Bullshit Jobs is one of those "just so" stories that seems truthy but doesn't stand up to any critical evaluation. Companies are obviously not hesitant to lay off unproductive workers. While in large enterprises there is some level of empire building where managers hire more workers than necessary just to inflate their own importance, in the long run those businesses fall to leaner competitors.

> in the long run those businesses fall to leaner competitors

This is not true at all. You can find plenty of examples going either way but it’s far from truth from being a universal reality

> Companies are obviously not hesitant to lay off unproductive workers.

Companies are obviously not hesitant to lay off anyone, especially for cost saving. It is interesting how you think that people are laid off because they’re unproductive.

It's only after decades of experience and hindsight that you realize that a lot of the important work we spend our time on has extremely limited long-term value.

Maybe you're lucky enough to be doing cutting edge research or do something that really seriously impacts human beings, but I've done plenty of "mission critical right fucking now" work that a week from now (or even hours from now, when I worked for a content marketing business) is beyond irrelevant. It's an amazing thing watching marketing types set money on fire burning super expensive developer time (but salaried, so they discount the cost to zero) just to make their campaigns like 2-3% more efficient.

I've intentionally sat on plenty of projects that somebody was pushing really hard for because they thought it was the absolute right necessary thing at the time and the stakeholder realized was pointless/worthless after a good long shit and shower. This one move has saved literally man years of work to be done and IMO is the #1 most important skill people need to learn ("when to just do nothing").