Comment by jl6 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jl6 | Hacker News Reader

I honestly think the author doesn’t understand the jobs that are presented as bullshit jobs, and here’s an example:

> In some countries, such as Brazil, such buildings still have uniformed elevator operators whose entire job is to push the button for you. There is a continuum from explicit feudal leftovers of this type to receptionists and front-desk personnel at places that obviously don’t need them.

This example speaks to me because I recall many years ago using an elevator in Rio de Janeiro which had an operator, and although his job was ostensibly to push the buttons, he was in fact part of the security apparatus - the friendly outer layer of a defence-in-depth strategy.

Not bullshit at all.

Now that’s not to say that organizational dysfunction doesn’t exist. I’ve seen people get hired and then the project that motivated the hiring has lost funding and the person has been idle. I’ve seen managers go on long-term sick leave and their +1 being too busy to find a replacement or provide supervision themselves, leaving teams directionless. I’ve seen people work really hard on bad ideas that didn’t fail fast enough.

Those people absolutely described their jobs as bullshit, but it was circumstantial bullshit, not an intrinsic property of the job.

The other angle here is grand purpose. The author denigrates some jobs because they achieve some allegedly amoral outcome. You might think that cosmetics shouldn’t exist, or that if they exist they shouldn’t be advertized. But that’s a value judgment to say the least, and a wholly different argument to declaring the whole supply chain to be made of bullshit jobs.

If the elevator man doesn't think his job is bullshit, it doesn't not fall under the definition of the author.

This makes the author's definition a rather uninteresting one.

This isn’t correct. The author calls bullshit jobs anything in the service sector.

The book takes the approach of “these people say their job is bullshit” to be tactful, as dunking on people is seen as a generally bad thing to do.

I believe you read that wrong. He said that service jobs provide something essential to customers, even if they aren't well paid and can often be quite soul-sucking and are explicitly not the BS jobs he's talking about.

We'd still have a situation where the elevator operator does a valuable job, but without acknowledging it. Should we call that a bullshit job ?

Ask yourself: what problem is that job solving and how effective is the solution?

A security guard who has to manually press elevator buttons is not solving the problem effectively. Are you more secure that the guard manually presses the elevator button? Hell there could be an assault in the elevator and he wouldn't know a damn thing because he spent time away from watching cameras to press the elevator button. Therefore, it is a bullshit job.

Watching cameras constantly is boring. It’s more interesting to maintain attention by being a face in public, ears and eyes present on a single space.

Bullshit isn't a quantifier about how entertaining a job is. Unless the job is specifically about entertaining I suppose.

Security jobs rely on attention. One’s effectiveness at it is impacted by how attentive they can and will sustain for their defined shift.

All jobs rely on attention. In this example, a security guard having to divert attention to interact with guests at the elevator is going to be distracted far more.

But again, this isn't about the security man!!

The question is what is the impact of lack of attention, it is hard to keep attention when the job is boring and if 5 minutes of lack of attention are critical than it might be a good idea to make the job less boring by gamifying it. Taking an action even simple as pressing a button makes people more alert, that's why Japanese train drivers for example must do some hand movement of sometimes say some word when they see a signal, apparently it keeps them more aware. I am not saying keeping those people pressing buttons in the lift was for security reasons but it could be a desired outcome which was later observed as useful and therefore the position was kept as is.

Well maybe his job is to guard what exists at the top of the elevator. So yeah, controlling the single point of entry and the only keys to the kingdom could be super effective compared to watching it on a TV screen.

You don’t know anything about the threat, the environment, or the asset being protected. Maybe just don’t comment with baseless speculation?

So using your example, maybe there is something at the top floor that needs guarding. Someone manually pressing the elevator doesn't fix this, he becomes another weak point that can be easily socially engineered. One alternative solution that doesn't require that bullshit job is a separate elevator with its own lock/access, which is a very common solution used in many buildings.

I don't understand your defensiveness here. The entire point is to question the role as a solution to the problem. Literally what bullshit jobs is all about. This isn't specifically about the elevator man, so you don't need to get all weird about it.

Your solution to an elevator operator is to retrofit a building with an entirely separate elevator to access to the floor?

The problem you are trying to solve is not the elevator operator. The elevator operator is a byproduct of a rushed cheap solution to the problem of crime/access to top floor/whatever the actual problem is. Therefore yes, a retrofit could be a potential solution among many others, what actually is the problem, and how effectively does the role solve it?

I should step away from the elevator example because people are clinging to it a bit too firmly when the entire point is to question [job role], not the specific elevator operator.

So what would be an ideal example to you? This one is just security guard.

I’m going to make a random guess that in Brazil it’s far cheaper to hire someone to guard the elevator than build an entirely new elevator in a building that did not have one already (and where would you put it? What if it’s full?)

Presence is far more effective than monitoring cameras. No one cares if they’re on camera doing something wrong or bad. Presence is a real deterrent.

Presence also can mean placing yourself closer to where incidents happen more frequently which allows for a quicker response time.

Source me a security officer at a hospital.

To note, there are fully automated elevators in department stores in other countries that will have an operator at some specific times. It's not just a security thing.

The mains issue with security guards is they're weird doing nothing. It can be an important aspect of the job to be there standing in the corner in uniform, but if as commercial place you want a more casual and peaceful atmosphere, having your security staff dress like employees and do something, anything will help a lot.

As another there's the cleaning staff in attraction parks, they walk around with a broom but are expected to do a lot more, inclusing spotting lost kids, problematic behavior etc.

> he spent time away from watching cameras to press the elevator button.

Aren't they _in_ the elevator ?

When I worked at Wimbledon Tennis Tournament they had a team of lift operators whose job it was to push the button. Definitely seemed like a bullshit job to me at the time. I'd be moving supplies up from the basement and they would be sitting in the lift reading a book. I always felt like pushing the button myself as it would have been quicker, but I always let them. Thinking back on it I'm pretty sure some company was profiting from them being there.

bullshit is anything you don't need. you've been trained to think you need it in order to keep you and everyone else busy.

That's kinda the point I think. _You_ don't need it, but other people, your society needs it.

In the grand scheme of things, keeping everyone busy is also a societal construct that many will argue is needed. You might disagree, but the discussion would be on the societal model you want to push, and not the type of jobs people do.

You can keep everyone buy with thousands of jobs that actually need doing, like planting trees. Britains tree cover is like 12%

In our current society you'd do that by making planting trees somewhat worth money.

Then of course you'd need to control for which trees are planted in which ecosystem, in what ways and at what costs, under what conditions etc.

And in the end you'd of course also need PR and communication people to deal with all the public facing aspects of it ....

> bullshit is anything you don't need.

Like an Anarchist Anthropologist?

+1 same in NYC.

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