The Jobs Program: How Big Corporations Creates Meaningless Work
April, 2024
I spend most of my days at Google updating reports that serve no real purpose, filling a hole that was dug exclusively so I could fill it. This isn't incompetence or oversight—it's the logical endpoint of what happens when corporations become so large and profitable that their primary function shifts from producing value to maintaining power through employment.
The entire corporate real estate function at Google, where I work, feels less like a business unit and more like a jobs program designed to build political influence. We employ thousands of upper-middle-class professionals, pump millions into local economies through unnecessary capital projects, and create elaborate processes to justify our existence. The carbon footprint I'm supposedly hired to mitigate? Much of it exists only because of the vast real estate empire Google maintains—far beyond what's needed for its actual mission.
This isn't unique to Google or even to tech companies. It's the natural evolution of capitalism when companies become too successful: they transform from value-creating enterprises into employment-maintaining bureaucracies. The real product isn't search results or advertising revenue—it's the political and social capital that comes from being a major employer in dozens of congressional districts and cities around the world.
My colleagues seem genuinely puzzled when I express frustration with this arrangement. They've internalized the mythology so completely that they can't see the absurdity. They derive satisfaction from brand prestige, from wielding tiny amounts of power, from the free meals and the illusion of importance. They update their LinkedIn profiles with pride, believing they're part of something meaningful because the company logo carries weight at dinner parties.
The tragedy isn't that these jobs exist—it's that they trap intelligent, capable people in a pantomime of productivity. Every day, thousands of brilliant minds across corporate America spend their energy on tasks that add no value to society, solve no real problems, create nothing of lasting worth. We've built a system where some of our best-educated, most-resourced citizens spend their careers essentially playing elaborate games of corporate make-believe.
The sustainability theater is perhaps the most cynical aspect. I was hired as an expert in environmental impact reduction, brought in with fanfare about Google's commitment to fighting climate change. In reality, my role is to create reports that make our wasteful practices appear efficient, to find ways to marginally improve systems that shouldn't exist in the first place. It's like being hired to make a coal plant burn slightly cleaner instead of asking why we need the coal plant at all.
The feedback loops reinforce themselves. Executives need large teams to justify their compensation. Those teams need work to justify their existence. That work requires oversight, which requires more managers, which requires more reports, which requires more analysts. Before long, you have entire divisions whose primary output is the meetings and documents that justify having entire divisions.
My recent performance review illuminated this perfectly. Despite spending most of my time on meaningless tasks, I received 115% of my target bonus—the largest my manager had ever seen. The 360 feedback praised my leadership, my strategic thinking, my ability to navigate complex stakeholder relationships. What none of it mentioned was actual value created, problems solved, or impact made. I'm being rewarded for playing the game well, not for contributing anything real.
This extends beyond individual psychology to societal impact. These jobs programs concentrate wealth in already-wealthy urban areas, driving up housing costs and displacing lower-income residents. They create a class of workers entirely dependent on corporate largesse, afraid to bite the hand that feeds them even when that hand is actively making the world worse. They siphon talent away from startups, nonprofits, and government agencies that might actually solve problems.
The political implications are even more troubling. Companies like Google don't maintain these bloated workforces out of charity—they're building political moats. Every unnecessary employee is a voter who depends on the company's continued success. Every capital project is a local official who won't ask hard questions. Every jobs announcement is a politician who'll vote for favorable regulations.
We've essentially recreated the company town, but distributed across the globe and dressed in the language of innovation and progress. Instead of coal miners dependent on the company store, we have software engineers dependent on stock options. Instead of factory workers voting for the boss's chosen candidate, we have product managers who genuinely believe their company's interests align with society's.
The waste is staggering. Not just the direct costs—the salaries, benefits, and office space for unnecessary roles—but the opportunity cost. Imagine if the thousands of people currently updating pointless reports were instead teaching, building affordable housing, developing sustainable technologies, or solving actual problems. Imagine if the billions spent on corporate bureaucracy went to infrastructure, education, or climate adaptation.
But the system persists because it serves everyone except society. Executives get their empires. Employees get their comfortable lifestyles. Politicians get their stable employment numbers. Shareholders get their returns, subsidized by tax breaks for all those jobs created. The only losers are the public, who foot the bill through tax incentives, environmental degradation, and the slow decay of productive capitalism into extractive bureaucracy.
