On "bullshit" jobs - New data supports the idea that some jobs are "so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence"
That makes perfect sense. A lot of bullshit jobs in the corporate world are just administrative oversight because everything's too complicated and the right hand doesn't know what the left is...
Exemplary
That makes perfect sense. A lot of bullshit jobs in the corporate world are just administrative oversight because everything's too complicated and the right hand doesn't know what the left is doing, etc. Some exec creates a role for a particular reason that makes sense to them, then they depart the company but the role persists and nobody knows why (but it must be important). And whoever occupies that seat continues to appear busy, scrolling reddit all day and collecting a paycheck, until a proper audit reveals that there's zero justification to keep paying them.
I'm reminded of Dunbar's number. The lesson for business is simple there - your tribe of workers functions less and less well the larger it grows beyond one hundred and fifty individuals, more or...
I'm reminded of Dunbar's number. The lesson for business is simple there - your tribe of workers functions less and less well the larger it grows beyond one hundred and fifty individuals, more or less. We have created multiple galaxies of software programs for generations to try and scale better, and before that we encoded it in arcane manuals. Just follow the script and everything will be peachy. We fought two world wars and went to the moon on those scripts.
I don't know if it's a lack of understanding the system itself as much as everyone understands the problem but doesn't know the solution. For years I worked at a company that started small and...
We're all just winging it, and I think as our society has grown more complex, no one truly understands these systems anymore.
I don't know if it's a lack of understanding the system itself as much as everyone understands the problem but doesn't know the solution.
For years I worked at a company that started small and became huge. I watched a lot of these administrative jobs be created and a lot of it came about because nobody knew how else to manage these functions. You have teams of engineers who coordinate on projects but the burden of having engineers communicate status was felt as a waste of time by the engineers. We looked around at peer companies and brought in project managers who coordinate schedules. After a while the project managers become oversubscribed with projects so we brought more in. Then we needed to coordinate the project managers. Eventually you're in meetings that roll up status updates from other meetings and the whole thing just feels bizarre and disconnected.
There's also a tendency for leaders to think in terms of "lego blocks", where a lego block is a job function or a team, and so leaders want to spam the company with job functions and teams that roll up to other teams. It's probably for the best that leaders don't perform very avant-garde experiments on how to manage their people and interface with other teams, but I think there's plenty of room to explore bureaucratic organizational methods in labs and smaller settings. These are hard problems.
I think it's more of a matter of there being too wide of a variety of things needing to be done for any given business function. Imagine a repair shop. It's possible for a single person to do...
I think it's more of a matter of there being too wide of a variety of things needing to be done for any given business function.
Imagine a repair shop. It's possible for a single person to do everything, but it's not ideal. Just break down the repair of one thing into it's constituent tasks:
receive the thing from the customer
inspect the thing to find out what's wrong with it
generate an estimate for the parts and labor needed and send it to a customer
upon approval, order parts for the repair
enter parts into inventory when they arrive
perform the repair
remove the parts from inventory and generate a bill
receive payment and retreive the thing to return to the customer
That's actually a really rough teardown of the process, and many businesses will have other steps, like having an inspection fee or a warranty process. If one person does all of this, then their progress will be very slow. And because the person doing the repair is a skilled laborer, they're expensive, and they're doing work that someone without those skills could easily do for them. A big enough repair shop might have someone who's job is just to be the person who deals with the front-facing aspects. And at very large scale, it's easy to see how a manager might need to be put in place to handle when mistakes are inevitably made, or to have people with jobs so fine-tuned that their job appears to be useless.
In terms of raw resources, absolutely not true. We have more than enough resources for the world to be relatively comfortable for its current population and more. The issue is and has always been...
In terms of raw resources, absolutely not true. We have more than enough resources for the world to be relatively comfortable for its current population and more. The issue is and has always been distribution of those respurces being incresibly unequal on a great number of levels.
Plenty of people do talk about this. The issue is that the people who do are typically either underinformed, eco-fascists, or racists using it as an excuse to criticize minorities for reproducing too much. Or all three.
I disagree that hunanity has outgrown the scale at which it can run sustainably, and I don't think it's possible to ethically reduce the global population to an extent that we would no longer be...
