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There is a Danish book that adresses the issue, but they pick a different term, opting to call it pseudo work instead. The title of the book is: Pseudoarbejde. It's not that the jobs are bullshit, or just plain boring, it that they don't need to be done, at all. One of the authors originally didn't believe in the idea, arguing that the jobs where valuable, because someone actually wanted to pay others to do them. They have en example of a company that figured that if work fills the time allocated to it, then just allocate less time. They saved a ton of time reducing meeting to default 20 minutes. There where several other steps of cause, but they now have a four day work week. There's also an example from a Danish hospital, where a doctor is required to check if a patient has fallen within the last 14 days, because the hospital had issues where patients had fallen and no one notice. The kicker is that the doctor only does screening for breast cancer, there's no point in asking if an woman who is only in for a screen if she's fallen on the way to the hospital. A private company wanted a professional done yearly report, every year, requiring around three months of work in total. They wanted it, because everyone has one. It's 50 to 75 pages, which no one else had time to read, so they have another person to read it and cut it done to 10 pages. So no, it may not be bullshit jobs, they are highly paid jobs, performed by highly educated people. It's just that it's not contributing to the end product of an organisation. |