
The rise of the pointless job - kawera
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2018/may/04/i-had-to-guard-an-empty-room-the-rise-of-the-pointless-job
======
lainga
I have said this before, but I see some parallels between the modern world and
Japan during the early Tokugawa era. Japan had pretty much reached a steady
state by the time Tokugawa Iyeyasu came to power in 1600; most of the
available land had been cultivated or settled, and, especially after the
policies of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, society was locked in a rigid structure
without much room for advancement or unrest.

As a result, the samurai class, especially Tokugawa's bannermen and "inner"
families, sort of lost their purpose. There were no more wars to fight - not
when peace lasted "as long as the waves roll" \- and the strongest rebels they
could expect were peasants who could not own swords.

Because they couldn't just revoke the lands Iyeyasu had distributed (without
very good reason), and to give the samurai _something_ to do, the Edo
government expanded constantly, creating dozens of superfluous or sinecure
bureaucratic roles, so that the second and third sons of samurai families
wouldn't just sit around at home. I believe this pattern was repeated across
the various daimyo han at each castle town. Further, the samurai household
_themselves_ created redundant job openings just to get more peasants out of
unemployment. This was how every samurai ended up with six porters. Even as
certain samurai families sunk into abject poverty in the 1800s, as the
shogunate neared its end, this policy continued: your grandfather had
increased the number of household retainers from five to six, to give
someone's fourth son a job; and it had become hereditary, and now that fourth
son's grandson was _your_ sixth retainer, and you couldn't destroy the
position even if you could barely afford to pay him.

When I hear politicians talking about "creating jobs", I think of the
shogunate.

~~~
foamflower
When my family lived in Japan years ago, we noticed that when taking the
train, approximately three attendants checked our tickets before we boarded a
train. At least two of those jobs are "bullshit" in terms of producing wealth,
but they are socially beneficial in a culture where the social contract
requires near-zero unemployment. (I, apparently like you, can't help but
remember this kind of arrangement when listening to "jobs guarantee" rhetoric
from various politicians.)

~~~
WJW
Is visited the USA just once (in 2003), but there was an old man that took my
bag off the end of the luggage belt at the airport and handed it to me. I
could easily have picked it up myself, but he was there for those 30
centimeters of bag travel. I remember being amazed about it and remarking the
pointlessness of that job to my coworkers.

~~~
jopsen
In the US you often see people holding a sign saying "slow" next to
construction or road work.

This is a job that could literally be automated with a pole :)

~~~
ouid
Those signs say stop on the other side and are used in conjuction with someone
on the other end of the construction holding up the opposite sign so that a
single lane can be used to handle traffic in two directions. That job would
need to be automated with a traffic light.

~~~
kleiba
In Germany, no-one is holding stop/slow signs at any construction site. This
job is universally done by portable traffic lights.

~~~
jpetso
In Germany, people respect traffic lights even when there's no one there to
enforce your good behavior.

------
expensivedrone
I'm a programmer working at a big-tech company. I make ~$350k/year, even
though my job could be done equally well by a college intern. I only do ~2
hours of productive work in an average day. My previous jobs were far more
interesting and challenging, and I had apparently done extremely well in my
interviews. Hence why I got an offer with an extremely good compensation
package.

However, the team that I go put into, is one of the slowest moving and least
useful I've ever seen. I spent my first couple months trying to make things
better, and be more productive - only to have my team-lead actively
micromanage and stonewall me in order to bring my productivity down to a
crawl. I tried talking to my manager about it, but they started blaming me
personally every time I pointed out any ways of improving the way we do
things.

Eventually, I stopped trying at all, did the best I could (~2 hours/day of
productivity), and just zoned out the rest of the time. Apparently this has
pleased my manager/team-lead, and everything has been smooth (boring) sailing
ever since. It still boggles my mind that I'm getting paid $350k/year to
essentially browse HN and post stuff like this all day.

~~~
modbait
Through my long career, I've notice virtually no correlation between my pay
and the utility of my position. And indeed, I've had one or two jobs like
yours. Sadly for my bank book, I can only stand being useless for relatively
short stretches.

I still reminisce about my lowest paying job, my first. It was probably the
most enjoyable and satisfying. It was also useful, though perhaps not at the
top of that list.

It's annoying that so many useless jobs pay so much. But even worse that it's
so hard to find a position where being useful is even a possibility.

~~~
edraferi
There's an economic theory that job satisfaction is a kind of compensation.
That is, you have to pay people more to do unsatisfying jobs.

~~~
ItsMe000001
I doubt that top-paying jobs like CEO are undesirable to those people who have
them as well as those who would like to have them. On the other hand all
really shitty jobs pay nothing - that's true for hundreds of millions, maybe
even billions of people worldwide. A >100k$ programmer office job in the US
does _not_ belong in the "shitty job" category, no matter how much someone
complains online because they are bored while comfortably sitting in their
chair waiting for the next big paycheck to arrive reliably.

That rule must have been made by one of those super-rich people grumbling
about how unfair life treats them and how the government attempts to steal
"their" money.

[https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/02/po...](https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/02/poor-
lives-rich-people/331159/)

~~~
randomdata
It's just basic supply and demand.

Top paying jobs like CEO are top paying because the supply of trusted people,
who boards are willing to hand control over billions of assets to, is
vanishingly small. Programming jobs are reasonably well paying because
businesses are careful about who they hand their code over to, although not
the extreme degree of CEO. And something like fry cook is low paying because
those businesses are willing to hire just about anyone.

But we cannot completely discount the effects of desirability. If your
employment options are fry cook or oil rig worker, most people would prefer
fry cook and thus oil rig worker has considerably higher wages due to the
aversion to the job, and therefore reduction in supply at the price point of
fry cook. Of course, increased compensation can prompt people to look in
alternative directions.

~~~
learc83
It's not just basic supply and demand though. There are many other factors
driving up CEO pay.

1\. CEO pay at public companies is public, so they feel the need to keep up
with other companies.

2\. The incestuous relationship between CEOs and the boards of directors that
set their pay.

CEO compensation isn't tied to performance.

~~~
randomdata
_> 1\. CEO pay at public companies is public, so they feel the need to keep up
with other companies._

That's just basic supply and demand. Since pay is public, people know how much
the other party will balk at, affecting the supply.

 _> 2\. The incestuous relationship between CEOs and the boards of directors
that set their pay._

That's just basic supply and demand. Like I said, the people who have that
kind of relationship are vanishingly small.

> CEO compensation isn't tied to performance.

