Jobs, sociology and bread scientists

Almost without exception, most of us who participate or have participated of the workforce, try to find meaning in whatever it is that we are doing. This is to say, that there is a reason beyond the income generation, for you or me to perform a duty, to work a job. Of course, we can without much effort think up of important jobs that bring a lot of value to society, like teaching for example, but the disconnection is to think not only that all jobs matter, but that only the jobs that matter get the high salaries.

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Of course we could be talking about extremes, and get lost in those outliers, but for the sake of being a little more concise with my point, i'll stick to some very easy examples. An affluent man or woman with a corporate position in human resources, would probably be making ten times if not more than someone who works for the city picking up trash. However, if all HR managerial personnel were to quit, the company would probably adapt to their absence and survive just as well. However, how many days would it take for a city to descend into chaos if all trash remained uncollected? just a couple of weeks?

Now, the complexity of our organizational systems make it to where it's necessary to add layers of control, in order to optimize, if you will, collaboration at a bigger scale. However, more often times than not, these layered positions within our organizations and corporations, bring little to no value, and resemble somewhat comical redundancies. I for one, one time held a job where I was the assistant, to the assistant, to the assistant to the purchasing manager, and yes, that is not a parody.

To bring it back to how I started this little mental exploration, I will say this: I did find myself attempting to justify the purpose on being the assistant of the assistant, of the assistant of the purchasing manager, and maybe for a split second believed that my position was necessary.

It's very interesting for me to imagine a future where most jobs will probably be redundant do-nothing positions. The kind of jobs that need no replacement, because automation actually does the needed tasks, and us humans stick to weaving layers of fat to justify hilarious titles in jobs that really don't need to exist.

After all, what would we ever do without bread scientists? I could not imagine a more chaotic world.