‘Bullshit’ After All? Why People Consider Their Jobs Socially Useless | Hacker News Reader

‘Bullshit’ After All? Why People Consider Their Jobs Socially Useless

journals.sagepub.com

45 pointsbookofjoe35 comments

The determination of whether a job is useless is largely left to the person responding to these surveys. If a person thinks their job is useless, then it is. They may be right, but it's also possible that there is a disconnect between their perception and reality. The study uses the example of doormen who are considered to provide no useful function except as a symbol of prestige. However, I'd argue that if the doorman viewed themselves as that symbol rather than a necessary skill which facilitates ingress and egress, they may feel differently.E.g Vanna White isn't a letter flipper (useless), but an entertainer who flips letters as part of her job.

There was a recent thread where a person working for a pizza shop was depressed because he felt as though he should make a larger contribution to society than "just working at a pizza shop." From a career advancement perspective, this job offers little opportunity. However, from the social perspective of feeding the people in his area, it's immensely helpful.

Some of the fault for this disconnect belongs to their employers. Knowing the difference that they make in the world is helpful to everyone and something that companies rarely communicate.

> However, from the social perspective of feeding the people in his area, it's immensely helpful.

Is it? Many of these places are serving WAY too many calories, in arguably questionable conditions, and relying on minimum wage labor to make it. So you're being paid to help other people pay to get fat.

I think it should be okay to recognize that a job has no real value except generating income for the owner. If the owner cared about the work, he'd be right there next to the workers.

People sometimes want pizza, and they're willing to part with money to get it. It's not deeper than that. The social value from a pizza job is in the vibe between your coworkers cursing the entitled customers, and the occasional good tip. Many people who work food service are down on their luck, drug users, or recovering druggies. Looking at it through a social lens, I would see this as the capital class exploiting the poor for income and furthering their suffering.

Most jobs are bullshit. There are some that are supremely important, but most could be replaced or outright forgotten, and the only problem would be "We built a system assuming everyone was forced to work and support themselves, whoops." Humanity is slowly creeping up to the point where everyone doesn't need to work, and we're not socially ready for it.

I work for a contracting company that builds software for utility companies ,(gas, electric, water,telecom, etc). While I think it's important that people get their heat, light, water and cellphone/internet, it's also complicated. Many of our customers are exploitive (of the environment, customers, or their just local monopolies) is this net good or bad? I don't know. I'm looking for another job because I want to have more impact and I can't quit the system, buy an RV and travel around building poor people houses.

>However, from the social perspective of feeding the people in his area, it's immensely helpful.

Ya know, dollar for dollar, I bet pizza is responsible for more productivity than any computer.

Because they are? Outside paying taxes (if you do), your job is probably useless for socially. Or actually shit for the world in the bad cases.

Yep. Most or at least many jobs exist purely to make the shareholders of companies more money by essentially exploiting people. Sure some of that is selling people what they want - but for the large part it’s exploitation and of little benefit to us socially.

If you think that’s true, just wait until they stop paying those paychecks to their employees….

Curious what jobs you think are worthwhile and what you do?

Not OP but I’d assume medical professionals, teachers, engineers, artists, food producers, workers in a (sustainable) power plant etc….

I’m all for renewable/sustainable energy, but I disagree with your implication that people working jobs in coal or gas power plants have worthless jobs. In pretty much every part of the world, power grids rely on those plants (for now), so those workers are literally keeping the lights on and civilization going. And it is often hard work.

Those jobs are worthless too when you realize they're mostly just keeping people with worthless jobs alive for longer.

Ultimately, we should all die and let the top 1% have their planet back. Hopefully AI gets us there.

https://twitter.com/PR0GRAMMERHUM0R/status/15780977916200263...

I would guess most are likely a net negative, but it can depend on your perspective. Anyway, I would say in most cases you probably make the world a little worse.

At the very least you're helping funnel money from the average joe and divert it to the uber wealthy, and a handful of lottery ticket winners. Often, you're actively searching for ways to hurt the vast majority of the population.

Maybe the best thing to do is work for an optimally useless VC-cash-furnace startup and spread as much of their money as far as you can before they cotton on.

> Because they are?

that's just a tautological argument. They are useless because the are useless?

IMHO, if a job gets pay, it is not useless, because the person paying is implicitly agreeing that the payment is worth the job being done - esp. if it's a private job, rather than a publicly funded job.

Have you considered people who work a job because they are forced to by market forces, or court orders?

