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I remember seeing a video that labels these people as doing bullshit jobs. As an example in UPS the people that actually delivers the packages are the ones doin

I remember seeing a video that labels these people as doing bullshit jobs. As an example in UPS the people that actually delivers the packages are the ones doing the real work. However between those workers and CEO there are like ten or more levels of management and all those people just sitting at an office doing basically nothing. Same with VW or with any other traditional German company. Sometimes to justify their job they would create problems that doesn’t exist and come up with a solution

warkdarrior 3mo ago
I don't know what is the right amount of management, and I'm sure there are some management roles that add no value, but it seems to me that you cannot have UPS function with just a CEO and, say, 10000 delivery drivers and no middle managers.
- calvinmorrison 3mo ago
  its just people underestimating what people do in their actual jobs. Every thing has a huge long tail of work. things like 'accounting' is obvious but there are entire jobs around just buying stuff, around logistics, around fleet management, around managing your staff (HR), there are LOTs of specialized roles and they're not all dumb because you think they don't do anything. Even in accounting there are many roles and subspecialties!
  - sajithdilshan 3mo ago
    I think you misunderstood my comment, I was talking about different layers of management. Not different roles like accounting or sales etc. but there is absolutely no reason to have 10 different layers of management.
    - calvinmorrison 3mo ago
      for someone like VAG or UPS why not? You can only remember/cram so much context into a single persons head, at some point you gotta split it up. In IT, you rarely see companies having managers with more than 6 direct reports. Of course in retail that number can bump up. But if you have a 4 or 5 thousand employees - you'll have 6 layers. Of course there are ways around it (I worked at F500 where i only talked to my boss rarely, and was managed by others on my team). VAG employs 600,000 people - that you have 8 or 10 layers is not absurd.
      - nradov 3mo ago
        Sure, but as a point of comparison the Roman Catholic Church has even more people worldwide and manages to make do with only 4 management layers. (I'm referring to those in religious orders only, not secular employees of various Catholic businesses and charities.)
        calvinmorrison 3mo ago
        Yes the Catholic Church still employs people besides priests but that's a good one!
      - com 3mo ago
        We’re now 50 years in on a personal computer revolution, and people on HN and elsewhere haven’t managed to escape industrial-style management thinking. If we can have billions of people organised - in their time away from formal work - into small working groups (“families”) generating a crazy amount of value for themselves and their communities, with no overarching management structure, what is possible today? Franchises are often very light on layers of management yet have hundreds of thousands of workers. The larger the enterprise, the less it has to look like an industrial firm. Information flow, coordination and oversight don’t require layers and layers of managers, it’s just that those managers prefer it, since they’ve never seen anything else, they get paid more for “their important work” and have status for managing managers. Change that and we might be in quite a different, probably better world?
  - 627467 3mo ago
    There's alot of overestimating on the need and value of "services". There's decades of teaching that service economy is the pinacle of advanced economies. Middle management bloat is "advanced service economy". And what is happening is an end of a myth

warkdarrior 3mo ago

I don't know what is the right amount of management, and I'm sure there are some management roles that add no value, but it seems to me that you cannot have UPS function with just a CEO and, say, 10000 delivery drivers and no middle managers.

calvinmorrison 3mo ago
its just people underestimating what people do in their actual jobs. Every thing has a huge long tail of work. things like 'accounting' is obvious but there are entire jobs around just buying stuff, around logistics, around fleet management, around managing your staff (HR), there are LOTs of specialized roles and they're not all dumb because you think they don't do anything. Even in accounting there are many roles and subspecialties!
- sajithdilshan 3mo ago
  I think you misunderstood my comment, I was talking about different layers of management. Not different roles like accounting or sales etc. but there is absolutely no reason to have 10 different layers of management.
  - calvinmorrison 3mo ago
    for someone like VAG or UPS why not? You can only remember/cram so much context into a single persons head, at some point you gotta split it up. In IT, you rarely see companies having managers with more than 6 direct reports. Of course in retail that number can bump up. But if you have a 4 or 5 thousand employees - you'll have 6 layers. Of course there are ways around it (I worked at F500 where i only talked to my boss rarely, and was managed by others on my team). VAG employs 600,000 people - that you have 8 or 10 layers is not absurd.
    - nradov 3mo ago
      Sure, but as a point of comparison the Roman Catholic Church has even more people worldwide and manages to make do with only 4 management layers. (I'm referring to those in religious orders only, not secular employees of various Catholic businesses and charities.)
      - calvinmorrison 3mo ago
        Yes the Catholic Church still employs people besides priests but that's a good one!
    - com 3mo ago
      We’re now 50 years in on a personal computer revolution, and people on HN and elsewhere haven’t managed to escape industrial-style management thinking. If we can have billions of people organised - in their time away from formal work - into small working groups (“families”) generating a crazy amount of value for themselves and their communities, with no overarching management structure, what is possible today? Franchises are often very light on layers of management yet have hundreds of thousands of workers. The larger the enterprise, the less it has to look like an industrial firm. Information flow, coordination and oversight don’t require layers and layers of managers, it’s just that those managers prefer it, since they’ve never seen anything else, they get paid more for “their important work” and have status for managing managers. Change that and we might be in quite a different, probably better world?
- 627467 3mo ago
  There's alot of overestimating on the need and value of "services". There's decades of teaching that service economy is the pinacle of advanced economies. Middle management bloat is "advanced service economy". And what is happening is an end of a myth