249
submitted 5 months ago by FlyingSquid@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] kescusay@lemmy.world 23 points 5 months ago

The thing about that kind of attitude is that it's inherently self-defeating, because if you insist your employees come to work sick, they're going to get everyone else sick too, and productivity will plummet even if everyone keeps showing up. Sick employees don't perform well.

[-] riskable@programming.dev 18 points 5 months ago

Sick employees don't perform well.

You assume performance matters. A ridiculously large number of jobs are "bullshit jobs" and just require a body/someone to be there.

Example: When I was a teen I had a job at a roller skating rink that involved working at a snack bar. On Tuesdays (designated little kids figure skating practice time) the likelihood that anyone would enter the place was slim and the likelihood that someone would come to the snack bar was probably 1/10th of that. However, if the place was claiming to be open at that time they needed someone there. If only to prevent people from stealing the snacks/drinks 😁

Even at "modern" offices there's tons of jobs that don't have anything practically measurable in terms of "performance". How do you measure the performance of a receptionist who's job is to just hand people clipboards and then enter their info? Smiles? Typos? LOL

Even "fancy" jobs like "systems administrator" often have no realistic measure of performance. Did anything break today? No? Fantastic job 😁👍

[-] theneverfox@pawb.social 1 points 5 months ago

Those are all useful things though - they're not useless, they're just not working at full capacity.

Systems administrators do have meaningful metrics though...

I'm assuming you mean glorified IT so I'll start there. Hardware breaks down obviously, but do does software. They have update schedules, so every few months they have to test updates, research it, and decide how when to roll it out. They have to periodically check equipment, and convince the company on what to buy when. And obviously, at any time something can explode and stop the entire company from working

For systems engineers for more complex systems, you have the same things, except the stakes are much higher. So there's a lot more math, test systems, and so on.

The metrics come from methodology, not just nothing going wrong.

When I think of a truly useless job, I always think about sales. What do they actually do? The better they are is basically how much they can force others to act suboptimally - to pay more, to buy more, to trust a product more because it came from someone charismatic.

I mean sure, they could be using their powers for good and actually helping connect buyers to appropriate products, but most of that is because marketing has muddied the waters. And sure, they might actually be handling necessary logistics with expertise others don't have, but I'd go so far as to say most of them do more selling and less facilitating

It just seems like a lot of humans being stupid humans. It's work we entirely created for ourselves. And sure, it makes money for a company... But even that's just playing with made up numbers.

Which brings up a whole lot of even more roles based on stupid humans being stupid.

(And reception is again logistics and support - could you imagine walking into a doctor's office and just waiting in an exam room until someone shows up? Their presence enables someone with presumably valuable skills to multiply their productivity)

[-] i_dont_want_to@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 5 months ago

You are so very right. However, these facts do not deter these managers. (And other people that think like this.)

this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2024
249 points (98.1% liked)

News

22488 readers
4022 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS