ECONOMICS DESK

“WHEN IS A JOB not a job? When it’s bullshit.”

So says Walter Hybrid, CEO of Systems Teams Projects Core Strategies And Total Solutions Inc, a Chicago based consultancy which advises on useless corporate positions, redundant careers and pointless tasks.

In his new book Employment Without A Real Job Hybrid says that soon humans will become so surplus in the tech field that they will be hired in the way Yucca plants are purchased, just to dress up the office.

“As computers come to define more and more of the workspace, so more and more of what humans do becomes irrelevant. Huge numbers of Americans, and others around the world, find it impossible to explain what they do at their work all day.

“I’m not talking about people who do a specific thing, like a plumber or carpenter, or even a lawyer, though God knows some of them need to explain to me what they do. No, I’m talking about those millions of folks employed mainly in the technology space who form parts of teams than feed into other teams for projects that feed into other projects to provide solutions to questions they have no idea of.

“And when they’re let go, or downsized or retrenched or – oh Christ, I’m overdosing on the buzzwords here – whatever, they cannot define what it is they spent the best part of their lives doing.

“It’s like they were hired just so the company they work for could boast it had a workforce. A kind of status thing. Because some of these tech firms were so awash with cash they had to find something to do with it, so they hired and hired. That was in the good times. Now the bad times are here and cash is less available, companies are discovering how many of their staff did damn all.”

Hank, a process systems assistant team coordinator from California, recently fired following the failure of Silicon Valley Bank, is typical of what Hybrid talks about. He spent fifteen years in Silicon Valley, looking at a computer screen, and still cannot figure out what his purpose was. “They paid me very well, supplied me with free Coke and pizza; let me work any 80 hours of the week I wanted – Indeed I worked 100 hours some weeks – and I still can’t tell you what I did. I can’t point to anything that I achieved. I just turned up, I guess. I work for McDonald’s now. I find it more satisfying.”

“It’s true. Even a McDonald’s worker can point to something positive at the end of a shift,” says Hybrid. “But the fast food is giving way to the bullshit, it seems. Some of these bullshit jobs last no more than five minutes, or a day, or a week or something like that. So many now it’s impossible to keep track. So many that it’s easier to count the French Fries.”