In memory of the olden days when Hacker News focused on discussions for entrepreneurs, here's a question:
I have no doubt that hundreds of millions of BS jobs exist, but isn't that what management consultants are supposed to fix?
Whether or not management consultants actually do fix wasteful jobs is another issue. But my understanding of the sector was that it was aimed to fix these issues. Organisational refactoring, if you will.
Likewise, everyone complains about bad management, but good management is supposed to be able to fix the kind of issues Graeber describes. Steve Jobs' return to Apple in the late 90s is a famous example.
Years ago on this site someone who worked in senior management in a tech company told a story. It went something like this: there were two teams in the company, who were always complaining, not very productive, and seemed to waste enormous amounts of time and energy on pointless busywork or trying to coordinate tasks. Everyone on team A blamed team B, everyone on team B blamed team A, etc, etc. The manager realised this needed to be fixed, talked to the relevant people on both teams, figured out what the problem was, and ... fixed it. (I have no recollection of what the actual problem was -- let's suppose it was some kind of communication or process issue.) After that, things ran smoothly.
Is this story realistic? No doubt -- after all anyone who has worked in engineering is familiar with chronic technical problems that can be fixed with very small amounts of work -- if one has the requisite knowledge. And no doubt there are chronic human problems that are similarly solvable.
Anyway - after many rounds of such management fixes you would have an organisation that ran like a swiss watch. In such places, good managers, like good sysadmins, fade into the background and become invisible. Google in the 2000s may have been a good example. But eventually either the organisation grows, or the good managers leave, or -- most likely -- people decide they no longer need to worry about good management, the organisation begins to rot, and eventually they're forced to bring in bad management. Corporate entropy proceeds in the usual way, and you end up with waste, bad practices, poor communication, doomed projects, crappy output, politics, and -- BS jobs.
This is why I'm skeptical of political intellectuals like Graeber who note a problem but misidentify the solution. Some of the things he categorises as "BS jobs" are themselves intended to fix BS jobs.
But I do not have much experience working in large organisations, so perhaps someone else can chime in.
I have no doubt that hundreds of millions of BS jobs exist, but isn't that what management consultants are supposed to fix?
Whether or not management consultants actually do fix wasteful jobs is another issue. But my understanding of the sector was that it was aimed to fix these issues. Organisational refactoring, if you will.
Likewise, everyone complains about bad management, but good management is supposed to be able to fix the kind of issues Graeber describes. Steve Jobs' return to Apple in the late 90s is a famous example.
Years ago on this site someone who worked in senior management in a tech company told a story. It went something like this: there were two teams in the company, who were always complaining, not very productive, and seemed to waste enormous amounts of time and energy on pointless busywork or trying to coordinate tasks. Everyone on team A blamed team B, everyone on team B blamed team A, etc, etc. The manager realised this needed to be fixed, talked to the relevant people on both teams, figured out what the problem was, and ... fixed it. (I have no recollection of what the actual problem was -- let's suppose it was some kind of communication or process issue.) After that, things ran smoothly.
Is this story realistic? No doubt -- after all anyone who has worked in engineering is familiar with chronic technical problems that can be fixed with very small amounts of work -- if one has the requisite knowledge. And no doubt there are chronic human problems that are similarly solvable.
Anyway - after many rounds of such management fixes you would have an organisation that ran like a swiss watch. In such places, good managers, like good sysadmins, fade into the background and become invisible. Google in the 2000s may have been a good example. But eventually either the organisation grows, or the good managers leave, or -- most likely -- people decide they no longer need to worry about good management, the organisation begins to rot, and eventually they're forced to bring in bad management. Corporate entropy proceeds in the usual way, and you end up with waste, bad practices, poor communication, doomed projects, crappy output, politics, and -- BS jobs.
This is why I'm skeptical of political intellectuals like Graeber who note a problem but misidentify the solution. Some of the things he categorises as "BS jobs" are themselves intended to fix BS jobs.
But I do not have much experience working in large organisations, so perhaps someone else can chime in.