I disagree that hunanity has outgrown the scale at which it can run sustainably, and I don't think it's possible to ethically reduce the global population to an extent that we would no longer be destroying the ecosystem. The number less of us that such a thing would require is extremely drastic -- even if we cut the human population in half, would that actually change anything about how we extract resources in a way that benefits the environment? We'd still be going to cut down the Amazon to feed livestock, still be going to operate oil rigs, and there would still be millions of people starving worldwide. At best, such a thing would slightly slow down our current unsustainable resource production and extraction, but that's not really going to do much for us or the environment. Even if it would, there's no ethical way to just reduce the population on a short enough timescale, much less reducing it to a small enough population that it would actually do anything useful for the environment.
It's far more useful to focus our efforts on improving the sustainability of our presence on earth and improving equality and quality of life worldwide as much as possible. Yes, this is more difficult than just culling humanity, but it has the bonus of actually being possible to do ethically AND actually potentially improving both people's lives and our impact on the environment. As a bonus, it's also likely to reduce the overall population long-term (it's a well-known trend that birth rates fall as countries develop).
I'm not quick to throw out the subject entirely -- I laid out my arguments for why it's not a good idea. It wouldn't be effective, and it's impossible to do ethically. "Culling" is just a literal...
You are quick to throw out the subject entirely and use words like culling which is of course not what I have in mind.
I'm not quick to throw out the subject entirely -- I laid out my arguments for why it's not a good idea. It wouldn't be effective, and it's impossible to do ethically. "Culling" is just a literal descriptor of what you suggest -- reducing the population of a group of animals because there are too many. I know you object to it because it entails killing, but you seem unwilling to engage with the fact that killing is one of only two ways to actually accomplish the drastic population reduction you seek and the only way that does it on a short time scale. Even the other method, extremely authoritarian regulation of human reproduction, setting aside ethical issues with that, would take far too long and be extremely difficult to implement effectively.
This whole comment reads like doomerism, like we're inherently incapable of improving the world beyond where we're currently at. But we are. We've already improved it in a number of ways. But believing that we are incapable of doing so is a surefire way to prevent the world from improving further.
Is mental health really at an all time low globally or are you talking about a strictly US population reduction (which would admittedly have the largest impact)?
Is mental health really at an all time low globally or are you talking about a strictly US population reduction (which would admittedly have the largest impact)?
In their article "‘Bullshit’ After All? Why People Consider Their Jobs Socially Useless," Walo et al. analyze data from the 2015 American Working Conditions Survey to find which workers judge...
In their article "‘Bullshit’ After All? Why People Consider Their Jobs Socially Useless," Walo et al. analyze data from the 2015 American Working Conditions Survey to find which workers judge their jobs to be socially useless. They aim to find some more objective data to confirm the work of Graeber (2018), who less rigorously identified several categories of bullshit jobs (his term):
Description
Occupations
Exist only or primarily to make someone else look or feel important
administrative assistants, elevator operators and doormen, receptionists
Jobs that are not only useless but actively harmful to society
sales and marketing occupations, corporate lobbyists and lawyers, military occupations, occupations in the finance sector
Actively generate more socially useless work for others
managers
As they note, they don't provide independent, objective criteria for being socially useless--they explicitly do not want to articulate a theory of social value. Instead, they look at other measures of perceived usefulness: reported "feeling of making a positive impact on [their] community and society" and "feeling of doing useful work."
They find that Graeber's claim "that people are usually correct in assessing the usefulness of their own jobs" is "somewhat overstated, as results show that people’s perception is also affected by various factors unrelated to actual usefulness." But, "By giving up the assumption that people are usually right in their assessment, however, all other aspects of Graeber’s theory can be upheld. Thus, some jobs may in fact be useless to society, even if this is only one reason among others why people perceive them as such."
The claim of the article is that the listed professions have a higher than average share of people who will say that their job is socially useless when asked. Additionally, it didn't seem to...
The claim of the article is that the listed professions have a higher than average share of people who will say that their job is socially useless when asked. Additionally, it didn't seem to actually verify the claim about military personnel, just a few of the other ones listed.
However, I think that if you ask military personnel whether or not their job is useless, the answers will depend on who exactly you ask.
Greek conscripts prior to 2022 for example, probably would largely consider their job to be useless. On the other hand, Ukrainian special forces in 2023 probably would not.
Even an American airman in charge of maintenance at some base in Alaska probably has a different idea of the value of his job than someone stationed in South Korea.
So depending on exactly who the study asked I wouldn't be at all surprised to see the military rank fairly high on a list like this. But again the article doesn't mention the methodology used for finding military personnel, because it doesn't verify that claim in the first place.
