I had a brief flirtation with management a few years back and it was definitely a bullshit job. I went from being a software developer who built things that people actually used to spending all my time in meetings reporting to the bigger boss how things were going, and sending stupid emails to all and sundry to justify what we were doing and why we may not have made as much progress as the bosses and clients would have liked.
I used to complain to the boss that I felt like I wasn't really doing anything productive, and his response was not to worry about it because sitting in meetings 'is real work'. Needless to say I disagreed and this eventually led to us falling out as I clearly wasn't on board the management gravy train. I also refused to join in with the business speak bullshit bingo which also didn't go down well with my MBA qualified boss.
So I'm back to being an engineer again, which feels more useful and less bullshitty, but means I'm now at a career deadend whilst I watch others climb up the greasy pole and get paid much better for doing so.
Teacher in a college here. Whilst some of what I do is important for the students, management only care about attendance and silly tick box tasks. There’s no interest from management about what the students actually learn. A typical example is this:
Management:
“One of your students only has 85% attendance”
Me:
“They have been suffering with an illness but still producing excellent work. They are one of the best students we have this year”
Management:
“They need to improve their attendance”
Me:
“They have on going hospital appointments. They are still producing the best work in the class”
Management:
“Make sure they don’t miss anymore lessons”
Me:
“They have hospital appointments”
Management a month later:
“They have missed more lessons and will likely not be completing their work if not in college”
Me:
“They have produced all their work and have a job offer for next year. They are our best student this year”
Have you heard of the McNamara Fallacy?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McNamara_fallacy
I've heard it summed up before as "if you can't measure what's important, make what you can measure important"
People can get sniffy about project managers, but just try delivering a digital product without an effective one
Yeah... there are various levels of project manager on my current tail-spin of a project. The project's biggest problems stem in some degree from piss-poor project management, somebody to basically coordinate all the various contributors and stakeholders and review streams, so that just as we finish a big feedback and review process with one stakeholder, the next doesn't then come along and demand that we down tools in order to package all our information up for them to review and provide feedback on.
It's got to a point where we are trying to complete a design whilst incorporating three different streams of overlapping and at times conflicting review and comment, because none of the outside parties talk to one another, and nobody grasped the reins and tried to amalgamate all the review into one omni-review which would occur at the end of each design stage.
I don't envy the project managers, but it is very obvious when they are not there or are doing their job poorly.
So I’m back to being an engineer again, which feels more useful and less bullshitty, but means I’m now at a career deadend whilst I watch others climb up the greasy pole and get paid much better for doing so.
This is cultural thing IMO. My Dutch colleague has worked in teams back in the Netherlands where the manager got paid the same as everyone else - they were just a member of the team, who had slightly different skills. It meant there was no major incentive to angle for a management job, and the people who did, tended to be good at them.
I don’t envy the project managers, but it is very obvious when they are not there or are doing their job poorly.
Yeah I would hate to be a project manager - looks like loads of admin and being organised. But I do appreciate working with a good one: they make sure I have the stuff I need to do my job, without me having to go round and chase people.
And what the hell is a ‘project manager’, actually?
A good PM is worth their weight in gold. Allows the team to get on with their individual tasks, keeps an eye on both the detail and the bigger picture, can work out when and how to re-prioritise resources, can motivate the team, is actively involved and understands what is going on...
A bad PM can wreck an entire project through a combination of inefficiency, ignorance, refusal to listen to the team actually doing the work, demanding unrealistic deadlines or outcomes.
If you want an idea of a bad PM, try watching most episodes of The Apprentice!
🙁 view from my office window doing my bullshit job
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Project Manager here.
Reading this there has been a lot of 'close to the bone' comments, that's for sure!
I find most of my 'value added' (and enjoyment) on a project comes when things are going wrong and the act of turning it around, but that situation in the first place is definitely not what the company/management wants to happen, so we spend our working lives trying to actively avoid the situations where we truly thrive.
Ironic really.
And what the hell is a ‘project manager’, actually?
Surprisingly, they manage a project, end to end.
Work out the budget, ensure budget is stuck to, ensure all the correct tasks are being done in the correct order, deal with issues, prioritise etc,. etc,.
Try doing a complex, large thing without one. While all the individuals doing things may be great they will have no oversight, control, prioritisation, inter-dependancies and so on across all the tasks done by others
And what the hell is a ‘project manager’, actually?
Really?
People can get sniffy about project managers, but just try delivering a digital product without an effective one.
Call it what you want, but some form of management is needed on any project, or else it's just a bunch of people each doing what they think is best and hoping it comes together at the end. Try doing that with a big engineering or construction project. I did have to laugh that the first comment about PMs related to digital products!
