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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31277 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 9, 2023

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Does anybody really expect for-profit businesses to throw money at workers for not working, or rather that they will put the profits into retained earnings?

While I don't agree with them wholeheartedly, isn't this the premise of the "bullshit jobs" folks say is already happening? Given the relative simplicity of it's product, does Facebook really need tens of thousands of software engineers? I guess Elon is willing to take that bet with Twitter.

I think long term we might see changes to improve efficiency, but it's not as if there aren't forces the opposite direction: managers that see status scaling with direct reports, not all technology is implemented immediately, and sometimes bureaucracy stands in the way. Sometimes unions drive this: NYC subways are still driven by hand despite computer controlled systems elsewhere.

Given the relative simplicity of it's product, does Facebook really need tens of thousands of software engineers?

Facebook isn't simple, and if you get caught in one of its circular bugs, there is no human support person who can help you out. I've had three clients in the past year get locked out of some Facebook for Business service or seemingly simple feature due to miscommunication between complex related services or a seemingly easily solvable security issue -- if there were any human beings capable of looking into them. There aren't. It's all completely impersonal and complicated and extremely frustrating when you're the one trying to get some kind of relief.

This is an interesting topic because, broadly, most people sympathize with workers fired from jobs because they’ve been made redundant, but also that automating the blue collar tasks which need to be done is not going so fast, so there’s jobs for these people to go into.

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