I think we need a category for people who do tasks that are created to decrease liability -- endless reports and trainings that no one cares about; and they create endless rules about what you can't do (top of the list, you can't fire anyone). All the money they spend on all those bullshit jobs could just be used to pay off lawsuits, if there were actually any.
Great article, Klaus! I enjoyed both Debt and Bullshit Jobs, even though there were problems in each, because both books are genuinely provocative and get you to understand that phenomena that we had assumed were just normal and the way life is, are in fact invented and likely pernicious.
I depart from Bullshit Jobs, though, when Graeber says it’s a phenomenon of capitalism. It’s not. The Soviets, famously, insisted that every person have a job. No stay-at-home moms for them! (Or early retirement, or people taking time off between college and work or during a midlife crisis to “find themselves” either.) The cynical Russian joke ran, “We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us.”
You can still see remnants of that system, in which there are way more workers than are necessary for the work that needs doing, in countries that used to be Communist like Czechia. You can’t imagine the layers of bureaucracy in situations where at most one worker could handle things. A trip to the main post office to pick up a package could take you all day because you would have to go to like eight different counters to conduct this simple transaction. (I used to beg people in the US never to send me a package, ever. Nothing could possibly be that important.)
Or, I once bought a dress for my BIL’s wedding at a fancy department store in Prague. I picked out a dress and handed it to a saleswoman. She sent it down a chute to a central processing area. I went downstairs and got in line. Someone in the processing area packaged up the dress and gave it to a cashier, who eventually rang up the purchase and handed over the dress and the receipt--which I had to wait in line to show to a checker to exit the store.
I think that bullshit jobs are a product of something else entirely--our deep-down feeling that everyone needs to be working hard, all the time. As a SAHM and housewife, I get this pushback all the time. People are really bugged that I don’t hold a paying job. In my case it’s social pressure, in the case of Americans with bullshit jobs it’s economic pressure, and in the case of people living under Communism it’s government force. But no matter the situation, we humans have a very tough time watching other people living at a slower pace, and so we set up systems to make it as difficult as possible to live that way.
I found Debt an infuriating read — Graeber was not a disciplined writer or thinker. Yet his surveys of anthropological literature were fascinating and eye-opening. And I’ve thought many times since reading it about one of the core conceits of Debt — that much of the confusion in modern life is the use of money (formerly reserved for trade with strangers) to accomplish what used to occur through free giving among kin and near kin.
I don’t know — maybe he’s like Freud: deeply insightful, but not someone to rely on for a coherent model.
2) You made the same error I made on a post once where I left in my parenthetical to finish without actually finishing. I feel better
3) Principal-agent is a perfect example of why economists should not be allowed to name things. YIKES. But misaligned incentives explain about 75% of the modern world.
4) The question of whether digital technology has actually provided benefits that outweigh the costs is a fascinating one. If I was not a lazy piece of shit I would do a four part series on this. Although since I enjoy plagiarizing you that may outweigh my inclination to sloth and I would do so. Was the drive to digitize everything actually beneficial? With a quarter century of hindsight I think you could add another 1,000 words just expanding on that.
5) I don’t know why you ever thought in a million years Freddie would pick this. But, if Scott Alexander’s Substack still exists in 2023 and is not brought down by the EApocalypse (I’m copyrighting that shit) this is a perfect candidate for his. First, he publishes many more. Second, they’re typically more like this, more concerned with thought provoking than just pure writer craft (not a knock on FdB’s winners, they’re just two totally different things). I think you would want to expand it though. Not just in what I mentioned in the last part but there seem to be a reallllllllly interesting thing here. I haven’t read his most recent book but I did read the ACX review of it and Freddie’s blogging on it. Your snippet on debt also seems to go along wiht it. David Graeber seemed to have the ability to grasp truths about the universe but he also seemed to - joke incoming - rely heavily on bullshit. I think f you actually read the other two (particularly debt) and minireview them there’s an interesting story there.
Like, Bullshit Jobs is obviously true. It’s so obviously true I almost find the discussion of it pointless. But - and I say this as someone with little respectf or economics as a discipline - this dude clearly has no ability to explain why. His relationship with rigorousness of thought seems loose at best. But the bulhit jobs phenomenon also seems like something that traditional social science disciplines would struggle with. Why? There’s an interesting contradiction there and I don’t fully understand it (and my thoughts here are super jumbled) but it’s something I want to read more about.
But I already think this is more interesting than half of last year’s reviews and I think this would make a great entry there.
I've read this, and Debt, and I think your final paragraph is excellent. He did seem to have a way of capturing something important and then doing a terrible job of proving it. When I read Bullshit Jobs one of the questions I was wondering was how it might relate to 'imposter syndrome', the feeling that everyone else belongs, and is doing a good job, unlike me who doesn't deserve to be here.
