[aselzer]

Fake jobs might be necessary but there is a danger of making them half fake jobs that get things done slowly and end up as a cost to society and the people supporting the workers.

An example of that I've observed are construction workers maintaining railway infrastructure. There are probably a few times as many people working there as needed. When walking by you'll see them standing around talking, or maybe one of them is sitting in an excavator and four are staring at him. Meanwhile people have to take the replacement buses for two months. Most of the work only gets done in the first and last week, largely using machines, while everyone relying on the train connection is at risk of delays or has to spend extra time on the journey.

[levosmetalo]

> An example of that I've observed are construction workers maintaining railway infrastructure. There are probably a few times as many people working there as needed. When walking by you'll see them standing around talking, or maybe one of them is sitting in an excavator and four are staring at him. Meanwhile people have to take the replacement buses for two months. Most of the work only gets done in the first and last week, largely using machines, while everyone relying on the train connection is at risk of delays or has to spend extra time on the journey.

An example of that I've observed programmer maintaining enterprise software. There are probably a few times as many people working there as needed. When walking by you'll see them standing around talking, or maybe one of them is sitting in front of the computer and four are staring at him. Meanwhile people have to do the "some important work" manually for two months. Most of the work only gets done in the first and last week, largely using third-party tools and libraries, while everyone relying on the "some important work" is at risk of delays or has to spend extra time on the job.

Ok, I fixed this paragraph for you. The way you see construction workers and their work is the way business people see IT workers and their work. Come, we are just staring in the monitor without actually doing anything.

Quote from child comment that TLDR it:

> To an outsider, a lot of work looks like non-work.

[pkaye]

Can you actually answer why his observations are wrong instead of saying the problem exists in other fields?

[jarek]

To an outsider, a lot of work looks like non-work.

[pkaye]

No, better reasons might be 1. work specialties, 2. safety considerations, 3. inter-dependencies that prevent full productivity. I just hate the "...yeah our industry sucks also..." knee-jerk answer.

[mattmanser]

This is so incredibly ignorant and judgemental I don't know where to start.

http://www.quora.com/Why-does-it-always-look-like-constructi...

[themartorana]

Yes and no. While there is legitimate "standing around" as your link makes clear, and safety should be paramount, most building projects from where I am - Philadelphia - take twice as long as the Empire State Building at 1/4 the size. We have labor unions that contribute to the problem, but you can't imagine how slowly work goes around here.

I'm aware that OSHA rules are different, and we have a higher standard of safety now than we did, but so too have materials and tools and building methods improved.

[saalweachter]

The Empire State Building was completed in one year and 45 days ... with 7 million man-hours of labor. Given 2000 man-hours in a work-year, that is 3100 people employed full time building the Empire State Building.

I would be surprised if the buildings you're thinking of in Philadelphia are employing even a tenth of that full time, continuously.

[aselzer]

Planning should be done before important infrastructure is made unavailable. If there is no progress being made for a long time, then there is something wrong.

Please also realize that my example does not apply to every country. It was meant to point out a danger of a form of fake jobs that seems to exist from my observation, not criticize all construction workers for being lazy or ineffiecient.

[rsynnott]

I think that this may be more that you don't understand what the railway maintenance workers are doing than anything else. I'll take a bit of cost over collapsing bridges and derailments, if it's all the same with you. When railways go wrong, they can go wrong _very_ badly.