated / damaged / looted. I remember him talking about how access to a ship (even if over long distance) with a good machine shop was critical to just get locals up and running with basic metal tools for everyday use and medical uses. It reminded me of the importance of a local blacksmith and such.
- WFHRenaissance 5y agoDefinitely a blacksmith in almost every city, but probably fewer blacksmiths per city than the other jobs. Metal tools are built to last, and are expensive, so it was probably often a low volume high cost kind of business where production could be covered by a minimal number of smiths.
- credit_guy 5y agoMy Dad was born before WW2 in a village in Eastern Europe, which was probably closer to a medieval village than to a 21st century one. He told me that a blacksmith would ask for 3 plum trees to do a certain job, presumably in order to make charcoal. I don't think there was anything special about plum trees, other than the local availability: people were (and still are) growing plum trees in order to make spirits. Giving up 3 plum trees meant giving up the spirits you could get from them for six years until the new trees would grow to maturity. So, yes, you wouldn't go to the blacksmith very often, if you could help it.
- dotancohen 5y agoOf extraordinary interest is the fact that the blacksmith made his own charcoal and presumably other consumables and tools. From whence his anvil? Would you mind sharing some more details, such as where was the village? This is exactly the type of history story that I enjoy telling my children. If you'd prefer to share privately, my Gmail username is the same as my HN username. Thank you!
- stevenjgarner 5y agoIt surprises me that all 10 jobs still exist, while there are several more recent occupations that no longer exist (albeit they were not that common): Milkmen, Elevator operator, Switchboard Operator, Ice Cutter, Bowling Pin Setter, Film projectionist, Lamplighter, Leech collector, Alchemist, Bematist, Redsmith, Daguerreotypist, Town crier
- pram 5y agoFresh milk delivery seems like something that could definitely make a comeback though!
- kibwen 5y agoSee also The Lindy Effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect
- anthony_r 5y ago<chuckles nervously as a software developer>
- bserge 5y agoThe industry is over half a century old by now, barring some absolute catastrophe, it's not going anywhere.
- post-it 5y agoBig solar flare would do it. Probably not worth worrying about though, not much we could do about it.
- AdamN 5y agoSolar flare would be awesome for coders. Some huge percentage of enterprise applications no longer have source code (they're just binaries with the code lost to the ages). All those binaries destroyed with the disks and insufficient disaster recovery would have to be rewritten!
- AzzieElbab 5y agoTotally explains why the most common English last name is "Smith"
- claudiulodro 5y agoA fun one that I'm personally familiar with is the Upholder, predecessor to the modern Upholsterer. Back in medieval times, the upholder was a combination furniture and textile producer as well as interior designer and the person who did the banners in castles, bedsheets, etc. Basically anything involving textiles. Over time, padded furniture became the main focus of the trade, leading to what we think of as upholsterers.[1] [1] https://spruceaustin.com/uncategorized/history-of-the-upholder/ https://spruceaustin.com/uncategorized/history-of-the-uphold...
- lozenge 5y agoHow about the knocker upper knocker upper? Although srather later in history. The knocker-upper would rap on window panes with a long stick to wake factory workers before dawn. They were careful not to rap too hard, so as not to wake people who might want to use their service without paying. The knocker upper knocker upper wakes a knocker upper.
- poulsbohemian 5y agoMy first reaction at seeing the headline was - I wonder if I could guess these jobs by people's family names, IE: Blacksmith, Cooper, Chandler, Brewer, Baker, etc.
- kemiller 5y agoInteresting that there are no smiths or millers on that list, given how common those surnames are.
- distribot 5y agoCool website. I miss this kind of internet.
- LambdaTrain 5y agoJust visualized this Montpellier as Oxenfurt in witcher 3
- irrational 5y agoIt's interesting to think about what my life might have been like if I had been born 500 years earlier. I think carpenter or stonemason are what I would have been most interested in. But I really love books, so maybe I would have ended up in the clergy. Thank goodness I was born now.
- lokimedes 5y agoYou would very likely have ended up with the same profession as your father (assuming you are male).
- avgcorrection 5y agoI wonder what I would be born again as if rebirth was real. Maybe a prince. Or maybe a Nobel Prize winning physicist… You would likely have been a peasant. The veil of ignorance doesn’t even make exceptions for HN readers.
- ncmncm 5y ago"Town Crier" suggests by name that a town needed only one. And, maybe, tolerated only one. I guess "gossip" was everybody's job, like textile production, so nobody's. According to ACOUP, all female members ("the distaff side") of almost all households spent any time not devoted to other tasks on spinning thread or yarn, albeit less so after the spinning jenny spread after 1200.