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Comment by apohn | Hacker News Reader

A large company I worked for was spending >$1M/year (data + data pipeline + personnel) on "Social Media Analysis." Every month a "Social Media Report" PDF was emailed to "key stakeholders and decision makers." When we asked them what they were doing with it everybody said they never really looked at it. When we asked them how it could be more useful they shrugged their shoulders.

And yet the company was constantly talking about how great they were at their social media presence and using social media Analytics to keep their customers happy.

I guess a sending out a monthly PDF on social media is self-explanatory to the value of if. So many people involved in something that was zero value.

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You’ve just described 95% of projects at large companies.

If you consult for any of them you quickly realize there are like 5 people running the entire company and 49995 somehow pushing forward through inertia.

Or 40000 doing the bare minimum not to get noticed or fired and 9995 playing politics instead of working.

Losers, Clueless, and the Sociopaths

https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...

Your 40,000 are the "checked out losers".

Thanks for this link. Aligns very much with my own experience.

Somebody downvoted you but that site is a real eye opener. I also use to send friends to read it. I'm not sure that everybody appreciates it because it's to easy to find themselves or to realize which role they are playing.

Wow -

"Eventually, as value hits diminishing returns, both the Sociopaths and Losers make their exits, and the Clueless start to dominate. Finally, the hollow brittle shell collapses on itself and anything of value is recycled by the sociopaths according to meta-firm logic."

That has a sort of cynical beauty to it.

AFAICT I'm a loser-turned-sociopath as I now sell to the highest bidder on a strictly short term basis, and don't believe in anything apart from my bottom line.

> If you consult for any of them you quickly realize there are like 5 people running the entire company

The sad thing is when some clueless manager on a power trip, or just trying to reorganize in the most clueless way, threatens someone vital to operating the company without knowing it. It can escalate quickly as the employee realizes how undervalued they are compared to their contributions, and a small local panic may set in for other people that see the train wreck that's fast approaching and its possible ramifications for them.

This sounds specific. Has this happened with you?

I've heard the situation explained times by others. My own experience is from a much, much smaller company and the owner just being oblivious due to his own ego. I saw the tension rising between the two individuals, and heard a few comments the owner had made which made it sound like they didn't think losing the employee in question would be a big deal. My first reaction was "If he fires her, I better look for a new job myself. This company probably has 12 months max without her, at least in it's current makeup."

And this, kids, is why a small startup can beat a big incumbent.

"can" but can also suffer from other idiocy. I know, i've worked many times in big, medium, and small companies.

The problem with small companies is... the lack of inertia! You get the CEO reading an article and decide to 'rebrand', throwing away whatever plan there was in motion to do the previous fad.

Then he goes to a show, and comes back all bouncy about the new cool stuff we HAVE to start integrating or else we won't be relevant when coming to market.

Been there, done that, got a whole pile of t-shirts ;-)

"change the world", "disrupt the industry"...

Builds another social network

> You’ve just described 95% of projects at large companies.

I've witnessed this in gaming teams as well.

As an analyst this is one of a few comics forever on my wall: http://dilbert.com/strip/2007-05-16

How doesn't that completely demotivate you?

I don't think it's my whole career by any means, just a comedic reminder of what bad projects look like.

I'm not the parent commenter but, regardless of the uselessness of such a job (as an analyst, producing reports of negligible value or whose value is ignored, or as a developer, producing apps that produce such reports for those analysts), you are still paid well enough to not complain/look elsewhere and the experience is useful for your next job.

Domo was founded in 2010, three years after this was published. Coincidence?

This is mine: http://dilbert.com/strip/2007-03-20

Same spirit.

I'm not sure why, but this comic feels like a cut above the rest in terms of execution.

I work with B2B companies and I can confidently say that outside of LinkedIn, there is little to no value in maintaining an active presence on Twitter/Facebook/Pinterest/Instagram in most B2B segments

It does matter for getting the right kind of employees, basically it's used as branding the company as something people would want to work in.

Most B2B companies are pretty hard to get any relevant information out of.

I've seen far more mileage in maintaining an active presence on niche-specific platforms.

A company that actively creates and shares interesting content on HN will have a much better brand image than one that does the same on Twitter. HN's smaller, self-selected audience will also land you better quality leads with less noise as compared to a large social platform

Unless you are selling to HR, I don't see any value in even keeping a LinkedIn presence.

Most corporate IT, enterprise software and consultants are on LI. People flow between those sectors, like a McKinsey consultant tapping out before becoming a partner, moving into a role at one of her clients, etc.

LI is a self-updating rolodex, has killed business cards. Invaluable to keep track of where people move.

Our sales people would hate for LI to go away. Happily pay themselves for Sales Edition.

> Our sales people would hate for LI to go away. Happily pay themselves for Sales Edition.

You just convinced me to go kill my LinkedIn account from whenever ago.

>When we asked them how it could be more useful they shrugged their shoulders.

This is a massive driver for giving you "Bullshit Job" thoughts. If my end products are not being used, why the hell do they even exist?

A of of these projects/products come from the same place. An executive or manager has an idea. Some of these ideas have good intentions. Some come from somebody reading HBR and seeing an article titled "By 2020 30% of purchasing decisions will be driven by social media." Then the ball starts rolling with the PowerPoint decks filled with revenue forecasts. And once that ball is rolling you have a lot of people inside and outside of the organization who are all pieces in this machine to achieve the final goal. Since nobody has visibility to the whole process and the accountability is totally opaque, the ball rolls into something that checks every requirement (even if the requirements were the opposite of the stated goal) but is totally useless.

This reminds me of a principle I heard reading some stoic literature (unfortunately I forget which) which stated: "The purpose of thought is to inform action."

Thoughts, analysyes and ruminations can be fun, but ultimately if they don't suggest an action: either initiating a new action, or modifying an action that is unfolding, then they are without purpose.[1]

[1] The Buddha even suggested that they are stressful.

There is a non-zero probability that the whole thing started out as a flypaper report: http://hoaxes.org/archive/permalink/the_flypaper_report

That is heart breaking.

Where there’s chaos, there’s opportunity. Channel that heartbreak into cash flow.

Or do something that's actually productive elsewhere?

If you’re not getting the most dollars you can for each hour you work, you’re shorting yourself.

Do it for a number of years and suddenly you realize: you've become one of them. Adding zero value and leeching of paying customers. Really kills your motivation to better yourself.

I now know how that woman at the end of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" must have felt...

That movie might have been a metaphor for corporate work places.

Investment bank research. A trader had said "it's the brand recognition between picking it up from my inbox and putting it in the bin".

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