Jobs that either don’t contribute in any meaningful way or jobs where one would be better off if they were paid to be on call.
If your job main tool is PowerPoint then there’s a high probability that your job is a bullshit job.
Cries in teacher
Teachers’ jobs are anything but bullshit. However, the modern schooling system sucks, teachers shouldn’t be doing/have to do what they currently do.
anything related to planning, creation and targeting of ads
Influencers… Do I really need to say anything else?
They really should be making like $50k/year max.
It’s basically modelling. With the same spread of poorly paid to insanely paid for no good reason.
Influencers in the modern age are competing for advertiser attention.
well they just got out of the rat race too well
not exactly what you’re asking, but banks and insurance companies are the majority of what I call “the beaurocracy of money”. they don’t produce anything of value, and are basically just a sinkhole for labour.
I hate capitalism as much as the next lemming but banks and insurance companies, at their base level, definitely provides a service. Banks help you spread the cost of things over time at the expense of interest, and insurance companies do something similar with risk.
Its only when they do warped shit like lend money at zero interest or force consumers to pay for insurance (thereby negating the need to be competitive) that they start to leech off the system.
I would distinguish between providing a service & creating value. the service that banks and insurance provide is useful, but only in the context of a money-centric society. they don’t create anything that has a purpose deprived of context, it’s only the moving around of numbers.
But we do live in a currency-based society. That’s like saying food only has value in the context of a chemical-energy based society. It’s a pointless semantic argument here.
perhaps it is, but I’m not convinced. if food, eating, whatever were an unnecessary and wasteful system then the growing of food and processing, production, etc would likewise be a waste of resources, human labour included. a lot of our work does go towards food production, supply, processing, etc - if you could switch to an alternate system that dispensed with food but didn’t otherwise alter our lives, that would surely be massively preferable. it’s hard to imagine because eating is such a fundamental need, but that’s just a limitation of this comparison.
if we could dispense with money but otherwise have society look much the same (or better, which I think it undoubtedly would be), that would be an improvement, to me, just by virtue of freeing up the labour of all the people who work solely in the overhead of the system. to imagine how else we might function as a society, I think it’s useful to identify ways in which the present system is inefficient.
if we could dispense with money
…but we can’t, so what’s the point
Administration in general. There are so many jobs in (public and private) administration whose entire job is, to fill out forms or write reports, that nobody will ever read.
The same is true for countless middlemanager positions. It’s not a full-time job to manage 10 employees who are not directly working with you. No idea how this is called in other countries, but in Germany we call it Matrixorganisation, and it’s often as absurd as it sounds.
I’m in administration and part of my job is filling out forms and reports that no-one will ever need unless there’s a problem in which case they become very important indeed.
In today’s business environment we tend to forget that redundancy = resilience.
I’m in the digitalisation part of administration. And I’m certainly handling a ton of processes that are not redundant, but plain useless.
Do you believe in unfettered free markets? Those jobs are very often to implement compliance to restrictions in the markets.
No, they are not.
They are often enough purely internal documents or remnants of old days, where certain documents were actually important, maybe.
The company I work for now has very much this attitude for the last 50 years.
As a result they have 3 locations, no sops, and no accountability.
Over the last 6 months is been my job to put us back in compliance with local and federal reporting requirements and develop SOPs. The feedback from the bottom up is that it’s wonderful to have consistency, different bosses giving the same answers to questions, auditors being able to complete audits in expected and appropriate times, and in compliance with reporting regulations.
Can companies go overboard and employ people like me who do busy unnecessary work? Absolutely. But it is definitely appropriate to have a couple of administrators.
Rules and procedures are always a trade-off. However, I would argue that the vast majority of organizations have way too many of them and produces way too much busy work.
Just look at your own example - I’m 90% sure, that the different locations did have procedures and did document stuff, just not in a consistent way. So their documentation was scattered and their reports practically useless.