There is no pay that is truly tied to performance. Just basic supply and
demand.

~~~
ItsMe000001
CEO pay is _not_ just supply and demand. You cannot even tell what "supply"
even is, because "CEO supply" is nothing that can be well defined. You could
make a lot of people CEO from the 2nd and 3rd ranks who also have the
experience and knowledge, or you can seek only people who already have been
CEOs - which does not guarantee anything at all, because CEO success depends a
lot on context and circumstances. CEO supply is extremely flexible based on
psychology for one (who you are willing to accept for the role is extremely
subjective and based on personal preferences), and can also very easily be
changed through actions (whom do you give a chance to learn to lead, and how).
So the possible "supply" of CEOs is decided on a whim to a large degree, based
on subjectivity (even if it's attempted to be hidden by some "thorough search"
\- which uses those same subjective criteria and selection heuristics).

You misuse economic theory by simply using it to make unsubstantiatable claims
pretending that it somehow proves anything as long as you use the right magic
words from economic thinking.

~~~
randomdata
_> You cannot even tell what "supply" even is_

It’s pretty easy to figure out. Typically there will be exactly one person the
board is willing to trust. It doesn’t matter how they reached that conclusion.

Being the only person in the world deemed suitable for the task gives
incredible leverage when demand is near infinite.

 _> You misuse economic theory by simply using it to make unsubstantiatable
claims_

It would appear that you’re simply overthinking this. We’re talking about
basic supply and demand, not a complex economic theory. It is simply an
observation of what people agree to. We call it basic because it doesn’t
represent anything more.

~~~
ItsMe000001
> _We’re talking about basic supply and demand_

I refer to what was written above. The only "thinking" I can see on your side
is how to prolong a non-argument - you just throw out random stuff, going for
quantity and endless repetition, but there is not a coherent recognizable
thought. Nice try, but I'd say after your first reply it turned into trolling.
You _are_ pretty good at saying a lot without saying anything at all though, I
give you that much.

~~~
randomdata
If you don't understand my explanation you are welcome to ask questions. I
also encourage you to refer to other sources on the internet that go into more
detail that I ever could in a short comment. You don't have to assume someone
is a troll just because a comment isn't perfectly eloquent.

------
tlb
The goon category is interesting in a future world where AI has replaced most
jobs, because it can employ an unlimited number of people. (Goon jobs exist to
counterbalance other goon jobs. Militaries are the canonical example.)

Most jobs -- teachers, auto workers, plumbers, farmers -- have a natural
ceiling on employment related to demand, but goon jobs don't because when one
side hires more goons, the other side has to also. Militaries have created
millions of jobs this way.

Goon jobs are not just blue-collar. A growing category of goon that allows
unlimited highly paid professional job creation is inter-governmental lawyers.
For example, the CA government is suing the EPA about vehicle emissions
limits. Both sides can justify a big budget for hiring lawyers. Metropolitan
areas like the Bay Area provide lots of opportunities for cities to sue each
other, transit authorities, and the state. I don't see any upper limit to the
number of jobs this can create.

All this is only a bad thing if you care about efficiency. If you let go of
that axiom, there are unlimited jobs to be created.

~~~
mfoy_
I die inside.

But any suggestion of "mincome" or the like is met with such a harsh
reaction... What, effectively, is the difference between goon-bloom and
mincome? Is it just that one is too obviously a subsidy?

~~~
TaylorAlexander
I talk to people about changing the world so work is optional, and people are
really attached to the idea that everyone should work all the time. Our world
is sufficiently productive (a trend I expect to continue rising) that we could
offer a modest life to everyone regardless of how much they work. Or more
conservatively, we could build a world where everyone has 8 weeks of vacation
a year or could take 6 months off every few years.

I believe this is doable from a technical perspective and it’s the problem I’m
trying to devote my life to. We ultimately need to build optional societies
where people who choose to join can opt out of consumerism, a major driver of
our need for endless work.

My vision is for systems of robotics that are totally open source (modifiable
and royalty free) that can create the basic goods for survival. Then groups of
people fund corporations with bylaws like a constitution that guarantee rights
to shareholders. The machines provide for the people and excess goods are sold
to a market to support growth of the community.

I think something like that in the future is one very useful aspect of a
society where unnecessary work is over and regular people get to enjoy the
benefits of modern productivity (instead of a small percentage of the
population enjoying that while most people miss out).

But in general when I talk to people I find that the hardest idea for them to
grasp is the idea that we could all work less and things wouldn’t collapse. We
just need to alter the distribution of wealth so that everyone benefits.

~~~
leetcrew
> Our world is sufficiently productive (a trend I expect to continue rising)
> that we could offer a modest life to everyone regardless of how much they
> work.

i realize that the rest of your post details technological advancements that
could create this condition (on an indefinite timeline), but you also seem to
be saying that it is already possible today. i often see this sort of claim
these days, and i always wonder why this is treated as self evident fact.

in 2015, the PPP adjusted GDP per capita over the entire planet was just under
$16k [1]. this is only 125% of the US poverty line for a single person in the
same year [2]. even if we could deliver this sum to every person in the world
without losing production capacity and with no administrative cost, it hardly
seems enough to provide what you mean by a "modest living" to everyone. much
closer to mere subsistence in a developed nation.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_\(PPP\)_per_capita)

[2] [https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-
series/demo/income-p...](https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-
series/demo/income-poverty/historical-poverty-thresholds.html)

~~~
rocqua
Measure productivity different from money made. The point is that based on
current production levels, we could provide everyone with sufficient food,
decent housing and basic amenities like water and electricity.

The reason this doesnt happen is that those who sell the food, or build the
housing are better off getting paying customers. This makes sense as a market,
sellers are self-interested. It also leads to a certain kind of optimum. But
certainly, as a matter of production, it is feasible to give everyone a modest
life without needing to change productivity. As a matter of social stability,
it isn't feasible, but in some sense, that should be a denouncement of
society.

------
smm2000
Author lost me on doorman. Doormen absolutely bring value and saying that
doormen is bullshit job is the same as saying that waitress is a bullshit job
- in the end customer is fully capable of bringing the food from the counter
to his table on his own.