My own complicity isn't lost on me. I cash the checks. I attend the meetings. I produce the reports that no one reads. I've become part of the very system I critique, trapped by the same golden handcuffs that keep my colleagues docile. The salary is too good, the alternatives too uncertain, the exit too difficult to navigate.
This is how systems perpetuate themselves—not through force but through comfort. We're not imprisoned; we're sedated. We're not oppressed; we're bought. The corporate jobs program doesn't need guards or walls. It just needs to make the cage comfortable enough that we stop noticing the bars.
The solution isn't individual—it's systemic. We need tax policies that penalize bloat rather than reward it. We need antitrust enforcement that prevents companies from growing so large they become quasi-governmental. We need cultural shifts that value real contribution over prestigious association. We need to stop celebrating job creation for its own sake and start asking what those jobs actually do.
Until then, I'll keep updating my meaningless reports, attending my purposeless meetings, playing my part in the elaborate theater that modern corporate work has become. Not because I believe in it, but because I, like millions of others, have been successfully captured by a system designed to neutralize dissent through comfort.
The hole exists so we can fill it. We fill it so we can justify our existence. Our existence justifies the hole. Round and round we go, producing nothing but the appearance of productivity, solving nothing but the problem of what to do with ourselves, creating nothing but the illusion that all this motion means something.
This is the corporate jobs program: not a bug but a feature, not inefficiency but strategy, not waste but power. It's how big tech and big business maintain control—not by producing value but by producing dependence. And it works perfectly, as long as we keep pretending it doesn't.
April, 2024
I spend most of my days at Google updating reports that serve no real purpose, filling a hole that was dug exclusively so I could fill it. This isn't incompetence or oversight—it's the logical endpoint of what happens when corporations become so large and profitable that their primary function shifts from producing value to maintaining power through employment.
The entire corporate real estate function at Google, where I work, feels less like a business unit and more like a jobs program designed to build political influence. We employ thousands of upper-middle-class professionals, pump millions into local economies through unnecessary capital projects, and create elaborate processes to justify our existence. The carbon footprint I'm supposedly hired to mitigate? Much of it exists only because of the vast real estate empire Google maintains—far beyond what's needed for its actual mission.
This isn't unique to Google or even to tech companies. It's the natural evolution of capitalism when companies become too successful: they transform from value-creating enterprises into employment-maintaining bureaucracies. The real product isn't search results or advertising revenue—it's the political and social capital that comes from being a major employer in dozens of congressional districts and cities around the world.
My colleagues seem genuinely puzzled when I express frustration with this arrangement. They've internalized the mythology so completely that they can't see the absurdity. They derive satisfaction from brand prestige, from wielding tiny amounts of power, from the free meals and the illusion of importance. They update their LinkedIn profiles with pride, believing they're part of something meaningful because the company logo carries weight at dinner parties.
The tragedy isn't that these jobs exist—it's that they trap intelligent, capable people in a pantomime of productivity. Every day, thousands of brilliant minds across corporate America spend their energy on tasks that add no value to society, solve no real problems, create nothing of lasting worth. We've built a system where some of our best-educated, most-resourced citizens spend their careers essentially playing elaborate games of corporate make-believe.
The sustainability theater is perhaps the most cynical aspect. I was hired as an expert in environmental impact reduction, brought in with fanfare about Google's commitment to fighting climate change. In reality, my role is to create reports that make our wasteful practices appear efficient, to find ways to marginally improve systems that shouldn't exist in the first place. It's like being hired to make a coal plant burn slightly cleaner instead of asking why we need the coal plant at all.
The feedback loops reinforce themselves. Executives need large teams to justify their compensation. Those teams need work to justify their existence. That work requires oversight, which requires more managers, which requires more reports, which requires more analysts. Before long, you have entire divisions whose primary output is the meetings and documents that justify having entire divisions.
My recent performance review illuminated this perfectly. Despite spending most of my time on meaningless tasks, I received 115% of my target bonus—the largest my manager had ever seen. The 360 feedback praised my leadership, my strategic thinking, my ability to navigate complex stakeholder relationships. What none of it mentioned was actual value created, problems solved, or impact made. I'm being rewarded for playing the game well, not for contributing anything real.
This extends beyond individual psychology to societal impact. These jobs programs concentrate wealth in already-wealthy urban areas, driving up housing costs and displacing lower-income residents. They create a class of workers entirely dependent on corporate largesse, afraid to bite the hand that feeds them even when that hand is actively making the world worse. They siphon talent away from startups, nonprofits, and government agencies that might actually solve problems.