This thread is a bit of an eye-opener really. It feels like there is something a bit wrong with 'the system' when we have so many people doing well-paid BS jobs, and at the same time a shortage of people in medical professions, teaching, social care, keeping the roads maintained, collecting the bins etc etc etc....
My current job isn't BS, but i fear it's got the "bullshitization of work" issue!
But... Alongside being a sexy local GP, I used to work at the CCG - purse string holders of local health economy.
THAT was a BS job..
I was paid a stupid amount for one day's work a week... I literally had to go hunting for work..
I'd attend meetings just because I HAD to be there.. my presence didn't change anything as decisions had been made.
I witnessed the most bullish of shittiness going on there... I would say that most people there, if told "you have XYZ jobs to do this week..do them, then go home..." would be out by midday tuesday. But..they HAD to work all week, so made the work last all week.
The pointlessness of SO MANY projects must have been demoralising!
It's like being a builder, building a wall, then having your boss knock it down saying it's not needed... Time. and. time. again..
I quit in the end. Despite the cushy hours (I often left early, and wasn't even missed) and high pay, I literally said to the team in my exit interview "some kid isn't getting cancer treatment 'cos you're paying me to look at facebook"..
I'm much happier..I'd rather have the time than the money...
DrP
I make poor quality car parts for cars nobody wants, or can afford to buy. I pour my heart and soul into making precision jigs and fixtures, or solve long running engineering problems, only to watch chimps with hammers smash them to bits minutes later, or have out-of-their-depth engineers refuse to act on said engineering fixes because, well, they didnt think of them and dont trust the m or understand them.
Occasionally you get the odd glimmer of pride in doing something in 20 mins which usually involves a full 8 hour strip down and rebuild cycle, but shit is usually your thanks. Thing is, there is literally nothing else better in the area any more, and its a bad feeling being too old to emigrate . Trust me, I have tried twice.
The feeling is very much that my skills and experience are becomi g, if not already are, obsolete, as we dont really make stuff in the UK any more, on a scale we used to. Yes there is a call for them abroad in the developing industrial nations, but Im too old to go now.
The problem with project management is there are a lot of bullshitters in the job.
There are however good project managers and when you work with one you realise what they can do and how they improve a project you can really see their value. The problem is many people never get to work with a good one.
when you work with one you realise what they can do and how they improve a project you can really see their value. The problem is many people never get to work with a good one.
Or, in my experience, good project management practice and intuition is stifled by process and unnecessary admin. I'd love to be able to just get on with it, but 90% of my time is spent doing reports/updates/documentation no-one reads or cares about just to appease the process.
My job, at times, feels very bullshit. But I work for a large financial organisation in IT Application Services. It's a very mature department, very process orientated, everything is understood. So a lot of the time I have a very light touch, approving checklists, speaking to people about not much at all, not doing a great deal. But when things do go wrong, all the "bullshit" about protecting people's livelihoods is true, even if it's easy to feel very distanced from that. i.e. if you can't log on to Internet banking and need to pay a bill urgently, how happy are you? That's when we're working our asses off to restore things knowing that people are affected. Tying up the corporate BS to reality can help you understand why you are actually there.
That said, in a previous more techy role I also PowerShell'd myself out of a role. Not that my role was dissolved, I just got to sit around reading for STW for more of the day.
view from my office window doing my bullshit job
😀 Are you a project manager?
"What is a bullshit job and do you work in one"
Thinking of going back to my previous job as Cow inseminator. where you get covered in all sorts of bodily function, from Bulls and Cows. A true Bullshit jobby.
I witnessed the most bullish of shittiness going on there… I would say that most people there, if told “you have XYZ jobs to do this week..do them, then go home…” would be out by midday tuesday. But..they HAD to work all week, so made the work last all week.
I know a few people with jobs like that.
In fact, I once had a one-day-a-week job like that (in a hospital doing some admin work for Occupational Health). Once I'd worked my way through the initial backlog, I'd also worked out all the tricks to shorten the process, learnt a few of the codes off the top of my head (so I didn't have to keep referring to the big book of codes each time) and by the time I got there on Friday, I could work through that week's accumulated forms in the space of about 4hrs no problem. But I had to stretch it out to 8hrs.
Played a lot of Minesweeper and Chess those days.
@DrP that is so familiar. I was “encouraged” to volunteer (arm twisted up my back by one of the bigger boys) for the governing body of the ccg at its inception. Promises of being able to make a difference, control the budget etc.
