Something the author sorta neglects to mention is that this makes you feel like shit, if you have any sort of conscience at all. Corporations largely don't care about individuals, and so maybe you shouldn't care about loyalty to your employer, but if you pride yourself on a skill or being able to do your job competently then doing mass time theft comes up with a nasty side effect; the time you spend planning trips or doing hobbies, or doing anything that you shouldn't be, isn't time that can be fully enjoyed. Additionally, you're taking a big risk, and you're opening yourself up to all kinds of scrutiny and potentially even losing your job if you're caught.
not at all. the author, said he was getting his obligations done and making his boss's life easier. that's a win for both the employee, the boss and the company.
why do you think it's morally acceptable for an employee to negotiate as toughly as possible for his/her salary but not for their time? It's all a negotiation process. the key thing is, he's meeting his agreed upon obligations. whether or not you do it efficiently (like him) or inefficiently wasting all your time is up to you.
If you are salaried and can complete your tasks (job description) in under the alloted time, is the onus on you or your manager to find more tasks?
Why is ok for your employer to make you complete additional tasks, draining you of your excess energy, but not increasing your salary at all?
When there exists this productivity/energy gap, the default US view seems to be you should give it up to the employer, but the article author is instead keeping it for himself.
Came here to say exactly this. Every interaction becomes a lie. I can bullshit with the best of them but doing it every day is not a path to satisfaction for me personally. Trying to do a side hustle at the same time only makes it worse.
i think the types of environments that foster the culture of bullshit jobs are bereft of conscience (ymmv as far as how you react to that in your own job).
additionally, many people within those environments feel that scrutiny or lack of job security even when they play by the rules.
something i've been thinking about a lot lately is that i don't feel very bad being cynical about these kinds of systems when they're helmed by people who are cynical about me. if my job is at risk due to mismanagement, restructuring, "the market" or anything else that would cause my employer to see me as a line item and not a human being with needs, i have every right to view my employment as an asset to manipulate as i see fit as well. turnabout is fair play. conversely, i've also been lucky to have had some good bosses and i don't act as ruthlessly in those situations.
I don't disagree with your idea at all, just with the approach. I think if you exist within an environment where you can still thrive leeching off of an ineffective organization, and you're okay with this because you understand that they view you as an expendable asset, then the right thing to do isn't to just keep doing that; the right thing to do is find a better spot to work.
All of this is easier said than done, and there's lots of reasons to stay put and half-ass a good thing while you can. I can't fault anyone for making that choice, and I don't even really view it as particularly malicious. Just not something I can do and simultaneously go home feeling good about my place in the world.
I get all my fulfillment from outside of work, I am ok with having a 'bullshit' job which facilitates the rest of my very nice and enriching life.
I think also that 'bullshit jobs' are a side effect of large (not even ineffective) organisations. At a certain size, you end up with roles and abstractions that take you far away from what your employer actually produces/generates revenue from, and if you are in such a cost center it can be hard to see how your individual work is meaningful to the bottom line in any way.
I get that working in the corporate world is often alienating, and also that one might have to accept a bullshit job in order to put food on the table, so on some level I say do what you gotta do.
But beyond that, man this is such a depressing way to live. I've worked a lot of jobs I don't like and put in varying degrees of effort based on how I feel about the people and the situation. But generally one value I live by is that if I'm paid to do something I'm going to try to do a good job at it. That doesn't mean burning myself out or going above and beyond for a boss or company that doesn't deserve it. But for my own integrity and self-worth I have to at least put in a baseline professional effort. If I can't stomach even doing that then it's a clear sign I need to be planning my exit, anything less is disrespectful to my basic self.
Congratulations you had a bullshit job, insufficient oversight and not enough personal and professional pride to do the work you were paid to do (a job is a promise, they promise to pay you and you promise to work. The fact that I have to say this kills me a little bit inside)
You broke your promise and lied about it every day for a year. You proved that your career (that you presumably worked hard to build) was a farce. This says nothing about the nature of work and everything about the quality of person reporting the “problem”.
