Many people feel they work in pointless, meaningless jobs, research confirms | Hacker News Reader

Many people feel they work in pointless, meaningless jobs, research confirms

phys.org

66 pointsPaulHoule14 comments

That’s because we’ve replaced jobs that involved growing or building real tangible objects with jobs that either create intangible objects or manage others that create intangible objects.

... that's not really what I read from the chart in there. #1 and #2 are "Transportation and Material Moving", "Production Occupations" (manufacturing?) and #5 is "Food Preparation and Serving Related".

You certainly could drive a truck or flip burgers and feel alienated but those are not white collar occupations where the value of what you do is not at all obvious. I mean, we all have to eat.

I’ll admit I’m speaking from personal experience.

At work it all feels so abstract and pointless, the only thing I’m achieving that matters to me is that my employer moves some of their money into my bank account.

Then I go home and grill some burgers after work and build a bookshelf out of wood over the weekend and feel so much more self worth.

That last paragraph really hits home.

it is interesting that art/entertainment/media jobs rank so high in the useless/meaningless list. people that do art for art's sake instead of a job usually feel their work is profoundly meaningful at least to them.

Yea that was peculiar. Could possible be that those in a position that r forced to optimize for money, which saps the enjoyment/fulfillment out of it

It is until you get a bad boss, bad project, or bad company. It is hard to extract meaningful artistic fulfillment from work at a company. Possible, but there are a lot of forces conspiring against it.

A friend of mine is a line producer for television. Her job sounds like a stressful management job involving lots of middlemen, coordination, miscommunication, and corporate shenanigans. There are writers, directors, actors, and other creative people involved; but, as with anything else, the bulk of people are various forms of social glue just barely holding the thing together.

I guess she at least can take pride when the show finishes production, and sometimes airs.

Now imagine how those who were born rich feel? I assume that in those circles it's very uncommon to be humble enough to do any work for others, so their "job" must be to entertain only themselves: a sad one man show where you're the spectator and the clown at the same time.

Am I reading your comment correctly, which is essentially

> rich people must have it extra bad

Quite sure even the rich have to entertain their peers - be a good host, have entertaining parties, … etc.

The contrary in my experience, the extremely rich people I know spend their time e.g. saving the dying craft traditions of a small mexican village, or restoring thousands-of-years-old villas in the italian countryside. Seems to be incredibly satisfying for them, and really the work I would prefer to do.

"What was their first clue?"

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