9 ms·

The Riddle of the Well-Paying, Pointless Job (2019)

40 points by rtukpe 3y ago

spking 3y ago
I used to think that the older I got, the easier it would be to knuckle down and get an hour or two of meaningless work done so I could move on to something more important or interesting. But actually the opposite has been the case, possibly due to overall declining energy levels.
- Swizec 3y ago
  > I used to think that the older I got, the easier it would be to knuckle down and get an hour or two of meaningless work done You’re thinking about it wrong. The trick is to do less and less of the shit you don’t like doing as you age, sorry I mean as you gain experience. Leverage your career capital into doing more of the work that fires you up and less of the work that doesn’t. There’s always things you just “have to” do, but you’d be surprised how many of those are optional. A lot of the stuff that bores you to tears, is boring because nobody cares about it getting done. High chance that nobody will even notice if you don’t.
  - pmoriarty 3y ago
    "The trick is to do less and less of the shit you don’t like doing as you age, sorry I mean as you gain experience." So this is why the people who've climbed the corporate ladder don't seem to jack shit?
    - Swizec 3y ago
      No, that’s because a lot (even most) of their time gets sucked into glue work. Every time you ask someone a question, they answer. Great! Takes 5 minutes right? What you don’t see are the other 30 people doing the same thing.
- slothtrop 3y ago
  Some people work around this by front-loading some hobbyism in their day, starting in the morning and getting up early. I've reached a point now I feel drained after a work day, whether I concentrated a lot or found it boring. And controlling for sleep. For this reason, if something I'm interested requires more overhead, I try to do some early or at least plan and set it up, so that once work is done I can just go through the motions without thinking about it too much.
LatteLazy 3y ago
This article a bad job of gluing together various ideas (Principal/agent problem, the motivational effects of money, so called Bullshit jobs etc) and does it via unfounded assertions (that people are paid more as they're promoted in order to motivate them for instance or that society actually considers teachers important). It's like the musing of a drunken co-worker after too many post-work drinks. More thinking and editing please, less keyboard-diarrhea!
smif 3y ago
The overwhelming majority of people work because they realistically have no choice but to work. There is no amount of neoliberal salad dressing that you can douse that with to make it more palatable to anyone. Doing shit because you have no choice but to do it sucks, period.
- Beached 3y ago
  I'd argue that the overwhelming amount of people would choose to work on something, even if they didn't have to. they would choose the arts, or work on inventing some new thing they want, etc. most people work stupid jobs because they can't afford there risk of doing what they actually want
  - philipov 3y ago
    Yes, what you're describing isn't Work. We may have been conditioned to use the same word for both things, as you did, to make it appear they are the same thing, but they're very different.
    - birdyrooster 3y ago
      Eh, you have to work for yourself too. It comes down to who are you working for... who's "will" are you sustaining? This is about willpower and using it for your own ends instead of others whether that is work or some other activity.
    - bannedbybros 3y ago
      [dead]
    - BobbyJo 3y ago
      What would the difference be?
      - Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
        I know this is Hacker News, and so someone "working on something" on their own is typically interpreted to mean "building a startup", which I would still call "work" in the more classic meaning of employment, but "work" doesn't have to mean that. A friend of mine retired early and spends a lot of time in his workshop building fun things for himself. That is work, but it's not "work" in the way people think of the term. One project I want to do some time is design and 3D print a model roller coaster, including building a train to travel over it. That's work, but it's not employment.
jagtstronaut 3y ago
I know this is not what this article is chiefly about, but I have always found the bullsh!t jobs argument lame. Sure, I have met plenty of people who just spin their wheels for money, but to me that is always just bad management. In my experience even at a mature company, there is always a mountain of real work to do even if some people are avoiding it.
zabzonk 3y ago
pay me lots of money to do nothing? sign me up! sadly, in a long career, this never happened to me. most well-run companies are always looking at ways of getting rid of dead wood. i thought this article was BS, and went on too long.
- nathan_compton 3y ago
  Sounds like you're just working for the wrong companies, then.
  - zabzonk 3y ago
    so i was getting well-paid to be busy, but this is wrong???
    - nathan_compton 3y ago
      "pay me lots of money to do nothing? sign me up!" Your words.
- dagw 3y ago
  most well-run companies are always looking at ways of getting rid of dead wood So get a job at a badly run company. Find a huge multinational which works in a wide variety of fields and apply for a job in a department without clear deliverables. Send lots of emails, attend lots of meetings, be friendly to everybody and always look busy. If anybody asks, you're mostly working on a vaguely defined internal project being run out of the Singapore office at the moment.
  - fallingknife 3y ago
    > send lots of emails, attend lots of meetings, be friendly to everybody and always look busy Sounds like work, which kind of defeats the purpose here.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
btbuildem 3y ago
If you work at a for-profit corporation, your job will be pointless, because the only reason it exists is to generate profits. It's as simple as that. We all need to make a living, so pick something you're reasonably good at, absolutely do not invest yourself emotionally into it, and use the proceeds to do what you really want to do. Exploit your employer every chance you get, because that is their default approach towards you.
- _gfwu 3y ago
  I agree in most of your comment except that it's an overly pessimistic take, in my view. You can still get jobs outside the corporate/capitalism driven Sodom that aren't soul-crushingly pointless and boring.
- no_wizard 3y ago
  I truly would be working on software in my spare time (and I do!) even if it was not my career. So it is possible to have both a job that is fulfilling and provides. I don't take for granted that this is not common, but it is possible. I can earnestly say I like what I do
- BitwiseFool 3y ago
  >"If you work at a for-profit corporation, your job will be pointless, because the only reason it exists is to generate profits. It's as simple as that." I certainly understand and can empathize with being jaded about corporate greed, but I don't follow your reasoning on this one. It implies the only jobs that are not pointless are those that don't generate profit?
  - Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
    I think they're implying that the job is pointless to the worker.
    - slothtrop 3y ago
      I don't think a worker's sentiments about a job are contingent on rationalization that the job's end result is useful/justified. If you pressed a red button all day knowing that it would provide value or save lives, it would still "feel" meaningless.
no_wizard 3y ago
>This has come to be known as principal-agent theory (or incentives theory), and is the foundational structure that most corporations are built upon today. Pay people more, and motivation should follow naturally. This is where the article breaks down for me. This is definitely not what corporations do outside of the executive class. The norm is attempting to drive pay and wages down as much as possible, sans a few exceptions. I think this is actually how it used to be until sometime in the mid 1980s when financialization took off in earnest and union power started to significantly decline. EDIT: Here's an anecdote I experienced. When I was younger in college I got a job working nights at a FedEx Office. I did really well there, working full time and it accommodated my hours, and leadership took notice. One day, they pull me aside, and ask how they can help incentivize things. Before I could answer they said "The only rule is it can't be about money. Money is off the table". I told them that if money is off the table, then what are we talking about exactly? They didn't give me a straight answer, only they couldn't increase my wage. This to me is further evidence of how untrue this statement is. FWIW, to complete the story, I left a short while later, and started working at Apple which lead to one of the most amazing lucky breaks I've ever had in my career
- Workaccount2 3y ago
  I hate to say it, but in my (many years) of doing unskilled jobs, I have found that the management is very often just as, uh, "skilless" as the employees.
- alexpotato 3y ago
  I had a conversation like this once at a large corporation where I worked: Them: "We want you to be the Global Head of X given how well you've done as the Regional Head" Me: "Great! Is there more money involved?" Them: "No, sorry. Budget is tight this year" Me: "Ok. How about having more people? Someone needs to replace me regionally while I do the Global role." Them: "Sorry, no additional head count this year." Me: "Ok. How about more title? I'm a VP and this sounds like Senior VP level." Them: "Sorry, Senior VP needs minimum 5 direct reports and you will only have 3." Me: "Then: no, I don't want the role" Them: "But why not??" I eventually did take the role farther down the line as I wanted a better title for the resume.
satisfice 3y ago
I didn’t see any actual examples of a high paying bullshit job cited. I don’t think they are common. I have known one fellow who was given a job as a sort of fake project manager. He was perplexed over why he would be given work and then told not to do much of it, while the real decisions and administration remained with others. Then he realized it was because this was a consulting company that made its profit from every billable hour he worked. So, yeah, it happens, but it’s not some grand phenomenon.
- efields 3y ago
  Let's assume the point of technology is to automate routine labor and software engineers have been hard at work automating routine labor for 50ish years. Why are we still hiring software engineers? Shouldn't 50 years be enough time to automate most of what needs to get done in an office? What happened during that time is that the gemini twins of technology and bureaucracy continued to layer their shit on top of each other, creating more problems in need of more solutions with more administration to satisfy with each new layer. The software engineer is one example of a high paying bullshit jobs. No really. As much as you love the job of SWE it is a bullshit job. The problem you are solving is mostly in the hands of gravity, local politics, insane financial machinery, the hubris of a few powerful people. It doesn't mean you can't get good at your job and find it fulfilling along with the other aspects of your life. This is the architecture of your reality and you've basically mastered it, not unlike a level 60 MMO player. Good job! Most people who read this website are doing bullshit jobs. That's why, above all else, probably the most important thing you can do is look outside what you do for a living and do some good in the world.
  - PragmaticPulp 3y ago
    > The software engineer is one example of a high paying bullshit jobs. Of course, because software has never been useful to anyone.
  - uzerfcwn 3y ago
    Office labor is indeed 95% automated. Companies used to hire armies of human accountants and calculators, most of whom are now laid off because Excel does it better. The industry is currently going further and automating customer service, copywriters and other human jobs too. Since then, most SWEs doing the automation have moved on to other jobs too, such as the gaming industry. Naturally, offices still need a couple of SWEs to adapt software to changing requirements, but only a fraction of the peak.
otikik 3y ago
The answer is obvious: do the absolute minimum you need to do to not get fired while you find meaning outside of work, look for something else, or both.
5350-uiop-1130 3y ago
reminds me of this charles bukowski quote > “It was true that I didn’t have much ambition, but there ought to be a place for people without ambition, I mean a better place than the one usually reserved. How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?”
- Jiro 3y ago
  If work was enjoyable, people would do it for free. And if someone else would do it for free, nobody's going to pay you for it.
  - Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
    > If work was enjoyable, people would do it for free. If work was enjoyable, and their bills were still getting paid. Can we stop pretending that the overwhelming majority of people aren't working because they have to?
    - slothtrop 3y ago
      Who "has to"? The meth tweaker on the street still eats every day. But participating in society is a vector validation/belonging and cash for other niceties.
- slothtrop 3y ago
  He asks this rhetorically, but some people get something out of it - the hustle and bustle, and of course brushing alongside co-workers. If there's money to be made it's because people want something and buy it. But really, money is motivation enough
egypturnash 3y ago
The ending of this is great. If you've got a job that pays decently but offers no satisfaction, the solution is a SIDE HUSTLE. Not a fulfilling hobby, not volunteering to improve your community, not even raising a family - all things that have provided satisfaction to countless people with well-paying-but-meh jobs over the history of office work. None of these things exist in the world of Usagi Sararīman, only MORE WORK.
vogueQubit 3y ago
0 - In real life, that "pointless" service job is a critical need for people and that's why it exists. 1 - When any job becomes truly pointless it ceases to exist. 2 - I look forward to what jobs we'll have when these service jobs have been mostly automated away