People like this make me never want to employ anyone ever again. Congrats you destroyed what little faith in humanity I had left. I’m glad you finally quit and I hope you never apply for or are offered a job again. (Clearly not mature enough to manage your own work without an extreme amount of oversight).
Might I suggest something real and tangible? Serve beer or keep chickens. At least when you violate your promise people will know immediately. (Here’s your beer. The glass is empty. No I filled it I promise. It is clearly empty. That’ll be £6. Again, no beer)
Oh maybe this was satire! “Here’s how a bullshit person operating in bad faith would conduct themselves”
I don’t think it was satire.
> I’m glad you finally quit and I hope you never apply for or are offered a job again.
Never is a long time. Do you not think it's possible that this person could end up in a different environment and be very successful as an employee and be a great asset to her employer? Is there a reason you personally wouldn't want this to happen at any point in the future?
> waaaahhhhh you broke your promise!! to your employer!!
my current employer broke no fewer than two promises they had made to me within a few months of my starting there. they did this simply because they could: it was cheaper for them and they knew there was little I could do in response. so you'll forgive me if I don't give half a fuck about these people, and do as little work as i can get away with
When people treat you badly, you confront them. If they won't change behaviour and you don't have any recourse, you avoid them. You *don't* compromise your own morals, and you *absolutely* don't advocate cheating in general.
This is really a poor mentality and is one of the reason employers particularly in Europe don't want to hire people anymore, many startups are doing everything they can to avoid hiring, exactly because of that kind of attitude, not even being grateful for a minute, idk, shitting on the person that feeds you seems just disrespectful and also, you should be acting like a professional, even when others are not.
I have multiple friends cheating their employers (who are actually not corporations) and working like 1h a day and delegating everything to AI instead and just plain lying about it, if you are paid per hour and not per task, then your duty is to ensure you'll make the company grow with the time they pay you to do, not scam them, I understand why people do it, but let's say what it really is: Scamming people.
There is a class of people who resent their job based purely on political motives and I can't stand them. If you don't think you're doing enough, try and pick up new work. Don't be afraid to add value to society.
There is an irony that people who tend to resent work are often the same people who proselytize about unions are despite the fact if they were offered a real union job they'd turn their nose up at it. People like this author ruin high-trust societies and hopefully she's only able to work low-trust positions now that she's published this.
If you have the self-awareness to realise that your job is BS and is deleterious to your well being the path of least resistance is to simply quit and find another job hopefully that is more relevant to what you’re skilled at.
All this chicanery to escape work would only eat at my conscience. I don’t believe for one moment that I should be emotionally attached to my employer but at the same time I am a professional and am paid to do a job. I should hold up my end of the bargain. Being deceitful 24X7, 365 days a year will eventually wear me out because there’s always the chance I will be found out. There’s also the reputational risk of being found BS’ing which is non-trivial and could ruin chances of future employment.
The thing is that it’s not polar. You can actually take a wider view and learn to optimize for selfish reasons, and once you’ve figured out the program you can go back to what you’re most comfortable with having a new perspective on how to do your job more efficiently.
And if you want to divide up the world along a couple of axes into job usefulness and how much the worker cares, then the author of the article was in the “useless job and cared”, while you are in the quadrant of caring and have a useful job best I can tell — which is great. Some people have useless jobs and don’t care much about their job but are happy to get paid. If you for example are a teacher of small children who depend upon you and you basically don’t care then that’s problematic while having a BS job that you care about a lot about is probably mostly an organizational / bad management situation.