Doormen Can accept packages when you are not in your apt (leaving outside is
not an option in NY)

    
    
      Can accept laundry delivery
    
      Provide security by screening people out at the entrance
    
      Virtually eliminate burglaries/theft
    
      Can provide key to housecleaner/installer/plumber/etc
    
      Keep parking spot in front of building available for short time use by residents (often semi-illegally)
    
      Can help brining up heavy suitcases/bags to the apartment
    

Doormen absolutely provide value and apts in buildings with doormen sells for
more than equivalent apartments with only intercall.

~~~
trophycase
Right. The real useless jobs are the 10 people working on animating hair for
the next Assassin's Creed game or the CGI for the next Marvel film

~~~
modbait
Heh. Careful--you may discover that there are jobs far more useless than that.

~~~
AstralStorm
Half of management jobs? ;)

------
mbid
There are plenty of bullshit jobs in the software industry.

Many things designers and graphics developers do is goon-ish. Design is mostly
an arms race. Employees of big companies create new design languages and at
some point the rest has to adapt or be left behind. Of course, marketing is
99% bullshit anyway, and that's where a good deal of the design goes.

I doubt games are more fun now than 10 years ago because graphics has gotten
better. If anything, games from 10 years ago have gotten worse because we're
used to more complex graphics.

Almost everybody here is a duct-taper. 95% of our time is spent dealing with
technical debt. We're using decades old technology that was never designed to
solve the problems we face now. Take the twitter password problem on the front
page: This would've never happened had we just adopted a more sane approach to
authentication. When you wait for hours on your windows updates, think of the
poor souls who know that none of this is necessary but can't entangle the mess
that makes this necessary (apparently). And think of the poor souls in testing
who can't report the real bug that is a broken code architecture which makes
automated or more fine-grained tests impossible.

~~~
ASpring
It's a bit much to say design is goonish and an arms race. I'd argue the
reason that Apple is the most valuable company in the world is mostly due to
their design expertise.

You can make the same argument about software between companies being an arms
race that competitors adapt to to or get left behind (see cloud, mobile,
voice, etc.).

------
zby
Graeber has been pushing this for some time now - it is an interesting
observation. In this particular article he does not even try to explain why
this happens - but in other places he made silly theories about capitalist
employers doing that on purpose to keep people from revolting - while omitting
the simplest explanation - that it is the result of complexity of our
organizations. People don't understand their jobs. Sometimes it means they do
something useful but they don't understand why it is needed, other times they
really do something useless - but nobody really knows which is which or what
part of a job is useful.

Then there are company power plays which are counterproductive to the whole -
but they are meaningful for the people who commandeer them.

And the biggest problem is that there is a positive feedback in that - after a
few failures to rationalize the organizations people give up. The harder the
organizations are to be understood the less people work on making them more
rational.

------
PurpleBoxDragon
I work a very productive job with direct outputs. But my job still doesn't
advance humanity forward. My company provides a solution for problems caused
by other entities, but it isn't a solution to some fundamental problem. Some
days I feel as if the job is pointless because, in the end, I'm just a duct
taper, even if I'm duct taping for an entity that is outside of my
organization.

If you take the concepts in this argument and expand it beyond just companies
(which the author started to do when mentioning armed forces counted as
goons), I think we would see a society that is already filled with useless
jobs.

------
rhacker
When I look at a downtown with tall buildings I always think about what the
fuck people are doing in those buildings. I get the sense that more and more
people are hired to simply report on a team. That report goes up one level and
its part of another team report (just representing more people). Then that
report goes up... and it continues for as many levels of bureaucracy that the
company decided was necessary.

Most of this falls directly in the category of "not my problem" that is eating
everyone's soul. Because more and more people subscribing to "not my problem"
we are creating perfect systems that need bureaucracy. The opposite structure
is more people doing the hands-on-work (that is reported on) and more of those
people being involved directly in decisions and are stakeholders on firing.
Everyone has a sense of how much work is being done and who the slackers are
so there is no more a need for upward reporting and downward decisions.

Now the argument being made is that AI is replacing jobs so you could say -
well this upward reporting job is all that we have left! So I say boo-fuck to
that. We don't have spaceships going into space on a daily basis, we don't
recycle 100% of what can be recycled, we don't have clean freeways, we don't
have technology that perfects our pollution, we don't have AI.... so there are
A FUCK TON amount of work to be done, but no one wants to do it because of our
"not my problem" attitude.

Heck if what we're facing is a training problem, then heck, I see a hell of a
lot of jobs right there!

------
c22
A lot of people have pointless jobs, but it seems even more people have jobs
that are actively contributing to the wanton destruction of our entire world.
I suspect these are both symptoms of our elevation of capital to the status of
_universal good_. This will only get worse as long as we continue to espouse
the default view that people who "don't have a job" are useless moochers and
people who have high paying jobs are valuable contributors to society.

~~~
amelius
"The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click
ads."

\--Jeff Hammerbacher

~~~
geodel
The best minds of previous generations were fighting wars or leading battles.
I personally do not think either of those activities is specifically better or
worse.

~~~
Filligree
I do.

Wars. Wars are worse.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
They do help reduce economic inequality, nothing like a good war to flatten
wealth.

~~~
gonzo41
Yeah look at Alepo. But the average Syrian didn't really have all that much
anyway.

The west will never fight a war like WW2 ever again.

------
Aunche
In some developing countries, there's an unofficial social contract that the
wealthy should employ as many people as possible, even if they need to make
pointless jobs. A company I worked for had a remote office in India that
employed people to hand out paper towels in the bathrooms.

~~~
blackbagboys
This is also common in higher-end nightclubs and bars in the U.S., although
these aren't full-time jobs and the attendants work mostly for tips.

~~~
monocasa
Or just strip clubs in general. I was in the most ghetto strip club I've ever
heard about (unpainted cinder block walls), but they had an attendant.

~~~
pbrb
That's to keep ppl from rubbing one out my man.

~~~
monocasa
Haha, that makes sense.

------
vfc1
This is true, I've seen this over the years in several corporate jobs,
typically in large companies. Teams are overstaffed, and each person ends up
not having much to do.

Managers keep the team size high because it's not their money to spend, and
they prefer being a team lead of 5 persons instead of 2, looks better on the
CV.

People spend their day in their desktop trying to invent things to do, looking
busy, surfing the web discretely, waiting for the clock to hit 6 oclock.

Then something "urgent" comes around that needs to be done for tomorrow, and
you stay in the office until 9 to finish it. The software gets delivered, but
its not deployed until 3 months down the line, and the users hardly use the
application at all.

------
billysielu
That reminds me of the forgotten employee, which is very awesome, and slightly
relevant.