And recently I was thinking about the book again in relation to Twitter / Meta et al, firing so many staff, from a bullshit job perspective is this a good policy?
It's not particularly original, Jack Welch was doing this kind of thing in the 80s, and most of the Big 4 consultancies have a yearly 'up or out' strategy, I wonder if Graeber unwittingly gives them cover for this model?
A bit late to the party but here is my take : bullshit jobs don't exist, from the pov of the employer. They only exist from the pov of the employee who is unfulfilled by his job.
Take compliance. It can be framed as both important (companies should respect environmental regulations, banks should not launder money etc) and a box ticking exercise (if outcomes/behaviours don't fundamentally change). Which is it? A compliance officer may feel valueless. But a company will find even strict box ticking valuable as it will shield it (and its executives) from legal repercussions.
So compliance, useless or not? Depends who you ask. But if you're paid to do the job, believe me, someone finds it useful. It just may not be what you think ought to be valued.
Maybe this is a subspecies of "flunky" but another category of bullshit job is that of "fluffer" or "Squealer", the person whose job it is to justify management doing what it wants to do.
Much of corporate legal practice consists of coming up with convoluted rationalizations as to why management's schemes are somehow lawful. And, of course, the field of management consulting largely consists of figuring out what management wants to do, then feeding it back to them, neatly packaged in the latest corporate buzzwords so that management can say that they're only following outside advice.
"You need to pay yourselves bigger bonuses so you can attract and retain top talent!"
"We went up hired McKinsey (and paid them a king's ransom) and they told us that we have to pay ourselves bigger bonuses to attract and retain top talent!"
"David Graeber claimed that between 20% and 50% of workers are in “bullshit jobs” with no social value. But in research intended to test the claim, only about 5% of workers felt this way about their position. And contra Graeber’s claim that this is increasing over time, the percent of people who self-identify this way has fallen substantially over the past decade. Also, the jobs where people admit to this are the opposite of the ones Graeber pointed to. Obvious self-report bias is obvious."
I think we need a category for people who do tasks that are created to decrease liability -- endless reports and trainings that no one cares about; and they create endless rules about what you can't do (top of the list, you can't fire anyone). All the money they spend on all those bullshit jobs could just be used to pay off lawsuits, if there were actually any.
Great article, Klaus! I enjoyed both Debt and Bullshit Jobs, even though there were problems in each, because both books are genuinely provocative and get you to understand that phenomena that we had assumed were just normal and the way life is, are in fact invented and likely pernicious.
I depart from Bullshit Jobs, though, when Graeber says it’s a phenomenon of capitalism. It’s not. The Soviets, famously, insisted that every person have a job. No stay-at-home moms for them! (Or early retirement, or people taking time off between college and work or during a midlife crisis to “find themselves” either.) The cynical Russian joke ran, “We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us.”
You can still see remnants of that system, in which there are way more workers than are necessary for the work that needs doing, in countries that used to be Communist like Czechia. You can’t imagine the layers of bureaucracy in situations where at most one worker could handle things. A trip to the main post office to pick up a package could take you all day because you would have to go to like eight different counters to conduct this simple transaction. (I used to beg people in the US never to send me a package, ever. Nothing could possibly be that important.)
Or, I once bought a dress for my BIL’s wedding at a fancy department store in Prague. I picked out a dress and handed it to a saleswoman. She sent it down a chute to a central processing area. I went downstairs and got in line. Someone in the processing area packaged up the dress and gave it to a cashier, who eventually rang up the purchase and handed over the dress and the receipt--which I had to wait in line to show to a checker to exit the store.
I think that bullshit jobs are a product of something else entirely--our deep-down feeling that everyone needs to be working hard, all the time. As a SAHM and housewife, I get this pushback all the time. People are really bugged that I don’t hold a paying job. In my case it’s social pressure, in the case of Americans with bullshit jobs it’s economic pressure, and in the case of people living under Communism it’s government force. But no matter the situation, we humans have a very tough time watching other people living at a slower pace, and so we set up systems to make it as difficult as possible to live that way.
I found Debt an infuriating read — Graeber was not a disciplined writer or thinker. Yet his surveys of anthropological literature were fascinating and eye-opening. And I’ve thought many times since reading it about one of the core conceits of Debt — that much of the confusion in modern life is the use of money (formerly reserved for trade with strangers) to accomplish what used to occur through free giving among kin and near kin.
I don’t know — maybe he’s like Freud: deeply insightful, but not someone to rely on for a coherent model.
