To believe most jobs are pointless?

[FirmBrickLemur]

Half of modern jobs just push paper around, while nurses and teachers get underpaid. Shouldn’t we rethink how we value work?

I do think we need a job audit in this country. Incentivise and financially support shortage areas etc. We seem to have a glut of delivery drivers, hand car washes, nail bars and a chronic shortage of carers and healthcare staff. Better routes in would be great plus financial incentives for staff that stay in these roles.

I’m talking about roles where the main function is excessive bureaucracy, unnecessary middle management, or pointless meetings that don’t contribute much. Think of roles that exist mainly to justify themselves rather than produce real outcomes - some layers of corporate admin, consultancy, or compliance that add red tape instead of value..

Again, this is very vague. Can you give a specific example because this just sounds like you've read it somewhere but don't have any substance to support your claims.

It's interesting that you think compliance is pointless. Do you think things like health and safety, safeguarding, data protection etc are unimportant?

Indeed, supply & demand & other aspects of economics.

In the private sector it’s up to the company investors/senior managers/boards what they will pay for. What they think will be profitable etc.

Harder to define/measure success in charities & public sector.

Ha! Remove all regulation and compliance functions and see how long before the Daily Mail sadface articles start woth people moaning that "someone should have done something".

I agree OP, because I'm in a 'bullshit job' 😂. I actually left a healthcare career to do so because I was miserable and it was destroying my mental health. I was astounded at how many jobs exist in the corporate world that seemingly do fuck all yet get paid £££.

For a while I was a lot happier, in fact still am, but I do often think to myself, especially after another crappy meeting where nothing actually gets done, that this is so pointless. But I also suspect I'm one of those people that may never be happy with their career so...perhaps don't listen to me!

It’s all relative isn’t it, would anyone die without those people making those reports for my company, no but would our company continue to make the right products, sell them to the right people and make as much money as we currently do to continue to grow the business probably not. I would guess at least 50% of the people reading this post have one of our products. We can only make those by making enough money to keep designing new products.

It's all about "barriers to entry". You need specific skills to become a train driver, and it's a very long training period, with high numbers of applicants, quite a high rejection rate and quite a high drop out rate. Because of that, it's highly paid. You can't just recruit and train up a train driver in a few days in the same way that you can "train" a retail or care worker

Isn't it also highly paid as its heavily unionised? After all, normally when jobs have high application rates it suppresses the salary paid. Train Unions are one of the few remaining Unions that still have a lot of power as they cause immediate and severe disruption to the rest of the economy when they strike.

Just because the OP thinks a job is pointless and unnecessary doesn't mean it isn't meaningful and necessary for other people.....

This could decimate lots of high tax paying laptop jobs though!

We need tax payers. Taking someone from a 60k marketing job and sticking them in a minimum wage care job would mean less money for that actual necessary jobs.

It’s not that I think compliance is entirely pointless - some regulations are essential, like H&S or safeguarding. But there’s also a lot of bureaucracy that seems to exist just to justify itself rather than add real value. Ever worked somewhere where paperwork and red tape slow everything down without making anything safer or more efficient?

Bit of a name change here.

I worked in a department (about 60 of us) that was contracted to advise schools on what they could spend essentially grant money on. I was very much on the school’s side and would help them jump all the right hoops to ensure they got it/use the right buzz words.

I once pointed out if the government didn’t spend millions each year on our team, and the team at the DfE, they could just give the school’s the money directly and everyone would be happy.

Basically the government spending millions each year to ensure the schools were focusing on ‘academic success’ and not using the extra grant money to plug other short falls.

I think the Covid crisis showed that society relies on very specific groups of workers to keep functioning: healthcare workers, medical researchers, those who keep the food supply going and utilities on, teachers, the police...basically all the essential workers.

The rest of us might do something useful now and then but it is not essential work to our survival as a specie/society.

I don't think how we value work is the issue - everyone I know highly values healthcare professionals and teachers. I don't think the value of the work is a straight relation to the pay for the work though, and that's standard. Think of farmers - without them, we'd have nothing to eat or wear, yet they're hardly living the life of Riley.

Jobs that require funding from public money aren't going to be as well paid as other areas, because the money that pays them isn't a never ending pot. Sure you can redistribute some of that by doing away with roles you see as pointless (but those roles can't just be from random companies or industries because that money won't suddenly get donated to public funds). You also need these unnecessary roles to contribute to public funds via taxes.

Things like governance and compliance are absolutely necessary, "red tape" and "paperwork" are there for a reason 90% of the time. You just might not understand the "real value" of it.

I’m not saying all jobs are pointless - of course, builders, engineers, and researchers contribute real value. But let’s be honest, there are plenty of office jobs where people spend their time on unnecessary meetings, reports no one reads, and tasks that don’t actually improve anything. If those roles disappeared overnight, would the world notice?

I often think this too! I look at the various job adverts or ask someone what their job is and am none the wiser! The one I really love is "consultancy" - in what? of what? to whose benefit?

My adult DD has a high powered job in an international company - she tells me what she does, but it means nothing at all - it is all flim-flam. Meetings, unnecessary international flights, company away days ....... sometimes I feel really sad that this creative person is wasting their life on it all - but not my decision!

I am sure there is some pruning to be done - but then the unemployment figures would go up ........

Ever worked somewhere where paperwork and red tape slow everything down without making anything safer or more efficient?

Ever worked somewhere when these jobs are removed or scaled down?
I work at a university where we've just removed a number of jobs you would consider pointless.
It's an absolute disaster.

I've worked in a lot of places where people have complained about red tape and unnecessary bureaucracy around health and safety etc.

But I have also worked in countries where compliance activities are not prioritised, and I have seen the impact of that.

I know which model I prefer.

My adult DD has a high powered job in an international company - she tells me what she does, but it means nothing at all - it is all flim-flam. Meetings, unnecessary international flights, company away days ....... sometimes I feel really sad that this creative person is wasting their life on it all - but not my decision!

So, because you don't understand your daughter's job you've decided it's 'film-flam' and a waste of her life??

What an awful thing to say. Who's to say she's not using her creativity in her role? Or that she enjoys her job and is creative in other ways?

How sad that you're so dismissive about your dd's chosen career.

I work in pharma in an “office job” and no there’s not one person here that has a pointless job. We manufacture and provide biologic medicines that are for people with cancer and rare diseases, every single thing we do needs to be documented and regulated. Do you want your meds to be safe, of good quality and effective? I think you do…

I believe many, many jobs are pointless.

Over the last 25 years I have repeatedly asked myself 'would society collapse if I stopped doing my job?'

The answer has always been a resounding 'no'.

From what basis do you make this massive generalisation?

Are you a CEO of a major company employing 1000s of staff?

Or are you just an observer with a wild opinion?

But even those aren't "pointless" to the point you could just scrap all of them overnight, that's ridiculous.

My previous job was finance admin for a company that supplied pallet wrapping. So yeah, definitely not "key worker" material but without the financial and logistical ends being thoroughly covered, stock wasn't purchased, deliveries were not sent out, our customers who were mostly factories, warehouses and waste sites would have to stop operating in some cases. Which would then knock onto their customers/schedules. If we didn't do reports and checks for the profits etc, we'd likely go bust after a while.

I kind of get what you're saying but I think it's massively over simplified to say any job that isn't teaching or a Dr or nurse is "pointless" and I'm sure you'd agree once you had no deliveries or none of the shops were stocked etc.

I know people are theorising about AI taking over but I still think that's a way off and can also see there being a huge backlash against it for all the potential issues it would cause.

If you speak to any business owner, they will tell you that nobody hires someone for the sake of it leading to extra costs for the company.
If they are there working, it is because they are needed.

Of course society wouldn't collapse, but would the company function you perform collapse? is that function not occurring detrimental to the companies service?

That's the question.

Companies performance isn't based on societal collapse, its based on making profit ergo enabling people to be paid... which would actually result in societal collapse - if 95% of people all of a sudden stopped getting paid...