>What would happen if all the bullshit work ended tomorrow?< It can't. Some of the bullshit work is actually just to provide a bizarro-world downtime where you

>What would happen if all the bullshit work ended tomorrow?< It can't. Some of the bullshit work is actually just to provide a bizarro-world downtime where you can't just tell people to take extra vacation because that is unthinkable: "fairness" complaints, worries that idle time makes people more likely to consider their options, and frankly the inconceivability of the idea in and of itself. So what you do is have this kind of idle time work that doesn't actually need to be done but keeps people busy. Think of it as the workplace version of engagement tweaking. As a concrete example, in the ASIC space, the sub-teams involved routinely finish their part of the current generation, and in some cases the next generation work isn't ready to start yet. One thing startups used to do (and were still doing in my direct observation as recently as 4 years ago) was lay off their ASIC guys as they finished the current generation until they could see whether the chip was getting traction, and then they'd hurry up and hire for the next generation of so. And so on. What the companies eventually started doing by ~2000 was creating bullshit background work projects that were clearly, at least to most observers, either senseless (like bumping the generation for a low-volume ASIC where even just the mask costs would never be paid back if the project shipped) or speculative-but-not-productive projects.