[https://sites.google.com/site/forgottenemployee/](https://sites.google.com/site/forgottenemployee/)

~~~
Aloha
I remember reading that years ago.

One day, I'd like that to be me.

------
Dirlewanger
In the US, I think it largely stems from our individualistic natures. Our
fierce independence comes at a cost to the greater community; we often don't
interact, and in the worst case outright loathe, our neighbors. People would
rather bitch on NextDoor about a loud party down the block instead of
confronting them directly about it. We solve disputes not by working it out
with the other party, but with subpoenas. Public jobs are low-paying and
staffed with people who couldn't find jobs in the private sector, resulting in
little incentive to do more than the absolute minimum. Many well-meaning
government initiatives aimed to benefit the greater good are met with intense
suspicion (your NIMBYs). Companies don't see offering jobs as enriching
communities, but rather bestowing saintly privileges that those plebians
better be thankful for. They're decked with such ridiculous liability clauses
that the case of the carpenter in the story is not an exception, but the norm.

That was somewhat of a rant, and I don't really have any kind of solution to
all of it. America is several thousand tragedies of the commons, from a
neighbor-to-neighbor level all the way up to the federal government.

~~~
tiberius1900
I have to say I don't understand many things about your comment, so I'd be
glad if you were to clear them for me.

1) You blame your "individualistic natures" for the appearance of pointless
jobs. Now, I haven't lived in the US, but that seems odd to me. I live in
Romania, a society that is profoundly focused on the community, and the
abundance of pointless jobs, particularly in the communistic years (communism
being a profoundly anti-individualistic ideology) was absolutely staggering.

It just seems to me pretty self-evident that, as you move the focus from the
individual, and his own happiness, he will find less motivation to do a
meaningful job, and be contempt with a pointless, but simpler job.

I may be missing something important here, as, again, everything I know about
American culture I know from the internet, so, if I am, please feel free to
tell me.

2) "Public jobs are low-paying and staffed with people who couldn't find jobs
in the private sector, resulting in little incentive to do more than the
absolute minimum."

I'm afraid I just don't follow here. Wouldn't the low pay motivate people to
work at pulling themselves out of those jobs and into the private sector?

3) You claim, quite rightly, that companies are not concerned with the public
good, just with their survival and/or success, and consider jobs given out as
"saintly privileges".

Firstly, all of the modern advances of mankind, from the industrial
revolution, to the ridiculously cheap products provided by Rockefeller,
Edison, and the like, to the supercomputers almost every human in the
civilized world carries with him in his pocket, were made, not in the interest
of "the greater community", but in those people/companies' self-interest.

Secondly, which worker do you think is more productive? The one that says "I
am owed this job by my company"? Or the one that says, "My job is nothing but
a privilege given onto me by the company, and I must prove every day that I
deserve it?"

In any case, I'd be really grateful if you could explain these points to me.
Thanks in advance!!

~~~
Dirlewanger
>I may be missing something important here, as, again, everything I know about
American culture I know from the internet, so, if I am, please feel free to
tell me.

Americans, as the saying does, live to work. Many tie their individual worth
to the jobs they do. We invest a lot of ourselves into our jobs (those we care
about anyway), and oftentimes the output doesn't equal the input.

>Wouldn't the low pay motivate people to work at pulling themselves out of
those jobs and into the private sector?

You greatly overestimate the average person's drive to better themselves.
Plenty are fine to get something that pays the bills and that's it.

>Secondly, which worker do you think is more productive?

You're going between 2 extremes that I didn't mention. My comment about
companies offering jobs comes from the understanding of how positions (mainly
in the white collar industry) used to be in the 50s/60s/70s vs. today. People
that worked at the IBMs/RANDs/GMs/etc. of yester-decade worked there for
decades. They were loyal to that company, almost to a fault. When they
retired, they were given an expensive Omega with their name engraved in the
back. Some even got pensions. Note this was also largely in the context of the
pre-globalization age. Nowadays companies have no problem axing whole
divisions to meet their bottom lines. They will go overseas. They have no
problem leaving an area they've been at for decades. All the while, baby
boomers continue to wonder out loud why their kids don't have the same
earnings potential as they did. Not saying any of this is good or bad, it just
is.

------
vinceguidry
Edwardian-era mansions employed whole _teams_ of butlers whose sole job was
replacing candles.

Not everyone is in a position to make a discernible impact on society. 20% of
society will always drive 80% of progress. Think hard how you want the
remaining 80% to support their families.

~~~
nunya213
Pretty simple, return to a 90% top tax rate and give the proceeds out as Basic
Income. This shit situation we are in is not sustainable, we have levels of
inequality in the US not seen since the roaring 20s and we all know how that
ended.

~~~
AstralStorm
Even 100% tax rate is not enough to pay for a meaningful UBI, even in the US.
You will have to take major budget cuts somewhere.

Suppose we tax Forbes 500 at 100% level and the companies too. That would
provide about 2 billion USD a year. Divided by population it will be less than
$2k a person yearly.

Suppose you tax top 10%, I'd expect that to double this number. Still way not
enough. And we're not even close to military budget.

------
rossdavidh
Kind of lost me when they gave military jobs as an example. By this logic, it
is "pointless" for organisms to have immune systems, since if other organisms
didn't cause infection it wouldn't be necessary. Maybe, but that's not the way
the world is (or was, or likely will be anytime soon). It's a definition of
"pointless" so remote from the real world as to seem...pointless.

~~~
21
Here is an article which argues that we should stop using militaristic terms
for the immune system, that the immune system is not an army of killers, and
that it's job is not to kill enemies, because talking like this brings harm in
the world, by legitimizing violence.

I'm scratching my head at this.

[https://aeon.co/essays/why-we-should-guard-against-
military-...](https://aeon.co/essays/why-we-should-guard-against-military-
notions-of-immunity)

~~~
jeffreyrogers
I don't know. Most developed countries militaries exist more to respond to
aggravations from other countries than to actively stir up conflict. If a
country decides not to have a military than it's at the mercy of a country
that does to play nice. I'm sure it's true though that once you have a
military you're more inclined to use it, but militaries do serve a useful
purpose.

------
TheMagicHorsey
People in this thread that are praising job-creation as a social good miss the
point. Jobs are not good on their own if they produce nothing.

If you are unable to distribute wealth through other means and a job is
absolutely necessary, then find some useful work for the person to do. There
is ALWAYS more work to do There are never enough bridges, roads, doctors,
books, movies, research, etc. etc. If your society cannot find useful things
for people to do, that is a failing of your method of societal organization.

~~~
Bakary
The bottleneck is not the amount of work that ought to be done but the
difficulty of training people to be able to do it.

------
unit91
I had a very similar experience once when I worked for the government. I
wanted my small desk pointed a different direction, so I rotated it.