It's disingenuous to assume we all have a choice of where to direct our labor. If that were true, nobody would work for bad employers. Humans are exploitative of one another and society is where we formalize it.

Two words: "Scrum Master"

The simple truth is that we need a mixed economy: a free market to give people what they WANT, which is then taxed to provide the things people NEED.

Instead people pretend we should either ALL or NEVER do "social" work.

Social democracy is the right answer, but everyone is either a communist or a libertarian because those are so much simpler and people prefer simple, wrong, answers, to complex correct ones.

Isn’t it just a touch hypocritical to say that xxx is “the right answer” but “people prefer simple, wrong, answers, to complex correct ones”?

“The right answer” almost always turns out to be “it depends” (just like any good engineer would say) which is btw why I, like Graeber, would self-identify more anarchist than social democrat or communist.

How does the answer being "it depends" imply you should be an anarchist?

There’s no system quite as flexible as anarchy ;)

In all seriousness, the contextually relevant factors tend to be local details. Anarchy embraces the idea that people closest to and most impacted by the issues should be more involved in determining how those issues are dealt with

This doesn't sound sustainable. People will inevitably organize for defense and fiat because a few bad actors can do too much damage and barter is too inefficient.

Anarchists also organize into affinity groups. Not all anarchists are anti-market. Anti capitalist !== anti market

That doesn't work. People locally will decide that people far away should pay the costs while locals reap the rewards.

People upriver will use all of the water.

People in fertile, temperate, not low lying areas will be affected less by climate change and burning fossil fuels.

If the wind blows east, people to the west won't care about smog until made to care by force.

And so on.

Most people are not communist or libertarian but selectively socialist/liassez faire depending on the domain. Which is why almost all politicians end up seeming hypocritical, people don’t hold principled positions but practical ones based their own value judgements.

> but everyone is either a communist or a libertarian because those are so much simpler and people prefer simple, wrong, answers, to complex correct ones.

eh, no, the average communist and average libertarian, if given rational circumstance, would compromise with each other. Current authoritarian power structures stir up division and stonewall progress.

More people find the extremes attractive as the center of the overton window remains stagnant and mutually regressive.

Why would social democracy lead toward taxes being spent on needs rather than wants?

Its kinda like gang rape. the majority just decides they must have what the minority has and then they just take it no matter what the minority says.

who gets to decide if i want something or need something?

there is no right answer for everyone. this is how we know social dems arent the answer. i don't need a mommy state

Heh. I don't know about "people" but I work to get paid and I picked my job because I enjoy the nature of the work. Not that I oppose doing things to improve or benefit society but why would I even want to devote my life to doing jobs that don't pay well or that I don't enjoy?

I'd rather donate to people who enjoy doing things that benefit society so they can have a good quality of life.

Ultimately you owe yourself and your dependents a quality life well lived. If that means volunteering in places filled with ungrateful or resentful people (most places), then I can only say I wish I was more like you.

I wonder though, is it people with kids or who plan on having kids that value social contributions so much?

I will make the claim that most large companies could run way more productively if 50% of middle management was let go, and their salary was used to hire people who do the front line work instead.

Yes some middle management is required. But a lot less than people think.

The most productive and profitable company I ever worked for was organised around teams. With no middle management between the teams and the CEO. Lucrative team bonuses was used to incentivise people to generate a profit for the company and collaborate to achieve it. It worked spectacularly.

The concept of "bullshit jobs" is so hilarious. Honestly it like someone watched "Office Space" and thought it was straight up revolutionary philosophy.

Then decided to stake a huge chunk of their academic career on it.

I assume the creators of said concept regard their jobs as of the utmost importance and regard.

Lol. Lmao even.

> The concept of "bullshit jobs" is so hilarious. Honestly it like someone watched "Office Space" and thought it was straight up revolutionary philosophy.

> Then decided to stake a huge chunk of their academic career on it.

> I assume the creators of said concept regard their jobs as of the utmost importance and regard.

The claim made by Bullshit Jobs isn't that N% of jobs are objectively useless in the grand scheme of things, it's that N% of people feel that their jobs are useless. Its n analysis of the alienation of workers from their work.

The claim is stronger: That N% of jobs are useless and everyone including the workers knows it, but cannot acknowledge it.

The idea makes sense if you believe in an objective theory of value, as opposed to a subjective(capitalist) theory of value. Calling jobs worthless is also a rhetorical trick that preys on people's anger and insecurities.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com