Covid “Bullshit Jobs” Are Driving Everyone Crazy | Hacker News Reader

Covid “Bullshit Jobs” Are Driving Everyone Crazy

mtracey.substack.com

15 pointssteelstraw18 comments

Seems like a reach to me. They're providing a ton of utility. They are mitigating the a few key liabilities IMO:

1. The legal liability of a studio/prod not providing ample protections for employees. I'm unsure if there is precedent here, but it seems to fall under the General Duty Clause of the OSH Act.

2. They are doing supply-chain/operations security work. If every extra on set caught COVID filming would cease, and money would be wasted. If talent catches COVID -- same, but if talent catches COVID and ends up hospitalized or worse you've got not only a delayed movie, but potentially NO movie.

Agreed. They aren’t driving everyone crazy, they’re driving one blogger on sub stack crazy

did you read the article? unless the author is outright lying about his private correspondence with people who work on TV shows as a result of his tweet, he is certainly not the only one who is bothered by this stuff

Hmmmm... I read the article, and MT seems to think COVID guidelines are "hyper-paranoid". I think it's just a tradeoff at the end of the day. These projects are often very expensive, and they are systems that rely on the health of a few key components. Even a few sick days for talent has a price for production. Film sets are crowded affairs. I think it makes sense to be a little draconian in this setting. Anyways... doesn't matter what anyone here thinks LOL -- plenty of bodies willing to work in the film industry. This sort of stuff will start to disappear when either:

1. COVID becomes a less harmful and less contagious virus.

2. Studios and production execs stop caring about wasted money or failed projects.

But even then, the specter of a liability lawsuit will probably keep these staff employed for the duration of the decade.

Right, to say they have no purpose at all is rather disingenuous, or belies a rather extreme view towards COVID. And as far as the virtue-signaling goes, there is plenty of that from all sides.

The one good point I thought he made was the creation of the ‘COVIDeaucracy’, which like any established bureauacracy can bias towards self-preservation vs. its original purpose.

Fair point RE bureaucratization. Similar perverse incentives exist for pretty much any organization touching COVID right now. Vaccine manufacturers, PPE manufacturers, hazard/risk consultancies, cleanup crews, et cetera.

I'm not sure what will happen. I'm assuming that eventually COVID will become a relatively infectious but also relatively harmless virus (based on mostly conjecture from virologists online making some sort of evolutionary argument that I honestly have not appraised). We don't have seasonal flu inspectors, yet it can claim lives or at least weeks of someone's life at any time each year, and if we had sentries/surveillance to lower flu cases... well I could see that people a potentially popular option for these staff as well.

I do think that COVID will probably end up looking a lot like "9/11 for health" in the next couple decades. As long as large projects/businesses have the $ to spend on making themselves more resilient to the risk of infectious disease I could see these teams justifying their existence.

Ultimately, I think until the liability for the employer is eliminated or diminished we'll continue to see these teams do their work on set. I'm waiting for the first SCOTUS case RE COVID damages/compensation/liability. Maybe COVID waivers will be included in onboarding documents for new-hires in 2022? IDK! LOL

From OSHA's website: https://www.osha.gov/coronavirus/standards

They do indeed mention the GDC of the OSH Act.

> The reaction to this seemingly benign observation was one of the strangest eruptions of outrage I’ve ever experienced on Twitter — and I’ve experienced quite a few. People were utterly infuriated by it....

> Then, as tends to happen with these little blowups, the private messages soon started trickling in — and they told a slightly different story. This time, they came from other people working in the TV/film industry who wanted to tell me about the ridiculously mind-bending COVID protocols they still have to deal with...

Has this guy been living in a hole? He's just observing evidence that COVID has become a polarizing social issue, and that both sides are populated by people. There's no insight here, just a bunch of people talking past each other all assuming their opinions are the supremely righteous ones, OP very much included.

Also, one of the biggest bullshit job of them all is "reflexive bureaucracy-condemner."

If those jobs were eliminated, wouldn't those people all be able to fill some of the unfilled jobs we have all over the economy today, that are actually important?

I love "wrong" articles like this, because it's really interesting when someone does the very natural thing of presuming everyone feels the same way they do. The author tells us a lot about himself while believing that some perennial forever phenomenon is something new.

> The person said an elaborate system of “signals and codes” had to be developed for crew members to warn each other when the Compliance Officer was coming, so they could quickly put on their masks and pretend to be on their best behavior.

Wear your goddamned masks.

Just flat out wrong. It was only the orgs with bonkers-level compliance efforts like SNL and the NBA that managed that make it through this thing without having to shut down constantly.

It's disheartening to see how people like the author don't seem to give half a fuck about the wellbeing of others, and at the same time insist on ridiculing those who do.

Could you be more specific ?

Looks to me like telephone sanitizers.

Remember the last part of the story though: Shortly after Golgafrincham put all their telephone sanitizers into a rocket and yeeted them into deep space, the entire planet went extinct from a disease that spread through unsanitized telephones.

I liked the article. The Covid employees and the bureaucracy seems fiscally wasteful, and disingenuous.

china already back to normal, crowded beaches all maskless during the summer. it's economic and psychological warfare that's about it. and we lost.

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