1) Nicely done
2) You made the same error I made on a post once where I left in my parenthetical to finish without actually finishing. I feel better
3) Principal-agent is a perfect example of why economists should not be allowed to name things. YIKES. But misaligned incentives explain about 75% of the modern world.
4) The question of whether digital technology has actually provided benefits that outweigh the costs is a fascinating one. If I was not a lazy piece of shit I would do a four part series on this. Although since I enjoy plagiarizing you that may outweigh my inclination to sloth and I would do so. Was the drive to digitize everything actually beneficial? With a quarter century of hindsight I think you could add another 1,000 words just expanding on that.
5) I don’t know why you ever thought in a million years Freddie would pick this. But, if Scott Alexander’s Substack still exists in 2023 and is not brought down by the EApocalypse (I’m copyrighting that shit) this is a perfect candidate for his. First, he publishes many more. Second, they’re typically more like this, more concerned with thought provoking than just pure writer craft (not a knock on FdB’s winners, they’re just two totally different things). I think you would want to expand it though. Not just in what I mentioned in the last part but there seem to be a reallllllllly interesting thing here. I haven’t read his most recent book but I did read the ACX review of it and Freddie’s blogging on it. Your snippet on debt also seems to go along wiht it. David Graeber seemed to have the ability to grasp truths about the universe but he also seemed to - joke incoming - rely heavily on bullshit. I think f you actually read the other two (particularly debt) and minireview them there’s an interesting story there.
Like, Bullshit Jobs is obviously true. It’s so obviously true I almost find the discussion of it pointless. But - and I say this as someone with little respectf or economics as a discipline - this dude clearly has no ability to explain why. His relationship with rigorousness of thought seems loose at best. But the bulhit jobs phenomenon also seems like something that traditional social science disciplines would struggle with. Why? There’s an interesting contradiction there and I don’t fully understand it (and my thoughts here are super jumbled) but it’s something I want to read more about.
But I already think this is more interesting than half of last year’s reviews and I think this would make a great entry there.
Hey Klaus, as you know, I thought this was excellent.
I've read this, and Debt, and I think your final paragraph is excellent. He did seem to have a way of capturing something important and then doing a terrible job of proving it. When I read Bullshit Jobs one of the questions I was wondering was how it might relate to 'imposter syndrome', the feeling that everyone else belongs, and is doing a good job, unlike me who doesn't deserve to be here.
And recently I was thinking about the book again in relation to Twitter / Meta et al, firing so many staff, from a bullshit job perspective is this a good policy?
It's not particularly original, Jack Welch was doing this kind of thing in the 80s, and most of the Big 4 consultancies have a yearly 'up or out' strategy, I wonder if Graeber unwittingly gives them cover for this model?
I did not know He had died. You point out the influence of Debt on the Occupy movement which is much appreciated.
A bit late to the party but here is my take : bullshit jobs don't exist, from the pov of the employer. They only exist from the pov of the employee who is unfulfilled by his job.
Take compliance. It can be framed as both important (companies should respect environmental regulations, banks should not launder money etc) and a box ticking exercise (if outcomes/behaviours don't fundamentally change). Which is it? A compliance officer may feel valueless. But a company will find even strict box ticking valuable as it will shield it (and its executives) from legal repercussions.
So compliance, useless or not? Depends who you ask. But if you're paid to do the job, believe me, someone finds it useful. It just may not be what you think ought to be valued.
Maybe this is a subspecies of "flunky" but another category of bullshit job is that of "fluffer" or "Squealer", the person whose job it is to justify management doing what it wants to do.
Much of corporate legal practice consists of coming up with convoluted rationalizations as to why management's schemes are somehow lawful. And, of course, the field of management consulting largely consists of figuring out what management wants to do, then feeding it back to them, neatly packaged in the latest corporate buzzwords so that management can say that they're only following outside advice.
"You need to pay yourselves bigger bonuses so you can attract and retain top talent!"
"We went up hired McKinsey (and paid them a king's ransom) and they told us that we have to pay ourselves bigger bonuses to attract and retain top talent!"
I read the original "Bullshit Jobs" essay years ago, and it really resonated with me. But see this: https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/one-in-twenty-workers-are-in-useless-jobs-far-fewer-than-previously-thought
Quoting from Astral Codex Ten (https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/links-for-june) where I came across it:
"David Graeber claimed that between 20% and 50% of workers are in “bullshit jobs” with no social value. But in research intended to test the claim, only about 5% of workers felt this way about their position. And contra Graeber’s claim that this is increasing over time, the percent of people who self-identify this way has fallen substantially over the past decade. Also, the jobs where people admit to this are the opposite of the ones Graeber pointed to. Obvious self-report bias is obvious."