The political implications are even more troubling. Companies like Google don't maintain these bloated workforces out of charity—they're building political moats. Every unnecessary employee is a voter who depends on the company's continued success. Every capital project is a local official who won't ask hard questions. Every jobs announcement is a politician who'll vote for favorable regulations.
We've essentially recreated the company town, but distributed across the globe and dressed in the language of innovation and progress. Instead of coal miners dependent on the company store, we have software engineers dependent on stock options. Instead of factory workers voting for the boss's chosen candidate, we have product managers who genuinely believe their company's interests align with society's.
The waste is staggering. Not just the direct costs—the salaries, benefits, and office space for unnecessary roles—but the opportunity cost. Imagine if the thousands of people currently updating pointless reports were instead teaching, building affordable housing, developing sustainable technologies, or solving actual problems. Imagine if the billions spent on corporate bureaucracy went to infrastructure, education, or climate adaptation.
But the system persists because it serves everyone except society. Executives get their empires. Employees get their comfortable lifestyles. Politicians get their stable employment numbers. Shareholders get their returns, subsidized by tax breaks for all those jobs created. The only losers are the public, who foot the bill through tax incentives, environmental degradation, and the slow decay of productive capitalism into extractive bureaucracy.
My own complicity isn't lost on me. I cash the checks. I attend the meetings. I produce the reports that no one reads. I've become part of the very system I critique, trapped by the same golden handcuffs that keep my colleagues docile. The salary is too good, the alternatives too uncertain, the exit too difficult to navigate.
This is how systems perpetuate themselves—not through force but through comfort. We're not imprisoned; we're sedated. We're not oppressed; we're bought. The corporate jobs program doesn't need guards or walls. It just needs to make the cage comfortable enough that we stop noticing the bars.
The solution isn't individual—it's systemic. We need tax policies that penalize bloat rather than reward it. We need antitrust enforcement that prevents companies from growing so large they become quasi-governmental. We need cultural shifts that value real contribution over prestigious association. We need to stop celebrating job creation for its own sake and start asking what those jobs actually do.
Until then, I'll keep updating my meaningless reports, attending my purposeless meetings, playing my part in the elaborate theater that modern corporate work has become. Not because I believe in it, but because I, like millions of others, have been successfully captured by a system designed to neutralize dissent through comfort.
The hole exists so we can fill it. We fill it so we can justify our existence. Our existence justifies the hole. Round and round we go, producing nothing but the appearance of productivity, solving nothing but the problem of what to do with ourselves, creating nothing but the illusion that all this motion means something.
This is the corporate jobs program: not a bug but a feature, not inefficiency but strategy, not waste but power. It's how big tech and big business maintain control—not by producing value but by producing dependence. And it works perfectly, as long as we keep pretending it doesn't.
April, 2024
I spend most of my days at Google updating reports that serve no real purpose, filling a hole that was dug exclusively so I could fill it. This isn't incompetence or oversight—it's the logical endpoint of what happens when corporations become so large and profitable that their primary function shifts from producing value to maintaining power through employment.
The entire corporate real estate function at Google, where I work, feels less like a business unit and more like a jobs program designed to build political influence. We employ thousands of upper-middle-class professionals, pump millions into local economies through unnecessary capital projects, and create elaborate processes to justify our existence. The carbon footprint I'm supposedly hired to mitigate? Much of it exists only because of the vast real estate empire Google maintains—far beyond what's needed for its actual mission.
This isn't unique to Google or even to tech companies. It's the natural evolution of capitalism when companies become too successful: they transform from value-creating enterprises into employment-maintaining bureaucracies. The real product isn't search results or advertising revenue—it's the political and social capital that comes from being a major employer in dozens of congressional districts and cities around the world.
My colleagues seem genuinely puzzled when I express frustration with this arrangement. They've internalized the mythology so completely that they can't see the absurdity. They derive satisfaction from brand prestige, from wielding tiny amounts of power, from the free meals and the illusion of importance. They update their LinkedIn profiles with pride, believing they're part of something meaningful because the company logo carries weight at dinner parties.