40 points by rtukpe 3y ago

I used to think that the older I got, the easier it would be to knuckle down and get an hour or two of meaningless work done so I could move on to something more important or interesting. But actually the opposite has been the case, possibly due to overall declining energy levels.

Swizec 3y ago
> I used to think that the older I got, the easier it would be to knuckle down and get an hour or two of meaningless work done You’re thinking about it wrong. The trick is to do less and less of the shit you don’t like doing as you age, sorry I mean as you gain experience. Leverage your career capital into doing more of the work that fires you up and less of the work that doesn’t. There’s always things you just “have to” do, but you’d be surprised how many of those are optional. A lot of the stuff that bores you to tears, is boring because nobody cares about it getting done. High chance that nobody will even notice if you don’t.
- pmoriarty 3y ago
  "The trick is to do less and less of the shit you don’t like doing as you age, sorry I mean as you gain experience." So this is why the people who've climbed the corporate ladder don't seem to jack shit?
  - Swizec 3y ago
    No, that’s because a lot (even most) of their time gets sucked into glue work. Every time you ask someone a question, they answer. Great! Takes 5 minutes right? What you don’t see are the other 30 people doing the same thing.
slothtrop 3y ago
Some people work around this by front-loading some hobbyism in their day, starting in the morning and getting up early. I've reached a point now I feel drained after a work day, whether I concentrated a lot or found it boring. And controlling for sleep. For this reason, if something I'm interested requires more overhead, I try to do some early or at least plan and set it up, so that once work is done I can just go through the motions without thinking about it too much.

LatteLazy 3y ago

This article a bad job of gluing together various ideas (Principal/agent problem, the motivational effects of money, so called Bullshit jobs etc) and does it via unfounded assertions (that people are paid more as they're promoted in order to motivate them for instance or that society actually considers teachers important). It's like the musing of a drunken co-worker after too many post-work drinks. More thinking and editing please, less keyboard-diarrhea!

smif 3y ago

The overwhelming majority of people work because they realistically have no choice but to work. There is no amount of neoliberal salad dressing that you can douse that with to make it more palatable to anyone. Doing shit because you have no choice but to do it sucks, period.

