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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   25956 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 25, 2024

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because, outside of a very limited subset of jobs, like, nuclear power plant technician or something, the accomplishment of the task is irrelevant because the task is essentially a fiction.

Except that’s very definitely not true; most jobs have actual accomplishments that need to be done. Sure, diversity coordinators are figures no one would miss if they all called in for months at a time, but almost all of the common jobs need to actually do something. Even the HR lady could perhaps be routed around but there are actual things she does; if she quit on short notice management would have to do it until they found a new one.

It seems like this idea is limited to very high status jobs- and truthfully I don’t know if replacing CEO’s with a block of wood in a suit would make any difference, I suspect it depends on the company- and we only notice it when it applies to things like ‘surgeon’ and ‘airline pilot’, where, not knowing how to do there jobs even in very broad strokes, I can tell you that a block of wood in a uniform powered by chat gpt could not do it. Honestly I’m not actually sure if diversity advocates believe these jobs are less skill-heavy than commonly assumed or if they’re just high on their own supply about the massive untapped potential of black women.

I think the government/academic jobs vs private sector jobs is doing most of the divide there. As Ghostbusters said, "You don't know what it's like out there! I've worked in the private sector. They expect results."

I've worked government jobs (low level ones) and I've worked private sector, and in the government job I just had to do the minimum required and follow the rules and I could be sure not to be fired. Private sector there have been times I've worked my butt off and still went home scared that I'd be unemployed next month because the company went belly up.

The wider concept of bullshit jobs also includes jobs that need to be done quickly and well because your employer is competing with other employers, not so much because the job would demand efficiency and high competence even in a vacuum (such as a nuclear plant operator).

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