After buying Twitter for a hefty $44 billion and renaming it to X, Elon Musk fired 80% of the company’s workforce.
Musk’s firing was “one of the hardest” decisions he has ever made and was not “fun at all.” This event sparked controversy in the business landscape.
Even with this large cut, X remains functioning well and maintaining the same level of productivity as before. This cut revealed that 80 percent of the employees at X were not needed to run the company.
In the past year, X isn’t the only company that laid off a large number of employees, but is still functioning the same as prior to the cuts. Some examples include, T-Mobile, a telecommunications services company, laid off 5,000 US jobs; CVS, a pharmacy giant, fired 5,000 jobs to cut costs; and Epic Games, a video game and software development company, got rid of about 830 employees.
These events showcased the countless number of unnecessary employment in organizations in America.
One prevalent example of an inessential job in numerous industries is the middle manager. Their job is to spend their time supervising people who don’t need any supervision.
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fter peeking over the person’s shoulder, these middle managers give more work to the person being supervised, by wasting their time with unnecessary paperwork, tasks, and objectives.
Are these pointless jobs really helping the organization they are working for, or are they just dead weight on the company or organization?
Janene Murphy, a business teacher, explained how these senseless jobs might be counterproductive for a company. “By paying the wages for people that do meaningless work in a company, companies are losing profit for themselves,” Murphy stated.
Senior Achinteya Jayaram, who plans on pursuing business, agreed with Murphy but also highlighted its positive impact on the economy. “If you have five people doing a job that requires one person, it makes sense to cut four people since the company pays less wages,” Jayaram expressed. “But at the same time, a lot of these useless jobs help the economy run.”
Murphy described its benefits to the economy. “From an economic standpoint, we got one more person who is employed, who is making money, and by making money, they are fueling their dollars into the economy, and they may buy stuff they might not otherwise buy,” Murphy expressed.
On one end of the spectrum, these jobs are hurting a organization’s profitability, but on the other end, it is helping economic growth. Ultimately, this topic is complex and will continue to spark controversy and discussion.
