It's dangerous and stupid for anyone to say "my job/vocation is more worthy than yours"

I don't see jobs as neccessarily better or worse - merely better or worse fits for a person's abilities and talents.

And may I please add that being an accounting clerk for a mobile phone company is just about the WORST fit for my abilities, ever.

I've only ever had one job that I considered "worthier" than others - it was when I was a database programmer for a company which attempted to find investors for low income housing. That made me feel like I was doing something which made a difference in peoples' lives. I suppose I have more of a chip on my shoulder because I've been working in "entertainment" and I'm told again and again by people with Proper Jobs that what I do (did) doesn't make an iota of difference in peoples lives. Well, fuck that. Writing a song which cheers someone up and makes their life more worth living for the three minutes and ten seconds of the songs is JUST AS worthy as pushing papers around an office with no relation to anything in the world ever.

This is career rockism, isn't it?

(This was partially brought to my mind in a finance meeting when someone said since we are making good money shouldn't we employ a finance manager. We don't need one, and it was interesting to see how a perception that other people have these pretty pointless jobs just creating work for itself is thouroughly useless).

I don't think its a saddening pointless discussion to have. I think its one we all have with ourselves - and we are possibly not the best judges of our own jobs worth.

I'm looking forawrd to the Channel FIve show by the way: "When Unmanaged Knowledge Attackes".

(of course I'm just being an ass)

Uh, I'm with Nicole. Of course, some of my clientele make me wonder if knowledge is worth managing for them in particular, but such is the nature of this work.

I think of it this way -- I view my job as a constant puzzle that needs solving. How quickly can we get the books here? What's the best way to get the material scanned and available? How can we improve what we're doing? The job's worth? Another matter, perhaps, but I like to think that while we're not actually teaching these books to the students, it's nice to know that given a lot of what is discussed -- info that I think in many cases is crucial and important to study -- we're helping get that info out. Sure, a lot of it is material soon to be forgotten after a quarter is over, but who knows who is going to be further inspired or intrigued by something they read that was on Reserves? I'll have no exact way of knowing for sure, but it's a nice little thought nonetheless.

Pete B. is on a good point. Surely the Finance Manager's salary would eat up all the extra Finance that he / she had been hired to look after.

On a similar tip to the finance manager one, anothe Union had acounts come in who saved the 10,000 on their tax bill that year. The cost of hiring said accountants, 9,500 plus VAT.

NR: suspect we work with different definitions of KM.

The upside of having a worthless job is that you can get through entire days without doing a gram of work.

IT executives
MBAs
Human Resource managers

and of course,

Librarians.

They all tend to think they own it.

Yeah, it's generally not a great thing to think "I'm so worthy, I do so much for society", though this is not to say that some jobs are adding more value than others. But, I doubt it can be effectively measured, and probably shouldn't be. B

So, the most worthless job will be done be the person who compiles indexes of 'job worthiness'.

Personally, as a taxpayer I find it completely offensive that certain corporations and individuals do as much as they can to get out of paying, and then turn around and wave the bloody shirt whenever our idiot government starts a war.

I meant liberal as in strict economic terms ie. 'free', non-interventionist. I don't think there's a UK-US difference there. In both countries, the right wing party is conservative on social issues and liberal on economic ones and the left wing one vice versa.

So, while I constantly hear that my job is worth a great deal and is important, I have to admit that I have serious trouble with the forest for the trees at this point. I can't tell that I've done much of anything worthwhile for most of the last six months or more.

Is this a good or hideously bad thing? :)

I am often ecstatic when I get my literature search results and journal articles. So there you go.

I regard my job as worthy, being in nature conservation, and that is one of the things I like about it. I never thought that people doing worthy jobs were badly paid cos the warm, smug glow was supposed to make up for poor renumeration. I thought it was because it is hard to convince people to allocate money to something that doesn't generate money.

No, really, I do like this job, but I'll be glad when I get my LPN sometime next year.

A couple of examples: one, if all of the world's hairdressers would be wiped off the planet, sure, maybe we'd figure out ways to do many of the things hairdressers do on our own, but it wouldn't be the same, because there's a certain joy in going to a salon or a beauty college and getting your hair shampooed and cut by someone who knows how to do those things better than you do; and two, if what I do, i.e. payroll, were to suddenly disappear, sure, the world's workforce could eventually be paid, but not as efficiently or accurately.

So, all jobs are worthy, all jobs are needed. At least, that's what I feel.

I'd like to believe that since it's in a teacher training/credentialing program that I'm somehow fighting the good fight and making one or two square feet of the earth a better place. Sometime I actually do.

Whether or not it is right or nice or polite is one thing but as far as I can see it's basically a statement which provokes an argument about the world and our role in it. I think there's not alot wrong with thinking your job might be more worthy than someone elses, better than thinking it's shit and you've wasted your life or something anyway.

That said this goes back to the old and complicated chestnut about improving the world being about millions of goals intertwined and working together etc.

(And then they all lez up)

to someone with a blocked bog, professional shit-shovellers are worthy
ppl indeed

imagine a world where the jobs you might think are reprehensible/worthless are abolished on a workable local/national basis of govt. control, then think about the possible structural consequences to your society
(eg the military, weapons industry, non-eco-friendly power generators, etc)
ie it might be a fair cop but society's to blame

and even if yr society wouldn't fall apart without them there are plenty of occupations which might be seen as 'valuable' because concerned with the stuff that appears once you've got the physical basics sorted & then attend to aesthetics + upper layers of maslow hierarchy:
- fashion designers/models/reporters
- professional sports ppl
- artists (including musicians)

or are also correlated/parasitical consequences of institutions/functions which are valuable just colliding with basic aspects individual psychology:
- 'human interest' tabloid journos
- celebrity trash mags
(both could be seen as hard-to-avoid side-effects of having a free press)

the jobs i have most prejudice about (apart from a couple of the above haha) are what i call 'placebo jobs', eg:
- certain managerial/financial/advertising 'increase yr efficiency' consultancy types
- alternative health/cure-your-cancer-with-yoga practitioners, especially ones who work only with private upper-middle class 'clients'
- financial sector/stock market 'fund managers' or whatever

these seem to be largely immune to any kind of 'effectiveness' test, so its really not clear whether they make any difference to anyone other than the ppl who get paid for doing them

but i suspect this discussion ultimately points towards the same kind of swamp as the 'we're all shit for not giving every spare penny to charity instead of buying CD's/mags/theatre tickets/etc' worldview

why isn't this the same kind of argument-structure as that of spending choices being self-serving rather than altruistic?

(hah reason i think its a swamp is that if we gave all our money to charity our economy would collapse and we'd ALL BE OUT OF OUR WORTHLESS JOBS)

Having said that, there is worth in every job. When I first came to London I found it, despite class systems, a pretty egalitarian place to live because even working in a shop gave a person enough money to pay for themselves. That's changed with the erosion of certain kinds of local trade and many things like housing and later/higher education becoming privileges as opposed to rights. Nick's staying with me at the moment and we've been talking about London avarice and how greed gives people aspirations that are shallow but also cruel: to get rich for doing fuck-all purely to finance being a complete asshole, telling everyone to fuck off at the first possible opportunity (cue Harry Enfield 'Brummies' sketch).