Not bollocks. Think about the value of a slightly less dirty floor for an hour. Now think about the value of a slightly less buggy website. Which one actually matters?
> Without the janitor the building doesn't last.
Janitors aren't carpenters or construction workers or architects or civil engineers. They're janitors.
Think about a skyscraper in Manhattan. Think about the many businesses employing a multitude of people within. Now think about how long they would be able to keep running if all the janitors left and if you couldn't get any more. You would have folk selling crack in the stairwells within the week and businesses folding within the month.
Also, as to your comparison, it strongly depends which business you are in. If you are running a building services company and your web designers quit, that might lose you some business. If your janitors quit, you are out of business. (edited to add - even if you are in a web design business, if you need a building to run the business from then the janitor will be a fundamental part of keeping the business afloat, unless you can get your web designers to also mop the floors and manage the security and maintenance. I have worked for a small media company in London where this was almost exactly the case, only there the CEO didn't expect it of the staff, but took over all janitorial duties himself as it was a small building and didn't take much time out of his day. He'd do most of his planning while cleaning.)
There is a truth behind the cliché of the chief monk being the guy with the brush sweeping up and there is good reason behind the cleaning days that are promoted by Hidesaburo Kagiyama as a management practice for Japanese companies, where the day starts with the CEO cleaning a toilet with their bare hands in front of their employees.
Here's an example of Hidesaburo Kagiyama visiting a Chinese University to explain and demonstrate his philosophy:
"When Kagiyama visited a university in China to clean the toilets with the students, the toilets were exactly as described above. The students held their breath and waited to see how Kagiyama would treat those filthy toilets. Under the gaze of the students, Kagiyama started pushing the pile of feces and urine deep into the toilet bowl with his bare hand and flushed it. He then looked back at the students quietly and said, “Now you clean this toilet.” In this way, he assigned the toilets to the students respectively. Looking at the example set by Kagiyama, the students could no longer back out. They set about to clean the toilets."
Hidesaburo Kagiyama is the president of Yellow Hat, a Japanese car parts supplier that takes just over a billion dollars (120 billion Yen) in yearly revenue.
> Think about a skyscraper in Manhattan. Think about the many businesses employing a multitude of people within. Now think about how long they would be able to keep running if all the janitors left and if you couldn't get any more. You would have folk selling crack in the stairwells within the week and businesses folding within the month.
Are you kidding me? If a bunch of janitors left, you'd replace them with another bunch. It's a low-skilled job which makes little difference at the margin.
You are confusing price with value. Water is much more common than the essential amino acids and costs much less and is far easier to replace, but food and water are both required to keep living.
> Without the janitor the building doesn't last.
Janitors aren't carpenters or construction workers or architects or civil engineers. They're janitors.