I think optimizer-type jobs are a modest subset of all useful or non-bullshit office jobs. Many call more for creativity, or reliably executing an easy task. In some jobs, basically all the most critical tasks are new and dissimilar to previous tasks, so there’s not much to optimize. There’s no quick feedback loop. It’s more about how reliably you can analyze the new situation correctly.
I had an optimizing job once, setting up computers over the summer in college. It was fun. Programming is like that too. I agree that if optimizing is a big part of the job, it’s probably not bullshit.
But over time I’ve come to think that even though occasional programming is the most fun part of my job, the inscrutable parts that you have to do in a vacuum are probably more important.
I mostly agree with you, though I noticed if a job is mostly made of constantly changing tasks that are new and dissimilar to previous tasks, there is some kind of efficiency problem up the pipeline. Its the old Janitor Problem in a different guise; a janitor at a building needs to perform a thousand small dissimilar tasks, inefficiently and often in impractical order, because the building itself was inefficiently designed. Hence why we still haven’t found a way to automate a janitor, because for that we would need to redesign the very concept of a “building”, and for that we would need to optimize how we build infrastructure, and for that we would have to redesign our cities from scratch… etc, until you find out we would need to build an entire new civilization from ground up to, just to replace one janitor with a robot. it still hints at a gross inefficiency in the system, just one not easily fixed.
I think optimizer-type jobs are a modest subset of all useful or non-bullshit office jobs. Many call more for creativity, or reliably executing an easy task. In some jobs, basically all the most critical tasks are new and dissimilar to previous tasks, so there’s not much to optimize. There’s no quick feedback loop. It’s more about how reliably you can analyze the new situation correctly.
I had an optimizing job once, setting up computers over the summer in college. It was fun. Programming is like that too. I agree that if optimizing is a big part of the job, it’s probably not bullshit.
But over time I’ve come to think that even though occasional programming is the most fun part of my job, the inscrutable parts that you have to do in a vacuum are probably more important.
I mostly agree with you, though I noticed if a job is mostly made of constantly changing tasks that are new and dissimilar to previous tasks, there is some kind of efficiency problem up the pipeline. Its the old Janitor Problem in a different guise; a janitor at a building needs to perform a thousand small dissimilar tasks, inefficiently and often in impractical order, because the building itself was inefficiently designed. Hence why we still haven’t found a way to automate a janitor, because for that we would need to redesign the very concept of a “building”, and for that we would need to optimize how we build infrastructure, and for that we would have to redesign our cities from scratch… etc, until you find out we would need to build an entire new civilization from ground up to, just to replace one janitor with a robot.
it still hints at a gross inefficiency in the system, just one not easily fixed.