A few hours later my supervisor and a union rep showed up fuming. They have
people for moving things, why was I trying to take their jobs?!

~~~
fencepost
Not sure if true or false to demonize unions, but I've heard stories about the
horror of trade shows at union facilities where booth staff were literally not
allowed to plug items into power strips within their booths - it required a
service request and probably a charge.

~~~
unit91
I've experienced that at a trade show too. That convention center did it as a
means of charging crazy money for electricity. Internet was very expensive
too.

Trade shows are a racket facilities-wise but worth it as publicity/B2B
opportunities.

------
romanr
This is another argument in favor of universal income. Bullshit jobs is one of
consequences of progress, low cost goods, food and comfort. With increasing
automation it’s going to be get incrementally harder to find bullshit jobs for
people. until society understands that not everyone can and have to be
employed.

~~~
aristocles
UBI will lead to societal degeneration. Prices of essential services and goods
would skyrocket; people would lose direction and the small amount of meaning
they had.

I call UBI gay-space-communism because it suggests that all human beings are
capable of handling themselves outside of employment and daily routine. They
are not. The market creates this drive in people, and if you remove it, people
will degenerate fast.

Opioids, UBI, and free-love for everyone. Yikes.

~~~
dragonwriter
> UBI will lead to societal degeneration

No, it won't.

> Prices of essential services and goods would skyrocket

If you do a constant-value UBI and set the value too high, yes, that would
happen in a positive feedback loop, but that's why UBI should be tied to a
revenue stream with a value set by splitting the revenue stream with a reserve
cushion to build a fund to allow preserving benefits in short-term revenue
decline.

> people would lose direction

I don't see a credible argument for that replacing status quo means-tested
social support with UBI would cause this, and indeed much of the motivation
for UBI is to remove adverse incentives in present benefit programs that
manifestly do produce this effect.

> I call UBI gay-space-communism

Which is dumb, because it has nothing to do with homosexuality or outer space
or, as it retains private property, Communism.

> suggests that all human beings are capable of handling themselves outside of
> employment and daily routine.

No, it doesn't, not that that would justify your ludicrous label even if that
was true.

~~~
mamon
Any value of UBI higher than 0 creates positive feedback loop:

1\. government announces UBI

2\. retailers, in anticipation of higher demand raise prices.

3\. UBI beneficiaries see that they cannot buy as many goods as they want/need
so they start demanding more money.

4\. government see that they have more tax revenue due to higher retail sales
(and the price raise from step 2) so it easily agrees to increase UBI amount.

5\. go to step 2.

~~~
fulafel
Do you think other financial aid formsfunded with tax money have this effect
too? Or do you think UBI is qualitatively different because all taxpayers get
it?

I think you can be cured of the latter if you consider the fact that it's
exactly equivalent to a negative income tax system.

------
hammock
A rewrite of this classic essay which has been discussed on HN many times:
[https://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/](https://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/)

~~~
_rpd
This rewrite seems to be advertising his new book on the topic. Good summer
reading.

------
ImaCake
Universities are filled with this kind of pointlessness. The result is a
massive amount of friction between those on the "edge" of the university doing
useful work in research, teaching, building things, and the people in the
"core" who routinely fire and re-hire whole departments and replace perfectly
functional buildings in order to justify their paycheck.

It's not that the beaucracy running a University isn't needed (it definitely
is), but it has got out of control and is consuming valuable resources better
used elsewhere.

~~~
xbgood
This is the same in industry: At a company that was supposed to be financially
struggling, the CEO did:

1) Lay off software engineers are (the best ones, he had no clue).

2) Increase the head count in the HR department.

3) The increased head count in the HR department proceeded to move from one
billing or HR platform to the next because they needed activity.

4) Hire "diverse" new (cheap) software engineers with no clue.

I think professional unions with all their flaws are needed not primarily to
bargain for higher incomes, but to stop this social welfare program for the
bureaucracy.

------
habeebtc
Well, from an evolutionary perspective there are successful fish who evolved
suction cups on the top of their heads so they could both save their energy
swimming and also eat the food scraps of the shark they are attached to.

Some would argue that this metaphor better describes finance industry
professionals though.

------
mfoy_
Keynes was a little more direct: "The government should pay people to dig
holes in the ground and then fill them up."

~~~
PeterisP
However, digging a hole in the ground and then filling it up is horribly, soul
crushingly demotivating.

Even if someone is working in a job that de facto amounts to doing just that,
it should be covered up so that this fact isn't obvious and that a person can
reasonably choose to ignore the truth and convince themselves that their job
has some real value. Which is actually done, all kinds of internal propaganda,
glorious mission statements, etc.

~~~
mentalpiracy
> However, digging a hole in the ground and then filling it up is horribly,
> soul crushingly demotivating.

Ah you see, this is why you have one person doing the digging, and another
doing the filling! This way, each man goes home satisfied.

~~~
sametmax
This is not only clever, but actually a good metaphor of the activity of
numerous entities.

~~~
bitL
One company does the digging, another the filling, and they are both owned by
the same person in order to conceal that.

------
pjscott
Once upon a time there was a thing to be done. Huge meetings were held, and
goals were set for how much of the thing should be done per month. Metrics
were set up to track how much of the thing had happened. Over a hundred people
were invited to these meetings, and countless man-hours were spent on defining
goals. Many more hours were spent on measuring progress toward those goals.
Group emails were sent, vaguely confused words were spoken, and spreadsheets
sprang forth from the void.

None of this affected the people whose job was to actually do the thing. They
did as much of the thing as could be done in the time they had. The goals came
from the void and the metrics went into the void, and no echo was heard.

... And "once upon a time" means, in this case, "a few months ago at a big
company where I work." The really funny thing, though, is that _most of these
jobs make local sense._ The managers who went to the meetings and so on? They
were sheltering their people from all this so that things could get done. Even
the people who set all this in motion were probably well-meaning, since they
wanted the thing to be done and took actions that they perhaps thought might
plausibly lead toward this. I can't hate any of the people involved -- and yet
the end result of it all is complete waste; utter horrifying destruction of
irreplaceable time and energy. It would be better to light large piles of cash
on fire, because it would be much cheaper and at least then we'd be able to
stare at the flames.

How do you prevent this sort of situation?

~~~
nefitty
Is this an argument against the need for managers? Google tried that, and it
failed.

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/meghancasserly/2013/07/17/googl...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/meghancasserly/2013/07/17/google-
management-is-evil-harvard-study-startups/)

~~~
pjscott
Yes? No? Abort, retry, fail? I mentioned jobs making local sense. And it's
true! If any single one of these jobs were to go away, things would get worse.
The system would leave its local optimum, and many problems would ensue. And I
want to get out of that Nash equilibrium -- but how?

