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?

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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 🤷🏼‍♀️

* 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%.

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?

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

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.

To be fair, life is pretty pointless!

@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!

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.

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.