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Comment by injidup | Hacker News Reader

Maybe the take is that those reports that people took a day to write were read by nobody in the first place and now those reports are being written faster and more of them are being produced but still nobody reads them. Thus productivity doesn't change. The solution is to get rid of all the people who write and process reports and empower the people who actually produce stuff to do it better.

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The managerial class are like cats and closed doors.

Ofcourse they don't read the reports, who has time to read it? But don't even think about not sending the report, they like to have the option of reading it if they choose to do so.

A closed door removes agency from a cat, an absent report removes agency from a manager.

> The solution is to get rid of all the people who write and process reports and empower the people who actually produce stuff to do it better.

That’s the solution if you’re the business owner.

That’s definitely not the solution if you’re a manager in charge of this useless activity, in fact, you should increase the amount of reports being written as much as humanly possible. The more underlings under you= more power and prestige.

This is the principal-agent problem writ large. As the comment mentioned above, also see Graeber’s Bullshit Jobs essay and book.

> Thus productivity doesn't change.

Indeed, productivity has decreased, because now there’s more output that is waste and you are paying to generate that excess waste.

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