------
hutzlibu
Goons are only pointless, if you look at them from a idealistic all-humanity-
together approach.

And even though they tell us often they are there because of the other
goons... they are usually there to dominate(or exploite) the others. Which
gives the own side a massive advantage. Even though it mostly happens today in
a much more subtle way than the open conquering, stealing and blundering, of
the past, it is mostly the same principle. There are nice exceptions, though,
like the swiss etc. but big armys today are still there to enforce various
interests, for a long time mostly only as a potential threat, but more and
more in active engagement. And even though I appreciate honesty, I am a bit
concerned, that they more and more drop the facade.

(Still, the german president had to resign a few years ago because he said
that the german military is also there to protect german economic interests
outside of germany, and he did not mean fighting pirates. But it is still
highly illegal here (in theory), to make war for any other reasons than to
defend, so he had to go, even though the public outcry was completley
hypocrite)

------
eeZah7Ux
Honest question: how much of our work is not absolutely necessary?

It's easy to write a piece of software once and share it with everybody.

The product you are working on - what unique value is giving to humanity?

(I mean beyond "it pays the bills" and "it uses $popular_thing_of_the_year")

I believe we reached a level of productivity where - in rich countries - we
are all keeping each other busy with loads of unnecessary work.

~~~
tlb
Only farming is absolutely necessary. Farming is down to about 2% in the US.
You could cut that in half if people stopped ordering avocado toast and just
ate oats. So, probably 99%.

~~~
gajjanag
You might want to adjust the figure to account for clothing/minimal
construction work for shelter - both are definitely fundamental in most parts
of the US. One might also wish to add in a minimally functional healthcare
system to ensure a reasonably high average life expectancy.

Nevertheless, the point is still extremely valid; I would estimate around 95%.

Update: As in general it is easy to draw overly pessimistic conclusions from
this (I have been affected by this myself), it may be of use to point out that
positive answers do exist for this issue. One of my personal favorites is the
powerful, short book "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor Frankl.

------
osteele
Some (not all) of these jobs provide slack to an organization. A human is
effectively paid a retainer, or given an excuse to on premise and engaged, so
that they have the knowledge, context, and social capital to deal with unusual
or unforeseeable situations when they arise.

Giving someone a job that causes them to feel useless or disengaged, in order
to maintain their readiness, is bad management. The existence of a job whose
value can't be summarized on a process chart is not.

The article was entertaining enough satire, but in the end had me wishing for
an alternate version that categorized the forces that create and sustain jobs.
It pretended to this, but by starting from the assumption that corporations
and managers are idiots or ill-intentioned, it sacrificed insight for
populism.

I recommend _Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total
Efficiency_, Tom DeMarco, 2002.

------
haywirez
This is by David Graeber of "On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs" fame:
[https://www.strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs](https://www.strikemag.org/bullshit-
jobs)

Previous discussions:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6236478](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6236478)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8561080](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8561080)

------
jwilliams
Perhaps I'm reading to much into the title - but seems like pointless jobs
have been around a very long time. What is the "rise" really referring to
here?

------
jtcond13
Pointless jobs abound in both the public and private sectors, but I think
these articles resonate because so many white collar workers are largely
occupied with projects that will be cancelled before they're finished or whose
end product will eventually be ignored by the people who are intended to use
it. Most companies just aren't managed very well...

------
slx26
The problem is clearly not just about completely pointless jobs. Among jobs
that actually have a purpose, we find many that are: required to deal with the
problems generated by bad practices/inefficiency (the article mentions duct-
tapers. Commenters here also mention how in computer science we deal with a
lot of technical debt, even when many times we know there's no way out unless
we rewrite from scratch), or even worse, generated by the own inefficiencies
and 'stupidity loops' in a system (see a good deal of bureaucracy, supervision
and reporting taks, goons, etc.)

Of course we can't remove inefficiency completely, but these are big problems
with big consequences. I'm really saddened by it: I regularly see a lot of
comments from people that seem to be very capable but end up doing dull jobs,
for dumb bosses, wasting their potential when they could be adding so much
more value to our societies (and also be happier with it). And I don't intend
to blame anyone here, it's not like we have much better choices in many cases.
Sometimes you even think we would be able to achieve more with less man-hours
if we didn't spend so many of them on nonsense.

The need for jobs for everyone has also been discussed. UBI as an alternative,
etc. To me it's clear the number of jobs we need/will need in the future will
fall. And that's a good thing (we can produce more with less resources), but
it also has very negative consequences, due to the way our economic system
works and our need for money. But there's also a social problem. The concept
of work is so valued that society rarely stops to reflect about the positive
consequences of needing less work. And without this, it's really hard to build
towards that society with less jobs or less work hours sanely. The difference
between "work" and "paid work" is very important, and I feel we don't talk
enough about it either. Work is important for humans, even necessary. But we
can't keep repeating nice quotes that are actually referring to "work" and
applying them to "paid work" to evangelize the concept.

The whole situation is very frustrating. I'm quite young, and I think about it
pretty often. I don't really like the perspective for most jobs I could do.
What can I do? What can we do? Ignore the rest of the world and just try to
find the best place for yourself? Try to live with less? Get in politics,
start a business? I find it really hard to ignore so much waste of potential
and useless pain.

------
anm89
Staggeringly ignorant.

It's a mostly free system. Why is someone paying someone to do these
"pointless" jobs".

Hint: the answer is this that is bullshit. Surprisingly, companies like
nothing more than accumulating money. Paying people to do nothing gets in the
way of this goal and so generally it doesn't happen.

This doesn't mean everyone personally feels their job has value and it doesn't
mean there aren't pointless jobs in a large corporate environment but as a
systemic thing, valueless jobs aren't exactly our most pressing concern.

Not every value providing task in the world induces the person doing it to
instantaneosly reach nirvana because it is so wonderfully fulfilling. Many
jobs are mundane. It doesn't mean they are valueless. Why would someone be
paying them to do it otherwise?

------
grosjona
As companies get bigger and they monopolize industries, they can afford to be
extremely inefficient without any negative repercussions.

It makes the system fundamentally unfair. Money is supposed to be a
representation of the debt that society owes an individual for contributions
that the individual has made to society but its not like that - It doesn't
matter how useless you are to society, you can still make a lot of money. In
fact, it's easier to make money if you are useless to society; smart people
let other people create value and they spend all their energy on coming up
with strategies to capture the value created by others.

