To believe most jobs are pointless?

I remember I heard somebody on Radio 4 a while ago whose job was to 'scan the horizon' looking for new viruses that might pose a threat and raise an early warning flag. Thankfully Boris Johnson saw what a pointless job this was and sacked the whole team as soon as he came into power at the end of 2019.

Never anything wrong with a new pair of eyes checking things, even if they've been checked by others. Things change - machinery deteriorates over time. A new pair of eyes may see something different based on their experience etc.

Take the aviation industry - constantly reporting and reviewing even the most minor of incidents and making changes.

As long as the checks are done by people with adequate knowledge and experience to actually "check" things, rather than shuffle paperwork, then bring it on. The more the merrier, especially when the risks of failure are catastrophic.

@Tooearlytothink

So what compliance is pointless then?

All the compliance which is just "box ticking" by people who have no actual experience in what they're supposed to be regulating/supervising.

I.e. council food hygiene checks are mostly a box ticking exercise of checking certificates of the staff, work instructions, etc., so as long as a shop/cafe "has the right paperwork" it gets five stars. What they should be doing is actually taking samples of the food, getting it lab tested, taking swabs of surfaces etc.

Same in my profession, accountancy. Our audit files are examined by the regulators, but the regulators aren't actually qualified auditors. They come in, check the files are cross-referenced, check the checklists have been filled in and signed off, etc. But they don't actually check any of the work - they don't randomly check that, say, an invoice we claim to have examined in fact exists at all - so easy for audit clerks to tick a list of invoices to say they've been examined, but not actually checked any at all! Worst I saw was where an audit firm had given a clean bill of health (unqualified audit report) for a company which literally called in administrators two weeks after the audit report was signed. When we looked at the case, it was blatantly obvious the company had run out of money months beforehand and was literally living hand to mouth, whilst all the bills were stacking up. I saw the audit file, and it was perfectly filled out, neat and tidy, all cross referenced, but the "going concern" section was absolute rubbish - yes it looked as if it had been completed properly, but read the words and it was clearly fabricated by an audit clerk who couldn't be arsed to do the work, pretended he'd checked things that he hadn't, etc.

How about all the criticism of Ofsted reports, or care home reports, etc - lots of "compliance" inspections that are clearly not worth the paper they're written on.

Hope that explains why "some" compliance work is pointless - because it IS pointless if it doesn't delve deep enough to actually check things rather than just lazily box ticking paperwork!

To be fair, life is pretty pointless!

I can't tell whether or not you're being serious, but there are certain things that can't be checked too much.

On the off chance that you are, you'd be pleased to know that there are also a load of people doing the pointless job of preparing for accidents involving those same nuclear power stations that almost certainly will never happen.

You're right. I will stop my useless job (no payrise) and stop paying taxes. Let's all do it.

I tell you a pointless job -
Nuclear power station inspectors. 100% of the time just checking stuff that has already been checked by 10 different people and having meetings about it.
Is this the sort of job you're thinking about OP?

* To be honest your post shows a massive lack of knowledge and insight into how the world works in the 21st century. Our economy and infrastructure is dependent on lots of jobs that people do in the background to keep things going. All are important within a functioning society. No service/job exists within a vacuum.*

This 100%.

To be honest your post shows a massive lack of knowledge and insight into how the world works in the 21st century. Our economy and infrastructure is dependent on lots of jobs that people do in the background to keep things going. All are important within a functioning society. No service/job exists within a vacuum.

This is exactly what I think when I see posts like the OP.

It reminds me of my dad and his wife who think the only worthwhile jobs are the ones that either make things or are a traditional jobs roles they've heard of like teacher, doctor, plumber etc.
When I got my PhD instead of saying congratulations my dad's wife asked what was the point 🤷🏼‍♀️

I am a senior CP social worker and before that was a nurse working at what would now be a junior charge nurse level. Good, skilled admin (which is has been cut for years due to austerity) is essential. It is a different skill set and essential to provide services. In recent years, admin has been drastically cut and I am increasingly having to spend lots of hours that I could be spending with children and families, doing admin tasks at an hourly pay rate that is double the cost. I am also less efficient and it really is a false economy.

To be honest your post shows a massive lack of knowledge and insight into how the world works in the 21st century. Our economy and infrastructure is dependent on lots of jobs that people do in the background to keep things going. All are important within a functioning society. No service/job exists within a vacuum.