Something the author sorta neglects to mention is that this makes you feel like shit, if you have any sort of conscience at all. Corporations largely don't care about individuals, and so maybe you shouldn't care about loyalty to your employer, but if you pride yourself on a skill or being able to do your job competently then doing mass time theft comes up with a nasty side effect; the time you spend planning trips or doing hobbies, or doing anything that you shouldn't be, isn't time that can be fully enjoyed. Additionally, you're taking a big risk, and you're opening yourself up to all kinds of scrutiny and potentially even losing your job if you're caught.
not at all. the author, said he was getting his obligations done and making his boss's life easier. that's a win for both the employee, the boss and the company.
why do you think it's morally acceptable for an employee to negotiate as toughly as possible for his/her salary but not for their time? It's all a negotiation process. the key thing is, he's meeting his agreed upon obligations. whether or not you do it efficiently (like him) or inefficiently wasting all your time is up to you.
I highly doubt OP was paid on "tasks" and not per hour, Logging hours you weren't actually working could be considered time theft or fraud
If you are salaried and can complete your tasks (job description) in under the alloted time, is the onus on you or your manager to find more tasks?
Why is ok for your employer to make you complete additional tasks, draining you of your excess energy, but not increasing your salary at all?
When there exists this productivity/energy gap, the default US view seems to be you should give it up to the employer, but the article author is instead keeping it for himself.
Came here to say exactly this. Every interaction becomes a lie. I can bullshit with the best of them but doing it every day is not a path to satisfaction for me personally. Trying to do a side hustle at the same time only makes it worse.
maybe.
i think the types of environments that foster the culture of bullshit jobs are bereft of conscience (ymmv as far as how you react to that in your own job).
additionally, many people within those environments feel that scrutiny or lack of job security even when they play by the rules.
something i've been thinking about a lot lately is that i don't feel very bad being cynical about these kinds of systems when they're helmed by people who are cynical about me. if my job is at risk due to mismanagement, restructuring, "the market" or anything else that would cause my employer to see me as a line item and not a human being with needs, i have every right to view my employment as an asset to manipulate as i see fit as well. turnabout is fair play. conversely, i've also been lucky to have had some good bosses and i don't act as ruthlessly in those situations.
I don't disagree with your idea at all, just with the approach. I think if you exist within an environment where you can still thrive leeching off of an ineffective organization, and you're okay with this because you understand that they view you as an expendable asset, then the right thing to do isn't to just keep doing that; the right thing to do is find a better spot to work.
All of this is easier said than done, and there's lots of reasons to stay put and half-ass a good thing while you can. I can't fault anyone for making that choice, and I don't even really view it as particularly malicious. Just not something I can do and simultaneously go home feeling good about my place in the world.
I get all my fulfillment from outside of work, I am ok with having a 'bullshit' job which facilitates the rest of my very nice and enriching life.
I think also that 'bullshit jobs' are a side effect of large (not even ineffective) organisations. At a certain size, you end up with roles and abstractions that take you far away from what your employer actually produces/generates revenue from, and if you are in such a cost center it can be hard to see how your individual work is meaningful to the bottom line in any way.
I get that working in the corporate world is often alienating, and also that one might have to accept a bullshit job in order to put food on the table, so on some level I say do what you gotta do.
But beyond that, man this is such a depressing way to live. I've worked a lot of jobs I don't like and put in varying degrees of effort based on how I feel about the people and the situation. But generally one value I live by is that if I'm paid to do something I'm going to try to do a good job at it. That doesn't mean burning myself out or going above and beyond for a boss or company that doesn't deserve it. But for my own integrity and self-worth I have to at least put in a baseline professional effort. If I can't stomach even doing that then it's a clear sign I need to be planning my exit, anything less is disrespectful to my basic self.
I've worked with these people. I noticed.
Yup, whenever someone asks "how many people work on your team?", I usually answer: "about one third..."
This seems like a very stupid thing to put on the open Internet attached to your name
Isn't this illegal actually? Unsure in the US but I would bet it is in many countries. It feels deceptive/scammy.
There's a lot of this in the industry world-wide. The bigger the company, the more likely this is to occur.
I think this kind of phenomenon is why I feel that some people rightly should be worried about AI automating their job away.
Congratulations you had a bullshit job, insufficient oversight and not enough personal and professional pride to do the work you were paid to do (a job is a promise, they promise to pay you and you promise to work. The fact that I have to say this kills me a little bit inside)
You broke your promise and lied about it every day for a year. You proved that your career (that you presumably worked hard to build) was a farce. This says nothing about the nature of work and everything about the quality of person reporting the “problem”.
People like this make me never want to employ anyone ever again. Congrats you destroyed what little faith in humanity I had left. I’m glad you finally quit and I hope you never apply for or are offered a job again. (Clearly not mature enough to manage your own work without an extreme amount of oversight).
Might I suggest something real and tangible? Serve beer or keep chickens. At least when you violate your promise people will know immediately. (Here’s your beer. The glass is empty. No I filled it I promise. It is clearly empty. That’ll be £6. Again, no beer)
Oh maybe this was satire! “Here’s how a bullshit person operating in bad faith would conduct themselves” I don’t think it was satire.
> I’m glad you finally quit and I hope you never apply for or are offered a job again.
Never is a long time. Do you not think it's possible that this person could end up in a different environment and be very successful as an employee and be a great asset to her employer? Is there a reason you personally wouldn't want this to happen at any point in the future?
> waaaahhhhh you broke your promise!! to your employer!!
my current employer broke no fewer than two promises they had made to me within a few months of my starting there. they did this simply because they could: it was cheaper for them and they knew there was little I could do in response. so you'll forgive me if I don't give half a fuck about these people, and do as little work as i can get away with
When people treat you badly, you confront them. If they won't change behaviour and you don't have any recourse, you avoid them. You *don't* compromise your own morals, and you *absolutely* don't advocate cheating in general.
This is really a poor mentality and is one of the reason employers particularly in Europe don't want to hire people anymore, many startups are doing everything they can to avoid hiring, exactly because of that kind of attitude, not even being grateful for a minute, idk, shitting on the person that feeds you seems just disrespectful and also, you should be acting like a professional, even when others are not.
I have multiple friends cheating their employers (who are actually not corporations) and working like 1h a day and delegating everything to AI instead and just plain lying about it, if you are paid per hour and not per task, then your duty is to ensure you'll make the company grow with the time they pay you to do, not scam them, I understand why people do it, but let's say what it really is: Scamming people.
[dead]
There is a class of people who resent their job based purely on political motives and I can't stand them. If you don't think you're doing enough, try and pick up new work. Don't be afraid to add value to society.
There is an irony that people who tend to resent work are often the same people who proselytize about unions are despite the fact if they were offered a real union job they'd turn their nose up at it. People like this author ruin high-trust societies and hopefully she's only able to work low-trust positions now that she's published this.
If you have the self-awareness to realise that your job is BS and is deleterious to your well being the path of least resistance is to simply quit and find another job hopefully that is more relevant to what you’re skilled at.
All this chicanery to escape work would only eat at my conscience. I don’t believe for one moment that I should be emotionally attached to my employer but at the same time I am a professional and am paid to do a job. I should hold up my end of the bargain. Being deceitful 24X7, 365 days a year will eventually wear me out because there’s always the chance I will be found out. There’s also the reputational risk of being found BS’ing which is non-trivial and could ruin chances of future employment.
The path of least resistance is simply to quit.
The thing is that it’s not polar. You can actually take a wider view and learn to optimize for selfish reasons, and once you’ve figured out the program you can go back to what you’re most comfortable with having a new perspective on how to do your job more efficiently.
Unethical and unprofessional. Full stop. And then bragging about it.
This is just straight theft, and is completely unethical and immoral.
Not everyone has a bullshit job. If I stopped working for even a couple of days, people would notice, and I would eventually get fired.
And if you want to divide up the world along a couple of axes into job usefulness and how much the worker cares, then the author of the article was in the “useless job and cared”, while you are in the quadrant of caring and have a useful job best I can tell — which is great. Some people have useless jobs and don’t care much about their job but are happy to get paid. If you for example are a teacher of small children who depend upon you and you basically don’t care then that’s problematic while having a BS job that you care about a lot about is probably mostly an organizational / bad management situation.
[dead]