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There's a difference between a bullshit job and a job that's 95% bullshit (which is a whole heck of a lot of jobs). For example, my company pays a highly skill

There's a difference between a bullshit job and a job that's 95% bullshit (which is a whole heck of a lot of jobs). For example, my company pays a highly skilled individual a six figure salary to do one thing that takes him five minutes once a week. Could this task be automated? Probably, but it would require a project (which means human resources, a budget, and compliance-related activities). Such a project would take at a minimum six months, three of which would just be setting up the project and codifying in writing precisely what needs to be done and how the automation needs to work. Then there would be two months figuring out who was going to create it and who was going to be responsible for maintaining it in production (which by policy must not be the same people that designed/created the automation!). Also, there's a limited number of project managers and skilled people to get things like this done so even if the company wanted to do it, it just won't happen for a long time unless such an automation gets a big upgrade in priority. Besides, some manager gets to say they have one more employee working under them and that's super important for a manager's career! (when interviewing at another company the first question they always ask is, "how many people did you have working under you?") So that guy basically has a stable job forever as long as that task he does needs to happen. When he's not doing that task the company gives him endless busywork to perform from mandatory corporate training (which changes constantly) to 72-page security surveys to endless meetings where he really isn't needed but he's there "just in case" something comes up that needs his expertise. Is that guy's job a "bullshit job"?

Suppafly 2y ago
>Is that guy's job a "bullshit job"? Yes. Consider if he were hit by a bus tomorrow, they wouldn't hire a new person to do that job, they'd just have someone already employed spend 5 minutes to do that job instead. Every job I've ever worked there have been tons of near retirement aged people doing jobs producing spreadsheets and reports that no one reads, mostly by copy and pasting all day. When they retire, either someone else figures out how to do the same job copy and pasting automatically or figures out that no one had been looking at those reports for years anyway.
- riskable 2y ago
  Hah! The "once a week" job guy recently retired but instead of hiring someone new they handed the task to an existing employee without consulting that person (to see if they had the requisite knowledge). Now that task is failing and they're paying consulting fees to the previous guy (well, they did at least once now) to come back in to (re)run that task... Which apparently failed regularly before he left but he "just knew" how to correct things/massage whatever (data?) it was and then re-run the task by hand. That's the reason why I know about this situation... I know the guy that now has to do the old guy's "once a week" job (in addition to his existing one). He'll get the hang of it eventually... Probably. Maybe. :shrug: The replacement was given four days to train with the retiring person to learn how to do the job. It wasn't enough, obviously.
  - Suppafly 2y ago
    That whole situation is a failure of management, but that's probably a whole nother discussion.

Suppafly 2y ago

>Is that guy's job a "bullshit job"? Yes. Consider if he were hit by a bus tomorrow, they wouldn't hire a new person to do that job, they'd just have someone already employed spend 5 minutes to do that job instead. Every job I've ever worked there have been tons of near retirement aged people doing jobs producing spreadsheets and reports that no one reads, mostly by copy and pasting all day. When they retire, either someone else figures out how to do the same job copy and pasting automatically or figures out that no one had been looking at those reports for years anyway.

riskable 2y ago
Hah! The "once a week" job guy recently retired but instead of hiring someone new they handed the task to an existing employee without consulting that person (to see if they had the requisite knowledge). Now that task is failing and they're paying consulting fees to the previous guy (well, they did at least once now) to come back in to (re)run that task... Which apparently failed regularly before he left but he "just knew" how to correct things/massage whatever (data?) it was and then re-run the task by hand. That's the reason why I know about this situation... I know the guy that now has to do the old guy's "once a week" job (in addition to his existing one). He'll get the hang of it eventually... Probably. Maybe. :shrug: The replacement was given four days to train with the retiring person to learn how to do the job. It wasn't enough, obviously.
- Suppafly 2y ago
  That whole situation is a failure of management, but that's probably a whole nother discussion.