I rant about the bureaucracy within my job, but I work within statute and also as a social service we are funded by taxes. There needs to be a layer of accountability and people balancing the books! Considering the millions of pounds that has been cut from my local authorities budget every year for over a decade, credit to the pen pushers have found other revenue sources and stopped the council going bankrupt. Adult and children's social care is still be provided despite rocketing costs (and the latter is rated outstanding) and them also all those other things people take for granted like bin collections and community spaces. I would not want to be the person in charge of all this, and for the money they get, compared to the private sector, any head of a City Council/Children's/Adults services in the scheme of things are not really in it for the money.

I have to agree with this. Where I work there are plenty of on the ground and practical jobs that we do need in society, but also a hefty amount of managers who do very little other than create and attend meetings.

OP I often think the same. I have a creative office-based job that pays well and I enjoy for the most part, but recently I'll sit in meetings and think oh who actually cares, in the grand scheme of things it all feels a bit superfluous.

I would love to retrain and do something more rewarding / useful to society but it would mean taking a large pay cut. It's a tough one, but something I often think about doing.

If you think your job is pointless, just think - some poor bastard has to make a living putting indicators on BMWs.

You would notice pretty quickly if you didn't get your salary paid, or your hospital appointment booked, or someone to deal with your insurance claim for a cancelled holiday... Just because you can't imagine the value of office jobs or how they are part of the wider system, doesn't mean that they aren't actually important.

But the advertising is there because of the interest, its like anything, you can have 2 people very talented in 2 different areas, and the one in more demand will be more valuable.

It's not that only a tiny few people are so special and intelligent they are the only people who understand the woes of capitalism, it is that you cannot change a system within a short time or even in a few generations.

The industrial revolution shows us just how much upheaval there was over a long period of time from the change from agrarian living to "working for the man".

Truth is we always did "work for the man". Those fields always belonged to someone even when it was common land. Dues and tithes had to be paid to the community, church, and to the lord in the feudal system

Anything that suggests it was soooo much nicer way back when we were grubbing about in the mud trying to grow a turnip for tea is ignoring history and complete hippy bollocks.

I say this as an ex-farm worker who really did grub about in the mud growing a turnip for tea. I also know most people wouldn't touch that life with a treble length bargepole.

AI should not be used to scan applicants' CVs for buzzwords etc. To me people who add a lot of buzzwords are doing this for filler and probably don't last 5 weeks in the jobs.

If you have created a system where people need to do paid work to survive, then your best bet is to look at the size of your workforce and find a use for everyone, even if some people are doing "nice to have" jobs rather than essential ones. But what would be even better is if you could create a better system, which I think is partly David Graeber's point.

But another complicating factor is that the profit motive means it's better for companies to make more money from a shit service rather than less money from a good service. Maybe there's a lot of rubbish in the hedge that needs picking up, which could be a job, but no financial incentive for anyone to hire people to do it, because the person who owns the hedge would rather not dent their profits. (Amusingly you could enforce this through regulation and create two jobs here, a litter-picker and a litter-picking-regulator.)

Fair enough. In addition to my role (account manager in advertising) I'd suggest most recruitment roles are bullshit jobs - middlemen that aren't necessary for the process.

She agrees! - but the money is good - and the pension - and the health cover ...... ......

Football is such a bad example to choose to illustrate "bullshit jobs". Elite footballers have a very very rare talent and so can command a very high wage for that. It is also time limited, most elite level footballers are retired at 35/40.

The money in football is about spectacle. Plenty of incredibly skilled athletes in less commercialised sports barely make a living. Football has global marketing, aggressive branding, and an industry built around squeezing every bit of money possible from fans and advertisers. If pure skill dictated earnings, Olympic gold medalists in niche sports wouldn’t be working day jobs to survive. This also explains why female pro footballers are paid pennies compared to the men - the advertising beast isn't behind them.

It generates that revenue because of the skill. There wouldn't be any money in watching a bunch of town football club level players competing.

They pay professional footballers so much because football matches generate massive ad revenue - viewers are absolutely bombarded with ads and sponsorships. It has nothing to do with the players' skill or the entertainment value. Everything in our society is driven by corporate profits.

I hated my job, it absolutely felt pointless. I agree that a lot of jobs are.

I also agree that it's sad that pay and respect for a job isn't proportional to its value to society. Not sure how you'd achieve that though.