Beached 3y ago
I'd argue that the overwhelming amount of people would choose to work on something, even if they didn't have to. they would choose the arts, or work on inventing some new thing they want, etc. most people work stupid jobs because they can't afford there risk of doing what they actually want
- philipov 3y ago
  Yes, what you're describing isn't Work. We may have been conditioned to use the same word for both things, as you did, to make it appear they are the same thing, but they're very different.
  - birdyrooster 3y ago
    Eh, you have to work for yourself too. It comes down to who are you working for... who's "will" are you sustaining? This is about willpower and using it for your own ends instead of others whether that is work or some other activity.
  - bannedbybros 3y ago
    [dead]
  - BobbyJo 3y ago
    What would the difference be?
    - Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
      I know this is Hacker News, and so someone "working on something" on their own is typically interpreted to mean "building a startup", which I would still call "work" in the more classic meaning of employment, but "work" doesn't have to mean that. A friend of mine retired early and spends a lot of time in his workshop building fun things for himself. That is work, but it's not "work" in the way people think of the term. One project I want to do some time is design and 3D print a model roller coaster, including building a train to travel over it. That's work, but it's not employment.

jagtstronaut 3y ago

I know this is not what this article is chiefly about, but I have always found the bullsh!t jobs argument lame. Sure, I have met plenty of people who just spin their wheels for money, but to me that is always just bad management. In my experience even at a mature company, there is always a mountain of real work to do even if some people are avoiding it.

zabzonk 3y ago

pay me lots of money to do nothing? sign me up! sadly, in a long career, this never happened to me. most well-run companies are always looking at ways of getting rid of dead wood. i thought this article was BS, and went on too long.

nathan_compton 3y ago
Sounds like you're just working for the wrong companies, then.
- zabzonk 3y ago
  so i was getting well-paid to be busy, but this is wrong???
  - nathan_compton 3y ago
    "pay me lots of money to do nothing? sign me up!" Your words.
dagw 3y ago
most well-run companies are always looking at ways of getting rid of dead wood So get a job at a badly run company. Find a huge multinational which works in a wide variety of fields and apply for a job in a department without clear deliverables. Send lots of emails, attend lots of meetings, be friendly to everybody and always look busy. If anybody asks, you're mostly working on a vaguely defined internal project being run out of the Singapore office at the moment.
- fallingknife 3y ago
  > send lots of emails, attend lots of meetings, be friendly to everybody and always look busy Sounds like work, which kind of defeats the purpose here.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]

btbuildem 3y ago

If you work at a for-profit corporation, your job will be pointless, because the only reason it exists is to generate profits. It's as simple as that. We all need to make a living, so pick something you're reasonably good at, absolutely do not invest yourself emotionally into it, and use the proceeds to do what you really want to do. Exploit your employer every chance you get, because that is their default approach towards you.

_gfwu 3y ago
I agree in most of your comment except that it's an overly pessimistic take, in my view. You can still get jobs outside the corporate/capitalism driven Sodom that aren't soul-crushingly pointless and boring.
no_wizard 3y ago
I truly would be working on software in my spare time (and I do!) even if it was not my career. So it is possible to have both a job that is fulfilling and provides. I don't take for granted that this is not common, but it is possible. I can earnestly say I like what I do
BitwiseFool 3y ago
>"If you work at a for-profit corporation, your job will be pointless, because the only reason it exists is to generate profits. It's as simple as that." I certainly understand and can empathize with being jaded about corporate greed, but I don't follow your reasoning on this one. It implies the only jobs that are not pointless are those that don't generate profit?
- Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
  I think they're implying that the job is pointless to the worker.
  - slothtrop 3y ago
    I don't think a worker's sentiments about a job are contingent on rationalization that the job's end result is useful/justified. If you pressed a red button all day knowing that it would provide value or save lives, it would still "feel" meaningless.

no_wizard 3y ago

>This has come to be known as principal-agent theory (or incentives theory), and is the foundational structure that most corporations are built upon today. Pay people more, and motivation should follow naturally. This is where the article breaks down for me. This is definitely not what corporations do outside of the executive class. The norm is attempting to drive pay and wages down as much as possible, sans a few exceptions. I think this is actually how it used to be until sometime in the mid 1980s when financialization took off in earnest and union power started to significantly decline. EDIT: Here's an anecdote I experienced. When I was younger in college I got a job working nights at a FedEx Office. I did really well there, working full time and it accommodated my hours, and leadership took notice. One day, they pull me aside, and ask how they can help incentivize things. Before I could answer they said "The only rule is it can't be about money. Money is off the table". I told them that if money is off the table, then what are we talking about exactly? They didn't give me a straight answer, only they couldn't increase my wage. This to me is further evidence of how untrue this statement is. FWIW, to complete the story, I left a short while later, and started working at Apple which lead to one of the most amazing lucky breaks I've ever had in my career

