Do you believe in "Bullshit Jobs"?
Should I finish a book on the subject?
Since starting this Optionality work, I’ve had more than one person tell me I had to read Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber. Have you read it? Did you finish it? What did you think of it? Have you had a bullshit job?
Graeber defines “a form of paid employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence even though, as part of the conditions of employment, the employee feels obliged to pretend that this is not the case."
What kinds of jobs are BS, according to him?
Well, they range across the traditional corporate hierarchy, from receptionists to in-house lawyers. They include people hired to make customers feel good but not necessarily solve their problems, from store greeters to airline desk staff. Sometimes his judgment is sweeping. “Middle management” is BS, as are telemarketers, PR specialists, and in-house magazine journalists.
I find his dismissal of some work as bullshit to be lacking in empathy, not just for the workers but also for customers. For example, I have to think that Walmart has store greeters because some of their customers love that human connection. and because providing that human touch is a differentiator for them. Because having a differentiator leads to better business outcomes. Is the greeter necessary to stock or sell or distribute the goods? No. Does it mean that the human touch is bullshit? Also no, IMO.
I also think sometimes it’s not that entire jobs are BS. It’s that you have a job that makes sense and parts of it are fulfilling and meaningful, and parts of it are BS. How that job got that way and how we could fix it is often beyond our pay grade and certainly beyond our control. So sometimes, we just shake our heads. But do we really feel that way about our entire job very often? Even when I was a receptionist or an administrative assistant or a middle manager, I didn’t necessarily feel the act of welcoming, organizing, and triaging for my bosses was BS start to finish.
Since he leans heavily on establishing a lot of work as BS to kick off his book, I’ve felt stymied in making progress reading it, but I’ve read enough about his work to know that I find some of his points deeply resonant.
Like: There’s this powerful dichotomy in this country…we valorize work (and suffering for our work) as a surrogate for our worth as a human, but then we treat workers with a sort of casual fatalism. I wonder how many people would be all that upset to be laid off from their jobs if they knew they would still have healthcare and their kids would be able to go to college? And: He offers universal basic income and flexible work that aligns with real work to be done as solutions that could allow us to be productive when called for and creative, even generative, at other times.
How can we support ourselves in that scenario? And who pays for it?
It’s a missing piece I wish more AI evangelists would explicitly address. When evangelists talk about AI taking on certain tasks and how that will free us up to all be more creative, they don’t always acknowledge that there might not be enough well-paying creative jobs to make that a reality for enough people in a society where your job provides the capacity to support your life (and to consume the goods our economy is based on).
Politicians across party lines are fond of referring to jobs as a necessity for people to have dignity. But dignity seems like a luxury if you’re not able to provide for your most basic needs. And once you get past the basics, how dignified is it to feel your job is BS?
We’re at an inflection point right now. Automation, globalization, AI-ification. If Bullshit jobs aren’t the answer, what is? And are we prepared to significantly reform how our economy works in order to allow people to do meaningful work, pursue creative endeavors, give appropriate care to loved ones, and even to rest sometimes?
I guess I end where I began; Are you familiar with this theory of “Bullshit Jobs?” Have you had one? And if you buy the premise, what could we do about it?
Love youe questions. I have not read the book. I think jobs are called jobs not hobbies because they essentially provide means to live our lives. Having just retired from being a workaholic for 30 years, I still work hars but not for money which is liberating - but had to cover life costs first. There is something to be learned from every job, but the bullshit part is being mistreated. Hope the book focuses too on the human bullshit that many people bring to otherwise respectable work.
Elisa, If you are in this deep, keep reading. My thoughts: Every job at every level offers opportunity to learn skills we may find useful in our kaleidoscope careers. I spent a summer working in a factory, using an ink dip pen with an ink that could withstand high temperatures marking small metal casings that would house electronics sent into space in airplanes and spacecraft. Does that sound like anything I do now? No. But I learned about the people around me doing assembly line jobs and how they found camaraderie, and their opportunities to learn about the products and potential promotions. I learned how they supported their families. I saw the dignity in work that I would never have seen in white collar jobs or newsrooms. Around me were immigrants from many countries, an array of races and religions with a variety of talents and interests and responsibilities on the line and at home. I could have looked at it as a B-S job–just a few months of summer work. But my father, a senior manager there, taught me otherwise. He stoked my curiosity even when I was bored with the task by asking about quality control (QC), what I had learned and who I met. Later as a journalist, I understood more about factory labor, unions vs. non-unions, raising families on minimum wages, single parents, and the new immigrant experience than my peers who coasted from college to newsrooms. Every opportunity to learn is valuable for the individual who does it with an open mind.