3 ms·
Ask HN: Are most jobs smoke and mirrors?
Trying to learn more about UX and product management: the more I read the more I am concluding that they are rationalizations people use to justify the existence of their roles - after the fact.
For example, most PM books offer very general advice and frameworks, not specific or concrete knowledge - repeating the same superficial information, without much practical insights.
My hypothesis is that a lot of people got where they are from plain luck, but later justify their successes as "hard work" and create a story to sell themselves as "changing the world".
Does anyone feel that a lot of jobs are bs, paid by the rich to stroke their egos, keep their privilege, and prolong these self-perpetuating lies? Or that most "professionals" are subconsciously or intentionally lying their way through and feel proud about it?
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30215033
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
- dtagames 5y agoAn interesting post I read online recently (I don't recall where) suggested that most of our career ambition and pride is really just the Protestant work ethic wrapped in a personal story we can feel ok about. His suggestion was that all work is really just "something you like to do for money." Although it's cold, that's probably true. I'm not exempting myself from this delusion at all. In fact, it was eye-opening to hear it called out. I've spent vast swaths of my 3-decade career hoping or believing that I was doing something purposeful -- or that my company or customers were. In retrospect, what we probably did is help a few already rich people get richer and provide for our own livelihoods during some part of the process. Just working to care for yourself and your family doesn't sound particularly ennobling, but it does seem realistic. Since work is varied and so are the measurements of success, it's easy for anyone to map "success" or "failure" onto their own results, or someone else's. It's also easy to think that one person's work is more heroic or more important than another's, when really we're all just monkeys with typewriters trying to survive.
- mgh2 5y agoMaybe this one https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29903457 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29903457
- dtagames 5y agoNo, that wasn't it but thank you for the link. That article is also great! It's funny how a boiling toad (or an employee) can be psychologically and even spiritually flogged into a mass delusion of oligarchic profiteering masquerading as universal benificence.
- yuppie_scum 5y agoThat’s the general topic of this book: https://www.amazon.com/Bullshit-Jobs-Theory-David-Graeber/dp/150114331X https://www.amazon.com/Bullshit-Jobs-Theory-David-Graeber/dp...
- mgh2 5y agoYes, the book is well known, but is there a balance or are we just destined to live in lies? Maybe that is the purpose of life, to find truth in anything we do?
- mgh2 5y agoOn UX, Apple doesn't seem to follow the dogma and often get their products right, unlike their competitors - just look at last 10 yrs of crap output https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3uR6IDSHSM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3uR6IDSHSM
- danamit 5y agoHere is my take on it: * UX is IT's life coaching, etc... yes there is people who work as life coach, they get paid to be someone's friend basically, they suggest things to do, spend time with them in vacation, and somehow they give you the dope tips and tricks to be happy. There is hardly anyone who is mainly a UX person, the only purely UX person I worked with in my life was someone who did basically management of UI people. Bigger more important companies do have UX people. At that point any small improvement is worth it. * PM, those guys are important in coordinating work, someone has to do it, its useful role, but it doesn't take any unique skills, the type of personality would help but the unique skills no. There is no way we are people of science and agile and scrum and things we do are highly precise, ofc you have to "know" bs to do the job, we will never stop pretending being a PM is more than being someone who know how to coordinate work, talk to people, get stressed out by higher up so he amplify than and stress out the devs so they can finish in time. Manufacturing jobs have such hierarchies too, it is simple work just do the thing, but someone has to be making sure you doing the thing. We devs are a bit sensitive and it has to be someone with some super duper knowledge in doing the management and he has to hint to you that you should give it 110% instead of yelling to you as the old way in the manufacturing world.