Quickly realised the function was just to slavishly follow nhs England directives and the single most important outcome was always a cost saving. Left after my 2 years was up.
Ccg’s now being replaced by a different but equally pointless layer of nhs bureaucracy. 🙄
I think what I do is useful as a consultant. Help people solve problems that they can't fix themselves.
Problem is I spend about half my time trying to find people with those problems and then convincing them I can help.
I like to think I'm a decent scientist and could put my skills to something more fulfilling. For the genuine benefit of more people.
My wife is a government IT project manager though so I might show her this!
@docrobster
I feel 'we' don't fit in in those environments though...
I used to be VERY vocal about my skilset:
"See a problem...data gather...come up with a plan/solution...implement plan.. review outcome of changes at a later date."
ALL IN TEN MINUTES. THEN..REPEAT MULTIPLE TIMES A DAY
I simply abhored the keeness for meeting after meeting after meeting... where NOTHING changed, NOTHING progressed...
The ruddy corporate fear of upsetting someone or something meant that the titanic carried on heading towards the iceberg ....!!!
Also, when there WAS a good idea raised, it was done in such a messed up fashion!!
I likened it to someone somewhere saying "let's build a house". And everyone agreeing on the fact we need a house.
Then the first job someone does is go out and buy all the windows. Ordered them ALL.
And then order 8 rolls of carpet.
Then you start making plans. And in fact you actually want hardwood floor - so you cancel the carpet, but you've paid for it and there's no refund.
And the plans require much bigger windows. So you bin the first windows, and order half the new windows.
Then realise building a house is costly, so scrap all the plans and have another meeting......
ARG
DrP
And what the hell is a ‘project manager’, actually?
Surprise surprise they manage projects.
The problem with project management is there are a lot of bullshitters in the job.
There are however good project managers and when you work with one you realise what they can do and how they improve a project you can really see their value. The problem is many people never get to work with a good one.
I think there's a subset of people in every profession who if they can't do their job, take a side step into project management where this won't be noticed. Those asside there some people who are actuallyn
good at it.
Or, in my experience, good project management practice and intuition is stifled by process and unnecessary admin. I’d love to be able to just get on with it, but 90% of my time is spent doing reports/updates/documentation no-one reads or cares about just to appease the process.
Depends on the size of the company. When you've only got a team of <10 then it probably is all documentation and gant charts.
When it gets to a team of 100+ then you end up with 10% or more of them as project engineers (with junior, vanilla, senior, principal, consultabt levels within those) reporting to the project manager. Then the manager is just left to the more executive decision making and client relationship stuff. It meant that:
A) the people at the top are really good as there's a whole department of people actually doing useful management stuff to promote from. Not just following the Dilbert principal and promoting an engineer to management.
B) the rubbish people get bored and go work in financial services.
That was back when I worked in engineering, not TV though.
I have had a fair few b.s. jobs in my life, worst thing is the people who I took over from convinced themselves they were meaningful.
One manager even used to joke when asked how many people worked for him, used to answer, about half.
He nailed it, the company was taken over and went from 2000 employees to 2. The acquiring company could probably have done the takeover and reduced their own headcount by half. So many people didn't do anything.
Project manager is a very real skill. I know this because as someone who trained as, and works well as a field engineer, I'm now expected to be a project manager. No help, no training, just get on with it. I'm not suited to it one little bit, it's not my skill set and there's zero interest from management in helping me add it to my skill set.
Clearly my employer doesn't know what a project manager is supposed to be either.
So, what wasn't a bullshit job 18 months ago, now very much is.
Brilliant, someone doctored the yellow warning sign, danger men at work.
It read, no danger of men at work.
It stayed around for ages. The managers all sat in offices and never walked about, the md had a private suite and never walked about.
The UK job market is a giant Ponzi scheme.
I've always found that when a manager goes on holiday everything runs like a Swiss watch, then they return and f*** everything right up because that's what they're good at.
I spent 40 years doing proper jobs, now I've retired i sit outside my local drinking a very satisfying ale called Proper job.
Can't imagine what Bullshit Job is gonna taste like?!
Bloody hell, you can slag of the police, civil servants, Nhs, bike shop workers et al but diss a project manager and you get a right shoeing. Peak STW used to be some sort of IT nerd now it’s P.Ms
The pm's were only on here as stw time is after their tea break.
I am a mountain bike journalist. Occasionally you lot make me feel that's not a bullshit job.
I've always considered working in some office to be a bit of a bullshit type job, though maybe bull is the wrong adjective, in that having never actually worked in an office, its really a bit of a mystery as to what so many people actually do day to day*
* I've often surmised that each individual office worker does a little bit of something then passes it on to the next worker who adds a little bit more, then to the next for a bit more and so on and so forth.
