[bartedinburgh]

I think it's connected with the rise of bullshit jobs.

If your job is well defined, e.g. make an app or a website design, you can do it anywhere in the world. The app/design is your deliverable that anyone can see and judge.

If your job is a poorly defined "management" or "product ownership", with no real deliverable, how can your work be judged? Your job turns into convincing other people that your job is useful. Work long hours, seem busy, attend meetings, leave the office late. An epitome of the corporate environment.

[pixl97]

If your job is well defined it can be contracted out to a non-employee, which means another member of the gig economy, rather than a full time job with benefits. This is where the future is going. Anything that has a very strict definition of the work that can be done will be subject to automation or outsourcing. All the 'bullshit' that is left is what defines the full time job. Welcome to the future.

[mac01021]

The sooner the better.

We'll finally be able to stop tying health insurance to employment in the ridiculous way that we currently do.

Skilled professionals will more often be able to make their own hours and find more variety/novelty in their work by taking jobs for a variety of customers.

And there will be so many freelancers that a solid industry for helping them connect with consumers of their services so that the hardest part of freelancing (finding work) starts to become a non-issue.

Transitions are messy, of course.

[jpttsn]

I think it's kind of a leap to assume the value is low just because it's hard to measure.

This is in general a common, elusive mistake: "We can't measure it, so it must be zero." Better to be ridiculous and say it's worth between $100 and $10,000.

[loup-vaillant]

It's subtler than that. Because it is hard to measure, one has to make explicit effort to demonstrate value. This wastes time and energy that could have been used to increase the very value that needs to be demonstrated.

Value is lower because of the consequences of being hard to measure.

Then there are actual bullshit jobs, whose value is difficult to measure because they have no value to begin with.

[duckmysick]

> This wastes time and energy that could have been used to increase the very value that needs to be demonstrated.

How do we know the value has been increased at all?

[loup-vaillant]

We don't.

[dkarl]

Or at the very least, if there are people producing measurable value, figure out how much less those people would produce if they had to do the other jobs themselves.

[kbart]

My job is well defined and "delivery" is physical devices, but it's problematic to work remotely as I work with an actual hardware and it's not feasible to have my own, dedicated, expensive equipment at home. "Well defined" in your context mostly means web/app development, which already have high level of remote working positions, and you left a wide gap between such jobs and "bullshit" jobs.

[hawleyal]

Can confirm

[ataturk]

Somewhat true, but the kind of work my team does is complex coding around business requirements and it ends up taking two or three of us putting our collective heads together to work out solutions to problems. Looking at previous coding jobs I had, none were quite as complex, so YMMV.

[EliRivers]

My other half works in Singapore inspecting and certifying and maintaining ship hulls, and she pretty much has to go to the ship to do it. It seems kind of harsh to call that a bullshit job because she can't do it in the living room.

I can think of an awful lot more jobs that are pretty well defined but nonetheless can't be done in someone's living room.

[dionidium]

"All bullshit jobs require you to be on site" is a different statement from, "all jobs that require you to be on site are bullshit."

The person you're responding to didn't say what you think they said.

[EliRivers]

"If your job is well defined, e.g. make an app or a website design, you can do it anywhere in the world."

That's the OP's exact words. Inspecting a ship hull is clearly defined, yet I cannot do it in my living room. Likewise mopping the floors at MacDonald's. Very clearly defined, yet cannot be done anywhere in the world; I have to go to the actual floor that needs mopping.

[bartedinburgh]

You are right. In my original post I implicitly meant office jobs (software in particular). I kept that assumption implicit because I understood that the article was concerned with jobs that had the potential to be done remotely and thus save you the commute time. Mopping floors does not have the remote potential in the first place, while some (most?) office jobs do.

[EliRivers]

I thank you for your clear and helpful amplifying remarks, delivered without snark or otherwise unhelpful edge. I must confess that over time here on HN, I have become aware that many posters seem to consider only a very small section of the economy (and indeed, a very small part of technology) when making general statements, and I do find myself erring on the side of assuming people have not considered the ninety-something percent of jobs that do not involve making web pages and web apps. Mea culpa.