I do one of those “IT jobs that you do nothing until you do everything” it’s kinda wild and I have to remember not to completely fuck off and at least pretend to do something work related.
I say as I’m responding to this on company time.
Comment on If bullshit jobs are *really* bullshit, how do businesses justify the expense?
Nollij@sopuli.xyz 1 year ago
Can you clarify what, specifically, you mean by bullshit jobs?
For instance, I’ve seen some recent discussions about (mostly IT) jobs where you can do nothing almost all the time. These exist because every once in a while, they are REALLY important. There’s also a lot of mystery about what’s involved, usually from automation changing the workload.
ratman150@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
ALostInquirer@lemm.ee 1 year ago
So, what comes to mind when I write bullshit jobs are jobs simply for the sake of jobs, like to say that a business is in fact hiring for some unclear reason, or because of some cultural inertia that insists people must be working so they just make up jobs.
A more realistic form would be the weird busywork kind of jobs that seemingly could be automated but just…Aren’t…For some reason, but these may be more like what you describe where it’s not exactly bullshit yet it can feel very close to it at times.
meco03211@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Sometimes those jobs that can be automated are already. At a previous job a coworker had been asked to prep a weekly report. When he took it on, this would take him half a day. I wanted to work on some excel macro skills so I worked with him to figure out what was needed. Wrote an ugly ass macro that worked for what was needed. I told him in no uncertain terms he should not tell anyone about the time savings. He should use it as he sees fit.
Same job different person. HR business partner called me into her office. Had an excel file open. Ultimately what they were asking was for a simple formatting issue. I’m talking like merge and center or using the format painter. A couple times. It took her longer to explain what she needed than it took to “fix” it. She exclaimed that it probably would have taken her hours to figure that out… there were also salaries on the spreadsheet…
Nollij@sopuli.xyz 1 year ago
Jobs that exist exclusively for the sake of jobs really only exist in places of government (or caused by government). Otherwise, as you mentioned, the profit motive would kick in.
But what you’re mainly describing here is something different - it’s jobs that exist because someone (possibly many people) are bad at their job. Those unclear job openings? Often, it’s because Bob is leaving, and we need someone to replace him. But no one really knows what Bob does, or how to find another Bob, or even what would happen if they didn’t have a Bob. Or a PHB gets lofty ideas about what Bob’s replacement should do better, with no connection to reality. Or HR interferes with what the engineers say they actually need, and how to screen for that.
The people that can literally be replaced by an Excel macro? Their work is valuable, and often something the business needs. It was probably done on paper a long time ago. At some point it got moved onto a computer, and a process was developed. This person has probably been doing it reliably for 20 years. No one wants to mess with it. Or a really big one, the corporate bureaucracy has stopped everyone that’s tried to make it better.
I can attest that I’ve repeatedly been put on bullshit busywork projects because of managers that were completely detached from reality. Sure, they may sound cool, but it’s immediately obvious to anyone else that it will never actually be used. Or they themselves want to check a box on their own review with higher managers to say they accomplished something, even if they really didn’t.
Nibodhika@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Also non-technical people need to understand that automation makes life easier, but you still need someone who knows how to do it manually to fix the automation in case it breaks or needs updating. That person will do mostly nothing most of the time, but if you didn’t had him full time he would be extremely expensive to hire on demand on a rush, since he could ask whatever price he wanted and you would have to pay it.
ParkingPsychology@kbin.social 1 year ago
It's not just that the person would be expensive. Systems like that require system specific knowledge. So it's possible that it would take an outsider 3 months of study to get to the point where they can fix an issue properly in 5 minutes.
You can't make a baby in 1 month with 9 mothers. Some tasks just have an upfront cost and SOME IT automation jobs are like that.
And yes, you can try and do bodge job after bodge job "just to keep it going". And that works for some time. But eventually the small mistakes end up causing large outages. And then you need someone that can piece together how the small issues cause big outages.
meco03211@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Superiors not understanding what the job entails helps. Superior says do task A. Old guy not too computer savvy takes a long time to do task A. Of guy retires and a new young girl gets the role. Superior says do task A. New young girl does it in a few minutes and has extra time. I’ve run into that a lot.
Valmond@lemmy.mindoki.com 1 year ago
Or the exact opposite, not trying to contradict you here, but I have seen lots of jobs that had to be just stopped (the job itself, not the person doing it) just because the knowledge went away with parting people.
meco03211@lemmy.world 1 year ago
That could go either way. Had a job where a guy retired and they suddenly found out no one knew what he did but it needed to be done. There were legit conversations about offering the retired guy contract work just to teach someone what he did. In that case the manager had the bullshit job that could have been eliminated.