It's not just that the person would be expensive. Systems like that require system specific knowledge. So it's possible that it would take an outsider 3 months of study to get to the point where they can fix an issue properly in 5 minutes.

You can't make a baby in 1 month with 9 mothers. Some tasks just have an upfront cost and SOME IT automation jobs are like that.

And yes, you can try and do bodge job after bodge job "just to keep it going". And that works for some time. But eventually the small mistakes end up causing large outages. And then you need someone that can piece together how the small issues cause big outages.

Superiors not understanding what the job entails helps. Superior says do task A. Old guy not too computer savvy takes a long time to do task A. Of guy retires and a new young girl gets the role. Superior says do task A. New young girl does it in a few minutes and has extra time. I've run into that a lot.

Sometimes those jobs that can be automated are already. At a previous job a coworker had been asked to prep a weekly report. When he took it on, this would take him half a day. I wanted to work on some excel macro skills so I worked with him to figure out what was needed. Wrote an ugly ass macro that worked for what was needed. I told him in no uncertain terms he should not tell anyone about the time savings. He should use it as he sees fit.

Same job different person. HR business partner called me into her office. Had an excel file open. Ultimately what they were asking was for a simple formatting issue. I'm talking like merge and center or using the format painter. A couple times. It took her longer to explain what she needed than it took to "fix" it. She exclaimed that it probably would have taken her hours to figure that out... there were also salaries on the spreadsheet...

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.

You mean like manual work that can be automated?

I'll say this, as an engineer who's worked closely with the brass tacks, a lot of the time when new directors or c level people are brought in, they want to own a space. There was a solution existing prior to them, because the company already existed before they joined. But no one wants to be the guy who supports the previous ideas (maintenance on an engine isn't as sexy as designing it) because the idea doesn't have their branding. They want to be seen as bold/innovative, etc. So they make some calls and they find a solution that promises everything they have and more. If the new solution is a success, their position is cemented, they are now a stakeholder in the company. Sales guy is going to sell his ass off, maybe the workforce has to be repurposed (need more expertise in new fields), etc. All this creates unnecessary work for people with real jobs just because a boss wants it. In the end, the new director/c level can say, "wow, this was great, look at how our metrics have improved, all thanks to me!" Despite the fact that they weren't given all the features they were promised, or they didn't hire/train specialized engineers to truly own the new solution. Or maybe the solution isn't very effective. A lot of the time it's mostly politics. People are trying to get headlines just like politicians so they can keep climbing the ladder.

The way you're describing "bullshit" jobs doesn't exist, there are no jobs that are inherently, always bullshit. There's just bullshit work, and a lot of people who's job it is to do bullshit work