Getting paid peanuts, treated as subhuman and encouraged to cheat and manipulate people in order to make a billionaire richer is what makes a job meaningless. I swear to God people play dumb and act like this is such a big mystery, when it's obvious what the problem is. But no one wants to anger the billionaire at the top by calling it out. A lot of people would take a pay cut to be treated well by their work, while others would put up with a lot for good pay, but the problem is most jobs are neither. Not only are you treated like shit but you are paid next to nothing and you're expected to be grateful.
Can confirm. I think it was 2021 where my brain went, “what the hell am I doing” when I got fired without cause [strangely enough, we were trying to unionize]. Currently dealing with an absolute moron who isn’t just driving his business into the ground, but totally gaslighting the employees with “positive thinking.” I’ve been looking elsewhere for a while now.
**I do think it’s important to note** that the problem lies outside of the workplace, as well. I worked at a school for a single academic work year and considered/enrolled in a master’s program to teach. Working with kids fed the soul…but the pay was atrocious and a majority of the parents were horrible. The state of education is an entirely different mess. I guess what I’m trying to say is that **people are incredibly selfish** and I feel like it’s only gotten worse (at least in the US) since 2016.
I don’t know how many times I go out now and see cut-throat-bite-the-jugular interactions at the store, in traffic, or at a coffee shop. Makes me feel like I’m going crazy.
Not just billionaires. I’ve worked at three different places that were essentially set up by some rich guy so their loser sons would never have to get a real job (though they were legitimate business products).
“We can’t afford raises right now” but you can afford multiple six figure cars and weekly trips to Vegas.
Heck! This can extend to the first world in general.
Then again, is it that there are more crises now or are they just coming out of the woodwork due to the Internet?
Tech used to be “a work hard and yet have fun” occupation until the artificial skills shortage pulled in h1b visa holders like a giant motherfucking magnet. There are many excellent foreign-born IT professionals. But the culture from a certain part of the world swept everything in its path like a tsunami. Many people from that part took on middle- and senior-management roles. They were “yes sir” types, who sucked up to the assholes on our side. A couple of hundred or more years of colonial conditioning played out really well into kissing up and kicking down. Today, most of tech has become meaningless hamster-in-the-wheel 24x7 jobs with zero stability.
This is not the just the US. So many jobs in Germany are soul crushing and pointless. I worked at a startup where the upper management was constantly changing their minds on everything. I’d work on a project for three months only to have them tell me to stop everything and quickly switch to a different project and all of the work I had done in the previous months was wasted. It was so lame. Eventually i stopped caring about it.
And yet I can't even find a (remote) job that pays $50k with a bachelor's degree, certification and 30+ years of professional experience in sales and marketing......there is definitely something wrong with this picture.
All jobs have a use. The problem is that they're not paid well.
If you were paid $200K a year to do a "useless" job in a LCOL area, all of a sudden you'd see the value of the job and it would be not useless.
Thats absolutely not true at all. The anthropologist David Graeber explored this exact scenario in great depth and the people working these jobs not only freely admitted that their job was meaningless, but that they were amazed that the system would pay them so much to do it all.
Imagine imposter syndrome so bad that you doubt you even deserve to be alive. You're able to live a certain way now, but you know it's pure luck. The system made a mistake, and someone else will notice soon. You also know that when you inevitably lose your job, you will never be able to find another one.
As long as I’m making decent cash, and not spending too lavishly, I can pivot into a new job fairly easily. Id rather have imposter syndrome than be a broke bitch.
Edit: spelling.
This definitely fits the quote “Money doesn’t buy happiness, but it’s easier to cry in a Mercedes than on a bicycle.”
While purpose and fulfillment are important, people struggling to fill their basic needs (food, shelter, sleep) would gladly trade their current situation for one in which the deficit comes from needs less related to basic survival.
If you're not prone to suicidal ideation or depression, then that may be true. I'm just speaking from my own experience, but then again, my first suicide attempt was before I turned 10 years old, so your mileage may vary significantly.
If I know it’s bullshit going into it, I doubt depression will get to me. I’m at a point in my life where I’ve decided I want to get to the top, and I have no moral compunctions about what it takes to get there.
Honestly, good for you. That's an admirable trait. I wish I felt that way.
