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Antiwork

Anyone else have a dislike for “knowledge economy” jobs?

I don´t mean traditional jobs around knowledge such as teaching, science etc. But this specific nineties/noughties invention of consultants, weird staff functions nobody really understands, all kinds of modern media jobs, and the culture of all this: basically inexperienced people with a theoretical degree waltzing in through the back door, telling real workers how to do their jobs etc.? The insane production of text, graphs, ideas, presentations that eat gigantic amounts of time and money all of which the core productive departments have to pay for? All those abstract jobs they invented to park middle class kids after the real work was outsourced to Asia? The bad thing for me is, this was THE growth sector when I was at workforce entry age, and many of my peers went down that route and got really succesful. I wasn´t any dumber than them, but I never quite understood what the point…


I don´t mean traditional jobs around knowledge such as teaching, science etc. But this specific nineties/noughties invention of consultants, weird staff functions nobody really understands, all kinds of modern media jobs, and the culture of all this: basically inexperienced people with a theoretical degree waltzing in through the back door, telling real workers how to do their jobs etc.? The insane production of text, graphs, ideas, presentations that eat gigantic amounts of time and money all of which the core productive departments have to pay for? All those abstract jobs they invented to park middle class kids after the real work was outsourced to Asia?

The bad thing for me is, this was THE growth sector when I was at workforce entry age, and many of my peers went down that route and got really succesful. I wasn´t any dumber than them, but I never quite understood what the point was with A LOT of those jobs, and I couldn´t fake it either. So I guess that was that with a cozy government consultancy contract for life (technically, I could have). I guess to be happy with this modern type of economy, it is a requirement to be satisfied with the fact that the job exists, and derive meaning from that. I never could do that, and I am not even proud of it. It probably didn´t serve me well, but here I am: I just cannot take much of that as serious as you have to act in order to hold such a position. Please note I do not blame or disdain anyone who does that. I am just personally 100% unable to get rid of the feeling that in a wholesome world, 90% of those jobs wouldn´t exist, and that is just written all over my forehead when I job interview.

Thoughts? I do consider it´s just me being a jerk!

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