Workaccount2 3y ago
I hate to say it, but in my (many years) of doing unskilled jobs, I have found that the management is very often just as, uh, "skilless" as the employees.
alexpotato 3y ago
I had a conversation like this once at a large corporation where I worked: Them: "We want you to be the Global Head of X given how well you've done as the Regional Head" Me: "Great! Is there more money involved?" Them: "No, sorry. Budget is tight this year" Me: "Ok. How about having more people? Someone needs to replace me regionally while I do the Global role." Them: "Sorry, no additional head count this year." Me: "Ok. How about more title? I'm a VP and this sounds like Senior VP level." Them: "Sorry, Senior VP needs minimum 5 direct reports and you will only have 3." Me: "Then: no, I don't want the role" Them: "But why not??" I eventually did take the role farther down the line as I wanted a better title for the resume.

satisfice 3y ago

I didn’t see any actual examples of a high paying bullshit job cited. I don’t think they are common. I have known one fellow who was given a job as a sort of fake project manager. He was perplexed over why he would be given work and then told not to do much of it, while the real decisions and administration remained with others. Then he realized it was because this was a consulting company that made its profit from every billable hour he worked. So, yeah, it happens, but it’s not some grand phenomenon.

efields 3y ago
Let's assume the point of technology is to automate routine labor and software engineers have been hard at work automating routine labor for 50ish years. Why are we still hiring software engineers? Shouldn't 50 years be enough time to automate most of what needs to get done in an office? What happened during that time is that the gemini twins of technology and bureaucracy continued to layer their shit on top of each other, creating more problems in need of more solutions with more administration to satisfy with each new layer. The software engineer is one example of a high paying bullshit jobs. No really. As much as you love the job of SWE it is a bullshit job. The problem you are solving is mostly in the hands of gravity, local politics, insane financial machinery, the hubris of a few powerful people. It doesn't mean you can't get good at your job and find it fulfilling along with the other aspects of your life. This is the architecture of your reality and you've basically mastered it, not unlike a level 60 MMO player. Good job! Most people who read this website are doing bullshit jobs. That's why, above all else, probably the most important thing you can do is look outside what you do for a living and do some good in the world.
- PragmaticPulp 3y ago
  > The software engineer is one example of a high paying bullshit jobs. Of course, because software has never been useful to anyone.
- uzerfcwn 3y ago
  Office labor is indeed 95% automated. Companies used to hire armies of human accountants and calculators, most of whom are now laid off because Excel does it better. The industry is currently going further and automating customer service, copywriters and other human jobs too. Since then, most SWEs doing the automation have moved on to other jobs too, such as the gaming industry. Naturally, offices still need a couple of SWEs to adapt software to changing requirements, but only a fraction of the peak.

otikik 3y ago

The answer is obvious: do the absolute minimum you need to do to not get fired while you find meaning outside of work, look for something else, or both.

5350-uiop-1130 3y ago

reminds me of this charles bukowski quote > “It was true that I didn’t have much ambition, but there ought to be a place for people without ambition, I mean a better place than the one usually reserved. How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?”

Jiro 3y ago
If work was enjoyable, people would do it for free. And if someone else would do it for free, nobody's going to pay you for it.
- Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
  > If work was enjoyable, people would do it for free. If work was enjoyable, and their bills were still getting paid. Can we stop pretending that the overwhelming majority of people aren't working because they have to?
  - slothtrop 3y ago
    Who "has to"? The meth tweaker on the street still eats every day. But participating in society is a vector validation/belonging and cash for other niceties.
slothtrop 3y ago
He asks this rhetorically, but some people get something out of it - the hustle and bustle, and of course brushing alongside co-workers. If there's money to be made it's because people want something and buy it. But really, money is motivation enough

egypturnash 3y ago

The ending of this is great. If you've got a job that pays decently but offers no satisfaction, the solution is a SIDE HUSTLE. Not a fulfilling hobby, not volunteering to improve your community, not even raising a family - all things that have provided satisfaction to countless people with well-paying-but-meh jobs over the history of office work. None of these things exist in the world of Usagi Sararīman, only MORE WORK.

vogueQubit 3y ago

0 - In real life, that "pointless" service job is a critical need for people and that's why it exists. 1 - When any job becomes truly pointless it ceases to exist. 2 - I look forward to what jobs we'll have when these service jobs have been mostly automated away