The tragedy isn't that these jobs exist—it's that they trap intelligent, capable people in a pantomime of productivity. Every day, thousands of brilliant minds across corporate America spend their energy on tasks that add no value to society, solve no real problems, create nothing of lasting worth. We've built a system where some of our best-educated, most-resourced citizens spend their careers essentially playing elaborate games of corporate make-believe.
The sustainability theater is perhaps the most cynical aspect. I was hired as an expert in environmental impact reduction, brought in with fanfare about Google's commitment to fighting climate change. In reality, my role is to create reports that make our wasteful practices appear efficient, to find ways to marginally improve systems that shouldn't exist in the first place. It's like being hired to make a coal plant burn slightly cleaner instead of asking why we need the coal plant at all.
The feedback loops reinforce themselves. Executives need large teams to justify their compensation. Those teams need work to justify their existence. That work requires oversight, which requires more managers, which requires more reports, which requires more analysts. Before long, you have entire divisions whose primary output is the meetings and documents that justify having entire divisions.
My recent performance review illuminated this perfectly. Despite spending most of my time on meaningless tasks, I received 115% of my target bonus—the largest my manager had ever seen. The 360 feedback praised my leadership, my strategic thinking, my ability to navigate complex stakeholder relationships. What none of it mentioned was actual value created, problems solved, or impact made. I'm being rewarded for playing the game well, not for contributing anything real.
This extends beyond individual psychology to societal impact. These jobs programs concentrate wealth in already-wealthy urban areas, driving up housing costs and displacing lower-income residents. They create a class of workers entirely dependent on corporate largesse, afraid to bite the hand that feeds them even when that hand is actively making the world worse. They siphon talent away from startups, nonprofits, and government agencies that might actually solve problems.
The political implications are even more troubling. Companies like Google don't maintain these bloated workforces out of charity—they're building political moats. Every unnecessary employee is a voter who depends on the company's continued success. Every capital project is a local official who won't ask hard questions. Every jobs announcement is a politician who'll vote for favorable regulations.
We've essentially recreated the company town, but distributed across the globe and dressed in the language of innovation and progress. Instead of coal miners dependent on the company store, we have software engineers dependent on stock options. Instead of factory workers voting for the boss's chosen candidate, we have product managers who genuinely believe their company's interests align with society's.
The waste is staggering. Not just the direct costs—the salaries, benefits, and office space for unnecessary roles—but the opportunity cost. Imagine if the thousands of people currently updating pointless reports were instead teaching, building affordable housing, developing sustainable technologies, or solving actual problems. Imagine if the billions spent on corporate bureaucracy went to infrastructure, education, or climate adaptation.
But the system persists because it serves everyone except society. Executives get their empires. Employees get their comfortable lifestyles. Politicians get their stable employment numbers. Shareholders get their returns, subsidized by tax breaks for all those jobs created. The only losers are the public, who foot the bill through tax incentives, environmental degradation, and the slow decay of productive capitalism into extractive bureaucracy.
My own complicity isn't lost on me. I cash the checks. I attend the meetings. I produce the reports that no one reads. I've become part of the very system I critique, trapped by the same golden handcuffs that keep my colleagues docile. The salary is too good, the alternatives too uncertain, the exit too difficult to navigate.
This is how systems perpetuate themselves—not through force but through comfort. We're not imprisoned; we're sedated. We're not oppressed; we're bought. The corporate jobs program doesn't need guards or walls. It just needs to make the cage comfortable enough that we stop noticing the bars.
The solution isn't individual—it's systemic. We need tax policies that penalize bloat rather than reward it. We need antitrust enforcement that prevents companies from growing so large they become quasi-governmental. We need cultural shifts that value real contribution over prestigious association. We need to stop celebrating job creation for its own sake and start asking what those jobs actually do.
Until then, I'll keep updating my meaningless reports, attending my purposeless meetings, playing my part in the elaborate theater that modern corporate work has become. Not because I believe in it, but because I, like millions of others, have been successfully captured by a system designed to neutralize dissent through comfort.
The hole exists so we can fill it. We fill it so we can justify our existence. Our existence justifies the hole. Round and round we go, producing nothing but the appearance of productivity, solving nothing but the problem of what to do with ourselves, creating nothing but the illusion that all this motion means something.
This is the corporate jobs program: not a bug but a feature, not inefficiency but strategy, not waste but power. It's how big tech and big business maintain control—not by producing value but by producing dependence. And it works perfectly, as long as we keep pretending it doesn't.
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