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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   31616 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 17, 2022

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I think BS jobs are called as such not because they are useless but because they provide status/compensation not in proportion to how difficult the job is. And people inherently feel there is something "bullshit" about that, labor theory of value and all.

Without rampant credentialism the average bricklayer would have the alternative choice of becoming thhe average email sender.

People are very sensitive to class warfare being committed against them.

Without rampant credentialism the average bricklayer would have the alternative choice of becoming thhe average email sender.

I have worked with bricklayers and I have worked with email senders. This statement is simply untrue. E-mail senders are probably doing a less-highly skilled job on the whole than bricklayers, but they are doing a job which absolutely requires skills that most bricklayers do not have. E-mail senders need to be computer literate, they need to be fluent in English with good spelling and grammar, they need a certain amount of trustworthiness with potentially confidential information(and knowing how to handle confidential information is a skill!) and cybersecurity skills(basic stuff like "set a password and don't write it on the device" is not basic to bricklayers), and they need to be able to understand their role within the company and what they can and can't promise to the people they will be communicating with(not a problem for bricklayers in non-supervisory positions because they don't communicate with customers). They also need a certain level of "ability to fit into a white collar employment scenario", where it's assumed that they can take their work home with them(bricklayers, like most other construction trades, are assumed to be drunk and unreachable when off the clock) at least at critical times, they need to be able to be paid every two weeks via direct deposit(bricklayers expect a physical check every Friday at quitting time, because this is industry standard for construction), they need to communicate effectively about when they're not able to be at work or to complete a particular task and to resolve disputes by reference to a third party mediator(neither of these are expectations for construction workers, although plenty of individual construction workers are capable of doing them).

Requiring a college degree is a very cheap(for the company) filter for people who fit that description much better than a typical construction worker. Yes, even if that degree is in underwater basketweaving or whatever, it usually means that a person is computer literate, English fluent and capable of good spelling and grammar, can clearly communicate, is capable of doing work outside of the office setting when necessary, can follow directions for computer use and information handling, and probably comes from a class background where basic white collar behavioral norms like "tell someone when you won't show up" and "bring problems with a coworker to your boss instead of just angrily confronting them" are widespread. People who hire bricklayers have a different set of filters they use to seek out people who have the skills to be bricklayers, of course, because the ability to use computers and spell English is irrelevant to that job, but the ability to build things according to measurements is not.

assumed to be drunk and unreachable when off the clock

I work in cyber-security and have worked long and hard to establish that assumption, thank you very much!

Without rampant credentialism the average bricklayer would have the alternative choice of becoming the average email sender.

I think this claim requires a lot more evidence than anyone ever gives for it. For it to be true, it would mean almost every company in the world is just ignoring an enormous opportunity to cut their spending on salaries because... who knows. Maybe possible, but a fairly extraordinary claim that requires commensurate evidence. I think it's fair to assume that if these companies could employ most anyone to do 'email sender' jobs, they would.

Also, if all people mean by saying 'bullshit jobs' is 'jobs that maybe aren't quite as hard as people think', 'bullshit jobs' is a terrible term and people should stop using it. What do you think most people hear when someone describes something as 'bullshit'?

Credentialism doesn't mean companies are refusing to employ competent people because "who knows", it means that companies are refusing to employ competent people for the very specific reason that the lawyers of the Administrative State dreamt up a Byzantine tangle of regulations that says your company can be sued for $1 trillion if your e-mail senders don't have a piece of paper from e-mail sending school which indicates that they are properly versed in e-mail safety.

Also, if all people mean by saying 'bullshit jobs' is 'jobs that maybe aren't quite as hard as people think'

A bullshit job is a job which would have zero or positive net impact on the world if it didn't get done.

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