Here's another way that an employee can misunderstand their own job: Suppose you have an employee who is working for Megabureaucracy Inc. Megabureaucracy is a company that's losing money. The employee witnesses waste and inefficiency throughout the company in everything they do.

However, that individual employee may be doing work which means that Megabureaucracy is losing less money than it would if the employee did nothing. The employee might conclude that they are in a "bullshit job" - but actually what they are doing is adding value, even though they are part of an enterprise that as a whole is subtracting value. i.e. they are causing it to subtract less value than it otherwise would.

The same logic applies for employees that are working in an inefficient department of a company that is efficient in aggregate. Helping an organization that is inefficient to be less inefficient is still economically valuable - but to the individuals concerned they may consider their own jobs as economically valueless.