But either way thankfully I dont. All that sitting down being part of a team , not quite my bag.
Currently its big dangerous manly machinery, and before that big sharp butcher knives 😀
I've not done much work offshore but I spent 3 trips doing the rope access supervision of lifting point examiners. On a 14 day trip I'd spend 13.5 days counting waves, counting ships on the horizon, 0.1 day doing my job and 0.4 days waiting for the helicopter home.
I also spent 1.5years on a big red bridge just outside Edinburgh. The manager told me that he knew we didn't do much but not to get caught. I read a lot as the phone signal was crap.
Done the big dangerous manly machinery now mainly in an office.
I used to do failure analysis and write proceedures.
That was an interesting job*
Now I'm a project manager for fibre-optic flow measurement devices and sand control
Not sure what went wrong in life** other than the former were apparently no longer required. That is to say management atthat company decided we no longer needed to learn from our mistakes
I now seen to spend most of my days placating stakeholders /admin /logistics /billing /forecasting /stock control /ordering and very occasionally a thin sliver of pseudo engineering usually drawing on my old job experiance going through engineering drawings looking for potential issues/clashes....I've found a few clangers over the years - but that's not my job - but it's about the most interesting bit of the job and oddly while all the other work needs doing it's probably the most value I bring to the table in my role tbh. Other wise I'm just a glorified admin.
* Interesting in that no two days were the same and no two failures were identical and occasionally it was a war room appolo 13 how do we get out of this situation
** No longer want to go offshore
I'm a project manager. For a sort of government place.
Just in to do a single project (CRM migration). No team, just me.
Possibly bullshit, but the department I work in do some really important (investigation into some really horrific crimes) and their CRM is so bad they're losing touch with witnesses etc so I'll be helping with that?
Anyway, I'm in as a contractor. Will be my last ever office job as I'm taking the money and opening a brewery.
Not sure if my current job is bullshit or not. Similar to previous jobs, but they were all for charities. I feel it's a bit bullshit but does help people somewhere down the line?
Possibly bullshit, but the department I work in do some really important (investigation into some really horrific crimes) and their CRM is so bad they’re losing touch with witnesses etc so I’ll be helping with that?
Maybe it's an ancillary bullshit job?
By that I mean it's an important job but it only exists because there were so many people doing bullshit jobs that the system eventually collapsed under their weight and you have to get it working again.
Done Project Management for QinetiQ and for a short while DSTL, was fabulously involving, the projects were interesting, teams were often brilliant and regularly challenging. Then moved in to Programme management for a division that was sold off and that was as BS as it gets, Going from site to site, telling the stakeholders what they wanted to hear and absolutely no recourse if something went awry.
Had one BS meeting in Singapore, I'd changed my bosses presentation format from his previous meeting and bought it in to the 20th century.
They loved it, apart from one criticism which was that they wanted the format as before.
QM now for an aerospace composites company, lucky to have a job in aero after these last 18m (thanks flip for Trump's stimulus!) More challenges than I've ever had, but I love it.
I’ve always considered working in some office to be a bit of a bullshit type job.........
Currently its big dangerous manly machinery
Don't forget that JCB/CAT/Hyundai/Leibherr will be a load of big offices full of mechanical, electrical, elctronic, software and yep project managers designing those big manly machines.
Some of them will even be women.
My job is knowledge and skills based. I play at cutting edge medical science and hopefully deliver meaningful new medicines that make people’s lives a little more bearable.
There are still times when it has elements of BS. I produced a table of simple stats a week ago because our more complex analysis and reporting couldn’t generate a geometric mean. That’s pretty BS, even though the number is on some inputs documents.
Proper process removes the unnecessary thinking to focus on the important. That’s been a long learning from me.
Without project managers to herd people like me, nothing would happen. Proper PMs are like gold dust.
Fortunately, no, I don’t. For the first time in ages I’m doing something that is stress-free, (considering my recent circumstances, I’m incredibly glad about that), and I’ve been told by other people higher up the food chain that what I’m now doing is very much appreciated and is helping others with what they’re doing, which is good to know.
I’m also better paid now than I have been for years, which doesn’t hurt! I’m two years past retirement age, but I’m happier doing what I am than sitting at home worrying about how to cope on £155 a week.
My job is about delivering ways to automate stuff. We turn up... what do you need automating? and why do you do it?
The second question causes an outrageous amount of stumbling and awkward ummmms.
Sadly my role is not empowered to say 'just stop doing it', no matter how much I say it...
