See also: Bullshit Jobs

If you really look into stuff like featherbedding, it seems (to me at least) that it’s just a propaganda word for populists. It would be easy to convince someone that others are making more money due to featherbedding, meanwhile never discussing the worth of the work this specific someone is doing. In reality, I’d estimate over 80% of all paid work done today is some kind of this so called featherbedding.

I’ve always been a big fan of a variation of this for hiring for skilled entry-level jobs, though it is hit-and-miss getting management on board.

Specifically, the process and reasoning is that, in many cases, a new hire is not a good company fit either for personality, work ethic, or skill requirement reasons, so hiring just enough workers almost always ends in there still being not enough. Instead, I find that hiring a surplus of temp-to-hire people allows you to select from a larger candidate pool, then only bring on permanently the people that make the best fit from that group.

It costs slightly more up front, but eliminates prolonged manpower shortages and lengthy on boarding, which often cost more over time, and instead of that money going directly to waste, it is “wasted” on temporarily employing people that might otherwise have remained jobless for those 90 days.

In other words, management knows your job is bullshit and that is the exact reason for your job.