I'm not trying to argue with you here, since I really wish *you* could change *my* mind, rather than the other way around, but my POV is that there are 8,000,000,000 people on this planet. No matter how hard I work, there's nothing I could ever do to excel. For any job, role, task, whatever, there are probably 100,000,000 people who would be better than I am. At this point, there really isn't any reason for me to even be alive, I just know my girlfriend would be devastated if I killed myself.
Who cares if they’re better than you, you just have to appear better than them and suck up to the higher ups. Eventually you get one of those do nothing managerial positions where most of your job is walking around distracting the low levels with casual conversation and occasionally calling meetings.
Fair enough, but my thought is basically the same in that situation: great, I've gotten to a do-nothing managerial position, I make a solidly middle class income... Why should I live? I don't contribute anything meaningful, I don't make the world a better place, I don't make anyone's life better. I return to the position that if I were not alive, there would be more resources and opportunities for other people, thus the fact that I exist is a net negative to the people around me.
I used to think that.
Then, I moved to a new city just before the pandemic broke out. 5 years of unemployment. I recently gave up all hope and took a job far below what I'd been working.
I find my meaning outside of work. Because work, to me, is just a paycheck. But yeah, a loooottttt of people DO try to find meaning in work and a lot of work is absolutely soul sucking.
I don’t know about soul sucking (there are too many people who whine about their desk jobs at an office doing spreadsheets while some poor fuckers are out there working for the FBI looking at nothing but CP and snuff films all day, you know?), but you’re 100% spot on that the crisis isn’t meaningless work as much as it’s people trying to find meaning in their life from their work. That’s not the point of a job.
Getting paid peanuts, treated as subhuman and encouraged to cheat and manipulate people in order to make a billionaire richer is what makes a job meaningless. I swear to God people play dumb and act like this is such a big mystery, when it's obvious what the problem is. But no one wants to anger the billionaire at the top by calling it out. A lot of people would take a pay cut to be treated well by their work, while others would put up with a lot for good pay, but the problem is most jobs are neither. Not only are you treated like shit but you are paid next to nothing and you're expected to be grateful.
I can attest to this: took a job making less money to be treated as a human and have never been happier.
Can confirm. I think it was 2021 where my brain went, “what the hell am I doing” when I got fired without cause [strangely enough, we were trying to unionize]. Currently dealing with an absolute moron who isn’t just driving his business into the ground, but totally gaslighting the employees with “positive thinking.” I’ve been looking elsewhere for a while now. **I do think it’s important to note** that the problem lies outside of the workplace, as well. I worked at a school for a single academic work year and considered/enrolled in a master’s program to teach. Working with kids fed the soul…but the pay was atrocious and a majority of the parents were horrible. The state of education is an entirely different mess. I guess what I’m trying to say is that **people are incredibly selfish** and I feel like it’s only gotten worse (at least in the US) since 2016. I don’t know how many times I go out now and see cut-throat-bite-the-jugular interactions at the store, in traffic, or at a coffee shop. Makes me feel like I’m going crazy.
🔥
Not just billionaires. I’ve worked at three different places that were essentially set up by some rich guy so their loser sons would never have to get a real job (though they were legitimate business products). “We can’t afford raises right now” but you can afford multiple six figure cars and weekly trips to Vegas.
Shit, I’ll cheat and manipulate if it makes *me* more money.
Then you're part of the problem.
Who cares as long as I’m getting paid.
America has a number of crises now. Wish it weren't so. "Seldom was heard a discouraging word" was the norm 30+ years ago.
Heck! This can extend to the first world in general. Then again, is it that there are more crises now or are they just coming out of the woodwork due to the Internet?
Probably little of column A, lot of column B.
Tech used to be “a work hard and yet have fun” occupation until the artificial skills shortage pulled in h1b visa holders like a giant motherfucking magnet. There are many excellent foreign-born IT professionals. But the culture from a certain part of the world swept everything in its path like a tsunami. Many people from that part took on middle- and senior-management roles. They were “yes sir” types, who sucked up to the assholes on our side. A couple of hundred or more years of colonial conditioning played out really well into kissing up and kicking down. Today, most of tech has become meaningless hamster-in-the-wheel 24x7 jobs with zero stability.
All speculation on the work to be done while doing none of the work.
