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Like many here I'm the type that would be one of the engineers in this list and I'm a little skeptical this the first jobs to get let go in a contraction can tell you all that much about which jobs are "bullshit". People have already covered that recruiters, much like fracking, can be essential and have good value returns when engineers or oil is difficult to extract and worth a lot are less important when supply is abundant and cheap. But just in general this isn't the right way to look at businesses. The telling part is that sales people aren't let go. At least in my experience the sales people are making the value directly, they're contacting syndicators or clients or whatever directly and bringing business. The engineers support the sales people with new tools but in very harsh times they can be scrapped and sales people can make due with the older tools. recruiters are even more easy to let go because you can keep improving with the engineers you have. Each role is useful and not a bullshit jobs but their relative usefulness is more or less correlated with whether the company is being lean to survive or attempting to grow and improve and that is more responsive to the economy than anything like inherent usefulness.
The problem with recruiters is that 95% of them can be replaced with a python script and a picture of a IG influencer.
To be fair there are a lot of engineers that when let go their team productivity will go up.
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