Businesses are in it for the money, employees tend to be one of the larger expenses, so maintaining some bullshit positions that would cost them money doesn’t make fiscal sense, so what’s up?
Businesses are in it for the money, employees tend to be one of the larger expenses, so maintaining some bullshit positions that would cost them money doesn’t make fiscal sense, so what’s up?
Jobs that exist exclusively for the sake of jobs really only exist in places of government (or caused by government). Otherwise, as you mentioned, the profit motive would kick in.
But what you’re mainly describing here is something different - it’s jobs that exist because someone (possibly many people) are bad at their job. Those unclear job openings? Often, it’s because Bob is leaving, and we need someone to replace him. But no one really knows what Bob does, or how to find another Bob, or even what would happen if they didn’t have a Bob. Or a PHB gets lofty ideas about what Bob’s replacement should do better, with no connection to reality. Or HR interferes with what the engineers say they actually need, and how to screen for that.
The people that can literally be replaced by an Excel macro? Their work is valuable, and often something the business needs. It was probably done on paper a long time ago. At some point it got moved onto a computer, and a process was developed. This person has probably been doing it reliably for 20 years. No one wants to mess with it. Or a really big one, the corporate bureaucracy has stopped everyone that’s tried to make it better.
I can attest that I’ve repeatedly been put on bullshit busywork projects because of managers that were completely detached from reality. Sure, they may sound cool, but it’s immediately obvious to anyone else that it will never actually be used. Or they themselves want to check a box on their own review with higher managers to say they accomplished something, even if they really didn’t.