------
chaostheory
> “I work in a college dormitory during the summer. I have worked at this job
> for three years, and at this point it is still unclear to me what my actual
> duties are. Primarily, it seems that my job consists of physically occupying
> space at the front desk. While engaged in this, I am free to ‘pursue my own
> projects’, which I take to mean mainly creating rubber band balls out of
> rubber bands I find in the cabinets.

A doorman's job is not bullshit. The job acts as a deterrent for people who
shouldn't be inside that dorm. There have been cases where students get raped
by a stranger inside their own dorm room.

------
innagadadavida
Going by this example, blog writers reports should also be added the list.
Their sole existence is to get clicks to articles talking about stuff that we
all know about but there is nothing we can act on in an effective way.

------
ryanmarsh
For an amusing take on this please read "On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs: A
Work Rant" by David Graeber [https://www.strikemag.org/bullshit-
jobs](https://www.strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs)

It was good enough to warrant a response from the Economist
[https://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2013/08/labour-...](https://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2013/08/labour-
markets-0)

------
megamindbrian2
How about building and app that is never used, never sees the light of day,
and it's construction never serves as an example of what to do or not to do to
anyone?

------
_bxg1
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woK2FcqJVuE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woK2FcqJVuE)

------
fenwick67
I worked with a guy whose job was about 50% copying and pasting data from
source A to B or going through an Excel sheet and doing the same thing for
each entry.

Eventually he automated it in a hacky way with VBA that worked most of the
time. He spent a lot of time watching YouTube paylists while the VBA scripts
ran submitting web forms etc. It seemed like a pretty sweet gig.

------
andrewfromx
This is universal income disguised as a real job?

------
neilwilson
The point of a job is to allow you to put your own time beyond your own use
and use it to serve others.

This simple 'proof of burn' of your finite life is what gives the money
exchange value.

If you want others to give up their time to produce a surplus for you then you
need to do the same. Otherwise they'll just take the productivity themselves
and have Friday off.

------
_bxg1
The Lynx one is brilliant.

~~~
dave7
Yes, I laughed and expected it to be mentioned here more than just the one
comment.

Reminds me of codereddit:
[http://codereddit.com/?sub=todayilearned](http://codereddit.com/?sub=todayilearned)

------
Avshalom
As a aread this with that:

[https://longreads.com/2018/04/26/is-your-job-lynchian-or-
is-...](https://longreads.com/2018/04/26/is-your-job-lynchian-or-is-it-more-
kafkaesque/)

discusses it with in context of _Ask A Manager_ and _What Color is Your
Parachute_

------
SantaBarbarian
Want to see pointless job? go into a nice department store in Tokyo to buy a
shirt (if, say, United Airlines lost all your good clothes on the way over--
just as a hypothetical).

the sheer number of people involved in greeting, seating and feting you is
stunning.

then there's the five levels of distribution to get any kind of product to
market...

------
EGreg
This is why we proposed this at our company:

[https://qbix.com/blog/2016/11/17/properly-valuing-
contributi...](https://qbix.com/blog/2016/11/17/properly-valuing-
contributions/)

------
SpaceEncroacher
When you stop solving interesting problems crusty old man reality sets in. If
you agree to stagnate in a pointless job you a part of the problem until you
change your perspective. Are you waiting for Linda Carter to save you?!

~~~
downrightmike
If there's a chance of that, I'm good.

------
HillaryBriss
my favorite flunky job is the one where an executive tells the flunky to print
emails out on paper and put them into a big stack so the executive can ignore
them later

------
chaostheory
These are the types of jobs that are useful for anyone just starting to build
something. You may not need a seed investor if you have the right pointless
job

------
peterwwillis
> tasks that could easily be automated

If I had a nickel for every time someone told me automation was easy I would
be richer than Jeff Bezos.

------
ExpiredLink
>> _if no one had an army, armies would not be needed._

Lol, the US has an army because they need to attack other countries!

------
bluetomcat
Bullshit jobs is what the antiquated capitalist system gives us in return for
the increased efficiency in other human activities. You automate the
production of essential goods and services with increasingly less people
needed to support it, but you still need to employ everyone, so you invent
jobs just for the sake of them.

The system should be designed to reward us with more spare time, not to make
us busier with ever more mundane tasks.

------
k__
They had full emplyoment in the German Democratic Republic.

As far as I know you HAD TO work.

But.

The state HAD TO give you work.

Hilarity ensued.

------
Odenwaelder
A job for one week was to move plastic roof boards from an automated saw on a
pallet. They would save lots of money if they‘d place a robot there. In fact,
the hole factory could have been automated.

~~~
toomuchtodo
I would think carefully about this. Elon Musk thought the same thing with
Model 3 production, and then said “humans are underrated” and that they bought
into automation too much, leading to production delays.

[https://gizmodo.com/overrated-human-elon-musk-says-humans-
ar...](https://gizmodo.com/overrated-human-elon-musk-says-humans-are-
underrated-1825264384)

------
tripletao
> I should add that there is really only one class of people who not only deny
> their jobs are pointless, but also express outright hostility to the very
> idea that our economy is rife with bullshit jobs. These are – predictably
> enough – business owners and others in charge of hiring and firing.

A manager's job can certainly be pointless, and often is; but how could the
owner's possibly be? An owner who has hired managers who operate a profitable
business with minimal supervision is just a success. The managers can be
perfectly happy with this situation, if they prefer a stable salary to the
risky residual claim. I'm not sure the author quite believes in capitalism
here.

------
maggotbrain
A great example would be the author of this article.

------
megamindbrian2
Cold callers are the same as recruiters.

------
newnewpdro
It's called an "occupation" for a reason. There's no requirement of merit or
value to qualify as one, just occupy the people.

------
adultSwim
Pointless jobs are much wider than this. Most jobs I can get are to perform a
useful role in a useless pursuit.

Capitalism is supposed to be all about efficient resource allocation. However
having the smartest people of a generation work on putting little text ads
next to your search results and stock market chicanery is highly inefficient.

There is so much real work to be done. We shouldn't be wasting our time with
fruitless pursuits in order to literally not die.

------
jacob019
entertaining read, not sure I understand the bit about business owners.

------
crazygringo
I'm sorry, but this is completely ridiculous and flies in the face of
economics and capitalism, and deserves to be called out. Remember that David
Graeber is an anthropologist, not an economist.

Pointless jobs exist because of inefficiences. Someone higher up couldn't be
bothered to automate it, and there isn't enough oversight of the budget. An
entrenched interest (like a no-longer-needed union regulation) is too hard to
fight. Etc.

But capitalism is the most _marvelous_ machine for removing inefficiencies,
and therefore removing pointless jobs. Why? Because the owner/capitalist will
make more money when they're removed/automated. It's easy to say McDonald's
cashiers have pointless jobs, and they're being replaced with kiosks. Or taxi
drivers with driverless cars. The same way the original human "computers" were
replaced by calculating machines. The process isn't perfect and certainly
isn't instant, but it happens and is relentless.

Pointless jobs _decrease_ over time. And trying to claim that they're _rising_
, as Graeber does, is simply disingenuous and dishonest.

