Sinecure

By Deane Barker • • tags: definition •
Updates
This content has been updated 2 times since it was first published. The last update happened .

Definition: a position or office that requires little or no work but provides a salary

This is sometimes unethical – a no-show job, for example – but is sometimes a way to legally bestow a necessary title or position that someone needs to perform a function.

For example, someone might be “employed” by a company for $1/year in order to be legally considered an employee to perform some role.

In other cases, this is neither corrupt nor perfunctory, but is simply an example of lazy hiring and management.

Why I Looked It Up

In an article called Saving the Liberal Arts, David Perell wrote:

Without the incentives to focus on teaching, the market for professors self selects for sinecure. Professors can slack because they are among the only performers who have a guaranteed captive audience.

Update

Added on

I was reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin:

His stable services were merely a sinecure, and consisted simply in a daily care and inspection, and directing an under-servant in his duties.

Update

Added on

In Information Hunters, the book refers to a group of people known as “The Office of Soporific Sinecures,” refering to their tendency to sleepwalk through their cushy jobs.

Links both to and from this – Soporific September 11, 2022
From the Latin “sopor” which means “deep sleep.”
Links from this – Uncle Tom's Cabin December 20, 2022
This is a novel from 1851 designed to reveal the horrors of slavery. And it worked – it caused outrage across the United States and pushed the country toward the Civil War. The author, Harriet Beecher Stowe, was prompted to write the novel by the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which...
Links from this – Information Hunters: When Librarians, Soldiers, and Spies Banded Together in World War II Europe October 25, 2023
This is a history book that answers the question: what did librarians do to help the war effort during World War II? Well, a lot it turns out. They amassed foreign periodicals and scoured them for intelligence information They captured and cataloged information left behind in German facilities...