Depends on the industry. If literally everyone just always documented everything, my job would be much easier.
Huh? I can go almost anywhere in the world and wave my phone at a register and take whatever I want home. Without a bank Id have to carry a lot of everywhere.
No. No you wouldn’t. We don’t need banks to implement the concept of currency in a society and you’re myopic for not understanding that but instead pretending to be some sort of authority on the matter.
🙄 uh huh. I prefer a currency backed by something with some longevity and not petted by grifters who keep getting arrested for fraud over and over again, or hacked and cleaned out with little to no recourse.
Regardless, banks aren’t “worthless” at all.
I think of this in the context of healthcare constantly
I’m no economist, but banks are pretty useful from how I understand it. Lending out money people don’t use is like creating money out of thin air. Helps people buy houses and everything. I tried looking for the video I saw on this topic, it’s something like “how banks create money out of thin air”.
A lot of expensive business consulting (think PwC or Deloitte) exists just to tell organizations things the orgs already know.
They exist to take the blame. “PwC says we have to close down the plant, those damn bean counters!” - CEO who told PwC she wants to close down the plant
In fairness, some companies, especially the big ones, won’t accept a hard truth until a third party agency tells them directly. This is primarily because the grunts of the workforce often have the most knowledge of the systems but whose opinions are easy to dismiss.
People I know who work in consulting have said they charge an outrageous amount of money to speak to factory line workers and say what they’ve said to the factory managers because the managers are too up themselves to do it
That’s basically all Gordon Ramsay did on Kitchen Nightmares and Hotel Hell. The only time I can remember that it wasn’t because the owners or management weren’t listening to their workers, the problem was a 21 year old kid that BS’ed his way into a head chef position, who had no business being a head chef. The episode ended with the kid being fired, cause he couldn’t manage to maintain a clean kitchen.
This is because their execs are overpaid idiots who are on this list of people who should just stay home.
The workers might know, but the executives would rather pay millions so a big name can tell them.
Because they are connected to them. This is what happened with Toys R US. Bain Capital bought control and made the company hire consultants from Bain Capital.
Most CEOs.
If you can be the CEO of multiple companies at the same time, then you’re probably not doing much in that position.
How else are your kids friends going to fail upwards and support 4+ kids?
Tax prep software companies and tax prep services in general.
Yep.
Government already knows everything you owe.
They just cant tell you
Cause Tax prep lobbying said it would be unfair to their business.
So you gotta play the whole complicated game of figuring out your taxes, because H&R Cock wants your refund.
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Saved me $3000ish last year
There’s all kinds of esoteric rules the typical tax software doesn’t know how to handle
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No, that’s not how it works.
On a certain level, if you can afford to pay lawyers to delay the process you can “get away” with anything, but there’s only so much creative accounting that can be done before it’s clearly a crime.
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Lol it’s so funny how many bad takes there are in this thread. But saying that the government knows everything g you owe is one of the worst one.
No they fucking don’t. Sometimes they aren’t even sure that someone who got both his legs cut off needs disability, or that they can’t regrow their legs.
Or that a dead person can’t have a job.
Like, there are plenty of independent contractors and businesses that need to report their income, ecause how the fuck would they know that ?
I get that there are a lot of people with special types of jobs where their specific financial circumstances or the way they earn money is unusual. In that regard, I get why those people need to file their taxes.
But what about the remaining vast majority of people with standard jobs? The government absolutely does know how much I make and it makes zero sense for us to have to fill out a bunch of paperwork and not make a mistake on something that the government already knows the right answer to.
I’m going to catch some flak but I found myself in a position where H&R Block came in handy. It wasn’t for any services they rendered but because they have something akin to a protection plan where you pay a one time fee and they provide legal representation if any tax authority decides to come at you after filing.
