I don’t understand why people believe rapacious corporations which only care about making money at the expense of everything else would also blow money on a shitload of meaningless layers of jobs?
Genuinely if Bullshit Jobs is true then every corporation is managing a piece of a welfare state that would make the New Deal look like a nickel kicked to a panhandler.
The thing is, it is true in a weak form, and very false in strong form. There is inevitably going to be inefficiency due to departmental divisions and budget issues, and there is inevitably going to be work that is categorized as mediocre.
Why is there this stupid job? Because no one wants to pay to do it better. Why is this unbearable bullshit allowed to endure? Because it hasn't caused anyone important financial problems yet and it makes the machine go.
there are lots of jobs that have little to do with making the machine go, as they basically track and record what the machine is doing for future reference. this is deemed socially necessary, and may perhaps be, but it is divorced from the functional operation of the firm.
funny, I was thinking it's a realistic rather than idealized depiction. the sheer number of people whose job, or large part of the job, involves keeping track of activities rather than performing them is staggering. I have the receipts!
If Procurement doesn't exist you have your widget makers and widget sellers doing procurement and they suck at it! Even if they didn't, it's a bad use of their time.
As with procurement, someone has to train, remain compliant to legal, insurance and contractual obligations, and pay employees everything they are owed.
It is a bad use of widget sellers and widget makers time to do it. In small businesses this is done as sweat equity by the owner operator.
Says someone who has never gone through a serious audit. Many of these things are critical corporate memory. And often the problems of today are rooted in these records.
pretty simply. paying taxes is socially necessary but wholly irrelevant to firm functions. firms do that work *for* the government (as they should), but it's not what they're for.
yes, and again, safety is vital—but it's not a core function of a firm. in practice, firms end up paying lawyers and consultants to carry out purely formal activities to demonstrate compliance. it would in fact be more efficient to pay gov't agencies to do that!
(I once tried to address leakage for a small furniture manufacturer. spent a month building an inventory database and tracking system, only to discover that it was cheaper to let the leakage go than to try and control it. got paid though.)