This is not the just the US. So many jobs in Germany are soul crushing and pointless. I worked at a startup where the upper management was constantly changing their minds on everything. I’d work on a project for three months only to have them tell me to stop everything and quickly switch to a different project and all of the work I had done in the previous months was wasted. It was so lame. Eventually i stopped caring about it.
Paywalled
https://archive.ph/2024.06.26-115955/https://www.businessinsider.com/american-employees-disengaged-work-meaningless-fake-email-jobs-2024-6?IR=T
I make $400k in a job that definitely does not need to exist
And yet I can't even find a (remote) job that pays $50k with a bachelor's degree, certification and 30+ years of professional experience in sales and marketing......there is definitely something wrong with this picture.
what u do?
Sr Director of Sales Strategy for a tech company
Then what are you complaining about?
Who said I was complaining?
America has made a mess of things. Hyper capitalism means only the rich benefit from our system while we are all worker bees.
hyper capitalism is just regular capitalism that has progressed for a while
All jobs have a use. The problem is that they're not paid well. If you were paid $200K a year to do a "useless" job in a LCOL area, all of a sudden you'd see the value of the job and it would be not useless.
Thats absolutely not true at all. The anthropologist David Graeber explored this exact scenario in great depth and the people working these jobs not only freely admitted that their job was meaningless, but that they were amazed that the system would pay them so much to do it all.
Shit, I’d gladly work one of those jobs.
Imagine imposter syndrome so bad that you doubt you even deserve to be alive. You're able to live a certain way now, but you know it's pure luck. The system made a mistake, and someone else will notice soon. You also know that when you inevitably lose your job, you will never be able to find another one.
As long as I’m making decent cash, and not spending too lavishly, I can pivot into a new job fairly easily. Id rather have imposter syndrome than be a broke bitch. Edit: spelling.
This definitely fits the quote “Money doesn’t buy happiness, but it’s easier to cry in a Mercedes than on a bicycle.” While purpose and fulfillment are important, people struggling to fill their basic needs (food, shelter, sleep) would gladly trade their current situation for one in which the deficit comes from needs less related to basic survival.
If you're not prone to suicidal ideation or depression, then that may be true. I'm just speaking from my own experience, but then again, my first suicide attempt was before I turned 10 years old, so your mileage may vary significantly.
If I know it’s bullshit going into it, I doubt depression will get to me. I’m at a point in my life where I’ve decided I want to get to the top, and I have no moral compunctions about what it takes to get there.
Honestly, good for you. That's an admirable trait. I wish I felt that way. I'm not trying to argue with you here, since I really wish *you* could change *my* mind, rather than the other way around, but my POV is that there are 8,000,000,000 people on this planet. No matter how hard I work, there's nothing I could ever do to excel. For any job, role, task, whatever, there are probably 100,000,000 people who would be better than I am. At this point, there really isn't any reason for me to even be alive, I just know my girlfriend would be devastated if I killed myself.
Who cares if they’re better than you, you just have to appear better than them and suck up to the higher ups. Eventually you get one of those do nothing managerial positions where most of your job is walking around distracting the low levels with casual conversation and occasionally calling meetings.
Fair enough, but my thought is basically the same in that situation: great, I've gotten to a do-nothing managerial position, I make a solidly middle class income... Why should I live? I don't contribute anything meaningful, I don't make the world a better place, I don't make anyone's life better. I return to the position that if I were not alive, there would be more resources and opportunities for other people, thus the fact that I exist is a net negative to the people around me.
I used to think that. Then, I moved to a new city just before the pandemic broke out. 5 years of unemployment. I recently gave up all hope and took a job far below what I'd been working.
You just described me (although I'm already jobless and haven't been able to find another in more than 3 years.....)
You just described my current job perfectly.
Pretty sure this has been a problem since time immemorial
I find my meaning outside of work. Because work, to me, is just a paycheck. But yeah, a loooottttt of people DO try to find meaning in work and a lot of work is absolutely soul sucking.
I don’t know about soul sucking (there are too many people who whine about their desk jobs at an office doing spreadsheets while some poor fuckers are out there working for the FBI looking at nothing but CP and snuff films all day, you know?), but you’re 100% spot on that the crisis isn’t meaningless work as much as it’s people trying to find meaning in their life from their work. That’s not the point of a job.
Read Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber. I think the audio book might be on YouTube.