The two times I used them were when I made an interstate move and the following year when I purchased a house. The place I moved to has a byzantine regional tax authority that collects local taxes on behalf of most - but not all - municipalities in the county (like I said - byzantine). This regional tax authority is notoriously disorganized and aggressive, opening investigations about years old tax debt that amounts to pennies only to discover that the debt was paid but their records were misplaced.
Both years I filed with H&R Block and signed up for their protection plan. Both years the regional tax authority opened investigations. Both years H&R Block paid for a lawyer to get on the phone and get the stick out of the tax authority’s ass.
This is a super niche case but until I have a year where I basically don’t do anything interesting (move, have a kid, change jobs, etc.) or the regional tax authority gets it’s shit together and chills out H&R Block is actually providing value to me.
The entirety of the health insurance industry
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I like how an annual doctor’s visit and a biannual dental cleaning are supposed to be 100% covered by insurance.
But every time I go, I get a bill later on with the explanation that “the provider is asking for too much money for the services so we are refusing to pay the full amount”. Fuck off. That’s not how that’s supposed to work.
health insurance provides a legitimate service to society. not a bullshit job. i get you have political motives to project but it’s not a bullshit job.
If by “job” you mean being a middle man sucking money and effectiveness from people and getting in the way of actual health care, then I agree. It’s a “job” in that people show up and get paid, but it’s 100% a bullshit job.
Exactly! Apparently being irritated by being directly affected by this bullshit this is a political agenda? 🤣
Flash traders.
They abuse the technologies used by the stockmarket to buy and sell within milliseconds, so they can make a profit. They add absolutely nothing of value to the system, yet leech both money and talented employees from the market.
God I wish they would tax trades. Not even much. Like 1,000 trades for a dollar or something. Just to stop that type of fuckery.
Not at all. They are the ones who make markets efficient. Although I would consider frontrunning retail using private order flow data is bullshit.
They provide liquidity and price stability.
price stability.
No, the opposite of that.
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My apartment complex uses a package delivery service that basically acts as a middle man to receive your packages and deliver it to you. They use contractors who pick up packages from their warehouse and deliver them door-to-door. As expected, it’s common for packages to get lost/stolen. Instead of getting your package on the date/time promised, you have to wait several more hours for it to actually arrive. If it gets to the warehouse late in the afternoon, you’ll get it the next day. If you have Amazon next-day delivery, you essentially negate it with this service. If you’re expecting perishable items, good luck getting it fresh. If your package is large or heavy, you’ll have to wait several days as they only deliver oversized packages on specific days. All these are mandatory with a fee ranging from $10 to $30 on top of rent.
Now, that, is a postage tax.
Anybody want to bet someone in the building administration is in bed with this company?
So the rumor is the owner is related to one of the big apartment companies, that’s why the service is being pushed hard to a lot of apartment complexes in my city.
M I D D L E
M A N A G E R S
This is the real reason why companies are trying so desperately to camcel WFH. Covid revealed the truth (that we knew all along) that these people add no actual value to a company. They’re only there to act as a buffer between the C-suite and the peasants.
Managers of people can be good.
Managers of managers are almost always useless.
how are you connecting cancelling of WFH to middle managers ?
Also in your ideal company you don’t have team leads department heads but peasants talk to CEOs directly ?
Found the middle manager
haha no right now I am peasant class.
Worker owned cooperatives, worker managed teams, company decisions made democratically.
All other kinds of companies are dictatorships.
and why should that be any better? just because it appears democratic does not mean it makes it automatically “better” <- name 1 cooperation which has shown success for every 1000 “dictatorships”
democracies are plagued with slow reaction time which would take away your entire market edge. Also democries require transparency. If everyone knows the costing structure/ suppliers… you are done.
“Why would having a say in making decisions about your employment be any better than just doing whatever the richest idiot says?”
Do you even hear yourself? They’ve got you loving the taste of boot polish.
go freelance. you don’t have to. since your consider yourself smarter than your boss try starting a business.
it’s a trade off between income fluctuation and stability.
since you didn’t address any of my points but chose to just respond with random statements, I take it you were convinced but too ingrained with your original statement to admit. It’s fine happens to many of us.
glad to have helped you thinking critically.
Why would we be done? Most of this stuff is public record or easy to determine if you have a head for business finance.
not really… even for publically traded companies the you cannot tell much about their suppliers and customers. Most of the customers of the Firm I work for have NDAs stating we cannot openly advertise.
Only in services/tech sector where product differentiation is large you are a bit isolated form these concerns.
Oh please my competitors are often using the same suppliers and they have the same type of beancounters we have. Especially in my industry where we have a bunch of overlap. Just recently I had a corporate partner put together a quote for something we normally buy but wanted them to buy it. They came back with a price within a few percent of what we normally pay.
There is a reason why the three letter agencies are so good at catching money laundering. They have data on what X type of business should be buying and selling at what markup.
I bet you can do it. Just start looking at your numbers.
so you agree that numbers aren’t currently in the public domain. You just think they can be and it wouldn’t hurt.
Also this isn’t the only problem I outlined. it’s one of them.
also people are often disinterested and unqualified to even understand a balance sheet. let alone deciding on company direction.
I just find it fascinating that many people are convinced that they can run a company while they aren’t even able to manage their own finances
They’re only there to act as a buffer between the C-suite and the peasants.
This is a very important role in some companies, otherwise the C suite meddling would stop any work from getting done.
I’ve had two excellent managers and both of them saw their primary purpose as being a bullshit filter to free up the rest of us to do actual work.
That is a good point actually.
I am just thinking of my job. The client wants something stupid, I have to pick and choose my battles. When it comes time for me to hand over to fabrication I get yelled at. Never mind the fact that what the fabrication manager sees is the aftermath of my work. They had say 13 bad ideas and I got it reduced to say 6.
Real estate agents
Yes! It shouldn’t be difficult to purchase a house, but when we were looking, none of the seller agents would even talk to us until we had a buyers agent 🙄
Years ago my dad was fed up with realtors and you couldn’t list a property for sale without a realtor license. So he figured it’s probably as easy as it seems, seeing how many airhead realtors he’d met. He was right. He read a book and then went and passed the exam to get licensed. Sold his own property himself and never used the license again.
Absolute madlad
Wow I didn’t know this. How fucking stupid. Why is there this for a house but I can sell anything else
The agent we have used for several houses has been indispensable. He got us into our current house before it was listed, and before that he knew all the issues with every house we looked at because he’s been in the area for so long. You may have had bad agents, but some of them are really good at their jobs and add quite a bit of value.
In property markets where prices are reasonable they can be alright, but up here in Toronto where detached houses go for 3 million plus, there’s just too much incentive for greedy parasites
Anyone who earns any portion of income by hanging shit on my doorknob.
Anything in the online sports betting space. Addicts, scumbags, degenerates, and the people who make money off them.
Anybody working in SEO / “search engine optimisation.” Complete bottomfeeding scumfuck grift. The only reason it’s not considered fraud is because the government hasn’t caught up to it yet.
I’m learning web design, and one of those topics I need to learn is SEO so the websites I make rank higher. While I don’t like the idea of “gaming the system” to rank higher, it kind of becomes a necessity when everyone does it. What for you makes it such a scummy business?
Because of AI, SEO it’s likely to disappear along with search engines. People will just ask AI instead of using Google or Bing.
I’ll take the bait a little. I will help small businesses out of SEO holes from time to time. My friends’ business was really stuck, and often you just need an outside eye to point out some obvious things: their home page was a splash screen with no text, they didn’t use the most-searched terms in their headings, they were using text-on-imagd with no alt text.
As, generally, it’s agreed we need businesses to have a society (somewhat unfortunately), and businesses need the internet to function nowadays (mixed blessing), I don’t think it’s necessarily bad to help the smaller guys succeed.