~~~
jnordwick
You are not allowed to speak positively of capitalism here. It is a messy
system, far inferior to the more modern technocratic ways we should be
following.

~~~
optimusmaximus
Yes, and the fact that capitalism created the conditions that allow people
like the ones who pontificate on HN about the messiness of capitalism to exist
at all should go completely unmentioned.

------
leroy_masochist
TLDR: serving in the military is a bullshit job for "goons". The Guardian
really is a parody of itself sometimes.

~~~
TulliusCicero
Incorrect. They're saying that the military is a "goon" type of job, in that
it involves aggression, and you have to do it because others will plow over
you otherwise. It has nothing to do with the character of soldiers. This same
underlying logic also applies to corporate lawyers and advertisers.

~~~
leroy_masochist
Right, and therein lies the Guardian's stereotypical grad student reasoning:
militaries only exist because of humanity's lack of enlightenment, and
military service is therefore a job that "lacks positive value" and is
"essentially manipulative and aggressive".

Even if you subscribe to the standard litany of lefty anti-person-in-uniform
grudges, the notion that militaries around the world exist primarily to guard
against other militaries is misguided. A much bigger motivating factor for the
existence of large standing armies is the general desire of illiberal regimes,
be they on the right or on the left, to keep the young male population (ie the
backbone of a potential revolution) occupied on a daily basis.

~~~
pnathan
> A much bigger motivating factor for the existence of large standing armies
> is the general desire of illiberal regimes, be they on the right or on the
> left, to keep the young male population (ie the backbone of a potential
> revolution) occupied on a daily basis.

Would you mind citing that or expanding on more depth? I'm curious as to your
reasoning chain there and think it is an interesting critique of the article's
classification.

~~~
leroy_masochist
It's a common practice throughout Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Arab
world (and Russia until recently). Compulsory military service for males at
18, for a varying amount of time but enough to a) make a tangible difference
in the number of young guys loitering about because they have nothing to do in
the bad economy; b) have a large internally deployable force to quell any
unrest at a moment's notice; c) indoctrinate young men with the idea that
being a man / being a patriot / being of good character means supporting the
regime and its ideology (while also giving young men a group identity as a
veteran of the armed forces loyal to the government).

Fighting a war with another country is not the reason most countries spend
money on their armies that could be spent elsewhere.

------
profalseidol
Pretty sure there's a ton of pointless job in capitalism

------
sureaboutthis
Almost related. Perhaps outdated. I worked in television for 10 years as a
broadcast engineer. In a large city this is a union job.

I was given the task of testing and repairing some equipment that had been in
a back room for a while. I was the new kid so I didn't know the routines of
the day but one of my duties was to operate the camera for a five-minute
newscast in the afternoon. This only entailed rolling the camera into place,
pointing at the news person, focus and I was done till the newscast was over.

I was poking around the equipment in the backroom when one of the scruffy old
men quickly came into the room. "Hey, you're supposed to be on the set for
that newscast!", he said. I must have lost track of time cause I didn't know
it was so late. I rushed to the news set, got everything ready, put on my
headphones and looked around to see no one else was there and it was still an
hour before the news was to be broadcast.

Thinking the old man was the one who got the time wrong, I went back to my
other work, thinking I could get a few things done but, minutes later, the
same old man came in to chew me out. "Do you know how long it took us to get
your job into our union contract?! If management looked through the window and
saw no one out here, we'd be in big trouble. You get out there now!!"

So I went back on the set, now understanding that I was required to stand
there for 53 minutes, headset on, waiting for work to begin.

------
helpme420
These types of jobs are extremely common in Luxembourg (a small country in
EU). The workers stay because they are highly paid.

------
yosito
Pointless jobs like being paid to write an article about pointless jobs?

Edit: For those to whom the humor didn't come across, I'm just teasing. This
isn't an attack on the author.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Wouldn’t a constructive comment be more useful than attacking an educated
academic making an observation?

~~~
drb91
You’ve employed some sort of inverse ad hominem here. Credentials don’t mean
we should take someone seriously. Their words should stand for themselves.

~~~
toomuchtodo
> Credentials don’t mean we should take someone seriously.

This is a level of cognitive dissonance I’m not prepared to commit to arguing
against. I’m not capable of issuing the bar to every lawyer I require the
services of, nor the board to every presumed doctor, nor a thesis defense to
every academic.

Credentials aren’t perfect, but they are superior to the time required for
everyone to judge everything on their own. For example, almost all scientists
agree that climate change is human caused. Do I spend my time digging through
climate data, verifying this? _No. I rely on the expertise of experts._

~~~
yosito
You've just touched on why it's so hard to get a job in tech. As a culture,
we've taken an attitude that credentials don't matter, and no matter what our
past achievements are, we've got to prove ourselves over and over again. Maybe
credentials should matter.

------
fullshark
Yet another guardian piece that seems like it was written by an edgy teenager.

~~~
kristianc
In this case the edgy teenager in question wrote the generally well-received
'Debt: The First 5000 Years.'

~~~
tome
There were certainly plenty of hits of edgy-teenageriness in that book.

~~~
microtherion
Not to forget this quote for the ages:

    
    
        Apple Computers is a famous example: it was founded 
        by (mostly Republi­can) computer engineers who broke 
        from IBM in Silicon Valley in the 1980s, forming little
        democratic circles of twenty to forty people with their
        laptops in each other's garages.

~~~
walshemj
Laptops in the 70's do tell

------
transfire
There are a whole lot of pointless jobs in government -- they only exist
because of excessive authoritarian regulations.

~~~
Xuper
Also most of charities. They sell feel good and employ bachelors of arts.

------
gadders
We need a B Ark:
[http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Golgafrinchan_Ark_Fleet_Sh...](http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Golgafrinchan_Ark_Fleet_Ship_B)

