4 ms·

Can you give examples of this kind of job, other than those created directly by the government?

by swatow 12y ago

sheepmullet 12y ago
"Can you give examples of this kind of job, other than those created directly by the government?" Plenty of "useless jobs" exist. It comes back to the classic agency problem. What is best for the market/company/shareholders is often not what is best for the employees working at the companies.
- swatow 12y ago
  I don't understand your point. Can you give a specific example of where you think the "classic agency problem" results in useless jobs?
  - sitkack 12y ago
    The IRS and the TSA come to mind.
  - dropit_sphere 12y ago
    Marketing, litigation, interviews, credentialing, auditing, sales...all of these are useful for the company, but don't help society at all. "But society can't benefit from a company that goes under from ignorant customers/lawsuits/incompetent employees/fraud." Then perhaps society should stop doing those things to companies. These jobs are necessary because, of course, it won't. That's the agency problem.
quanticle 12y ago
I would venture that many of the jobs in any large (where large means > 10,000 people) corporation are bullshit jobs. For example, take Human Resources. Yes, you need a certain amount of HR to make sure that labor laws are being followed and that hiring/firing paperwork gets processed. But at most large corporations, the vast majority of HR's output appears to have no justification save to justify spending more on HR. Employee "engagement" surveys come to mind as the prime example of this. I would be willing to bet that you could halve the HR workforce at many corporations (especially with some effort invested into automating HR functions) and not notice any drops in productivity. More generally, a lot of "middle management" falls into this category. From what I see, it really looks like a lot of management work is really just make-work created by... other middle managers. Yes, some level of management is necessary to coordinate teams, but from where I sit, I see my manager spending literally 8 hours a day creating PowerPoint presentations that have no meaningful content whatsoever. And the funny thing is, he hates it more than I do! He's a (ex)programmer. He'd rather be writing code! But somehow the organization has decided (as a consequence of some managerial fiat, far above my pay grade) that it is more "productive" for my manager to be making PowerPoint presentations than writing code. Yes, the phenomenon of bullshit jobs is far worse in government than in the private sector. But it's still here in industry, and the larger and older the industry, the more prevalent it is. Software companies haven't accumulated as much cruft, but that's largely because companies in software tend to die before they have a chance to accumulate the cruft that's present in industries with higher barriers to entry. EDIT: Tyler Cowen [1] has an excellent term for this phenomenon: "zero marginal product" work. [1] http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/07/zero-marginal-product-workers.html http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/07/zer...
- andy_ppp 12y ago
  HR is an industry that could definitely be completely replaced by an algorithm + remote people + software. Anyone want to help me build this or does it already exist?
zaccus 12y ago
>Can you give examples of this kind of job, other than those created directly by the government? The guy standing in front of Little Caesars with a Hot N Ready sign, dancing. All HR jobs All jobs and businesses related to sales and marketing
- narrowrail 12y ago
  >All jobs and businesses related to sales and marketing Wow. I don't think you've ever worked for any business of any size. Sales jobs are usually very well compensated and make the difference between businesses that fail and those that succeed. Hell, Salesforce is a company originally built just to manage salespeople and their process. If you know a way to make them irrelevant you could probably write your own ticket.

Can you give examples of this kind of job, other than those created directly by the government?

by swatow 12y ago

Can you give examples of this kind of job, other than those created directly by the government?

"Can you give examples of this kind of job, other than those created directly by the government?" Plenty of "useless jobs" exist. It comes back to the classic agency problem. What is best for the market/company/shareholders is often not what is best for the employees working at the companies.

swatow 12y ago
I don't understand your point. Can you give a specific example of where you think the "classic agency problem" results in useless jobs?
- sitkack 12y ago
  The IRS and the TSA come to mind.
- dropit_sphere 12y ago
  Marketing, litigation, interviews, credentialing, auditing, sales...all of these are useful for the company, but don't help society at all. "But society can't benefit from a company that goes under from ignorant customers/lawsuits/incompetent employees/fraud." Then perhaps society should stop doing those things to companies. These jobs are necessary because, of course, it won't. That's the agency problem.

quanticle 12y ago

I would venture that many of the jobs in any large (where large means > 10,000 people) corporation are bullshit jobs. For example, take Human Resources. Yes, you need a certain amount of HR to make sure that labor laws are being followed and that hiring/firing paperwork gets processed. But at most large corporations, the vast majority of HR's output appears to have no justification save to justify spending more on HR. Employee "engagement" surveys come to mind as the prime example of this. I would be willing to bet that you could halve the HR workforce at many corporations (especially with some effort invested into automating HR functions) and not notice any drops in productivity. More generally, a lot of "middle management" falls into this category. From what I see, it really looks like a lot of management work is really just make-work created by... other middle managers. Yes, some level of management is necessary to coordinate teams, but from where I sit, I see my manager spending literally 8 hours a day creating PowerPoint presentations that have no meaningful content whatsoever. And the funny thing is, he hates it more than I do! He's a (ex)programmer. He'd rather be writing code! But somehow the organization has decided (as a consequence of some managerial fiat, far above my pay grade) that it is more "productive" for my manager to be making PowerPoint presentations than writing code. Yes, the phenomenon of bullshit jobs is far worse in government than in the private sector. But it's still here in industry, and the larger and older the industry, the more prevalent it is. Software companies haven't accumulated as much cruft, but that's largely because companies in software tend to die before they have a chance to accumulate the cruft that's present in industries with higher barriers to entry. EDIT: Tyler Cowen [1] has an excellent term for this phenomenon: "zero marginal product" work. [1] http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/07/zero-marginal-product-workers.html http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/07/zer...

andy_ppp 12y ago
HR is an industry that could definitely be completely replaced by an algorithm + remote people + software. Anyone want to help me build this or does it already exist?

zaccus 12y ago

>Can you give examples of this kind of job, other than those created directly by the government? The guy standing in front of Little Caesars with a Hot N Ready sign, dancing. All HR jobs All jobs and businesses related to sales and marketing

narrowrail 12y ago
>All jobs and businesses related to sales and marketing Wow. I don't think you've ever worked for any business of any size. Sales jobs are usually very well compensated and make the difference between businesses that fail and those that succeed. Hell, Salesforce is a company originally built just to manage salespeople and their process. If you know a way to make them irrelevant you could probably write your own ticket.