I could be a little more confident if I wasn't on my phone and I could read the article properly, however
I mean does any rational person think that the entire military and financial sector is bullshit? Banking, money lending, and investment have been among the most significant contributors to...
I mean does any rational person think that the entire military and financial sector is bullshit?
Banking, money lending, and investment have been among the most significant contributors to technological and societal progress in human history.
We can see right now the potential in bad actors like Russia that necessitate the existence of a military.
But if none of those institutions existed in the first place, wouldn't we be better off? Humans are able to innovate without a financial incentive. We're naturally creative beings, invention is...
But if none of those institutions existed in the first place, wouldn't we be better off?
Humans are able to innovate without a financial incentive. We're naturally creative beings, invention is fun for us. Do you think the first humans to do cave paintings, or who invented the wheel did it because some banker gave them a lone to do it, or someone commissioned it? It's possible, but there's no evidence for it.
When it comes to military, if Russia had no military, or no one else for that matter, there wouldn't be a war in the first place.
Much as I dislike the extremes it’s led to, the baseline concept of a modern financial system is what’s incentivised the cooperation and grunt work needed to build huge chunks of modern society:...
Much as I dislike the extremes it’s led to, the baseline concept of a modern financial system is what’s incentivised the cooperation and grunt work needed to build huge chunks of modern society: medicines, infrastructure, waste disposal, energy generation, the list goes on. These are the very, very not-bullshit core of jobs that support the foundation all the bullshit sits on top of, and I’d be extremely surprised if we could get all of that done without the structure of markets to moderate self-organisation across the whole thing. At least until we get to Star Trek post scarcity, anyway. The problem here and now isn’t financial systems existing, it’s them being seen as a natural law and end goal in and of themselves, rather than a dangerous tool to be wielded carefully only as needed to reach a given result.
Beyond that, the idea that we could feasibly eliminate violent conflict seems implausibly utopian, no? You’re right that people will naturally create and innovate, but fighting is just as natural.
It seems to me that our modern financial system is moreso a way to quantify those incentives, as opposed to money representing an incentive in and of itself.
It seems to me that our modern financial system is moreso a way to quantify those incentives, as opposed to money representing an incentive in and of itself.
I absolutely think that should be the case, that it plausibly could be with a few not-too-onerous structural changes, but at the highest levels it’s not what I see in the world right now. The very...
I absolutely think that should be the case, that it plausibly could be with a few not-too-onerous structural changes, but at the highest levels it’s not what I see in the world right now.
The very wealthy - the people who actually control the majority of money in the system - have been steadily growing their share for decades. They already had enough for a hundred lifetimes of total luxury, there was no material incentive for more, but they keep pushing for it at the direct expense of the workers and the environment.
Nations reference GDP with little if any mention of distribution, or free time, or happiness, or sometimes even health. If money represented incentives, I’d expect the distribution of it among the population and the outcomes achieved to be considered at least as important as the total amount.
Financial derivatives represent somewhere between half and two thirds of all “value” in the global economy - and while I do accept the usefulness of more complex financial products in targeted situations, the idea that their notional value equals or outweighs literally all goods and services on the planet is… challenging, to say the least. At best it would suggest a significant divorce between underlying incentive and financial valuation; at worst the whole thing is effectively gambling with stakes that could buy and sell nations.
Both of these are pretty irrelevant though aren’t they? Cave paintings don’t require massive capital. If you want to go to the moon, you are going to need that — and when you leave the realm of...
Both of these are pretty irrelevant though aren’t they?
Cave paintings don’t require massive capital. If you want to go to the moon, you are going to need that — and when you leave the realm of trivial barter systems, you need banking to manage it, and abstract ways of accounting for and valuing investment.
As for pretending there were no militaries — I don’t know what to say. This is basically asking how humans would be if humans were some alien species that behaves entirely differently than humans.
Also, this entirely reverses the arrow of causality. Militaries aren’t the cause of conflict — resources are the cause of conflict and militaries are a tool for conflict resolution.
The problem is there's too many people for banks to just go away. Food imports are a necessity to avoid mass starvation, and the effort required to make sure enough food gets sent to the right...
The problem is there's too many people for banks to just go away. Food imports are a necessity to avoid mass starvation, and the effort required to make sure enough food gets sent to the right places, plus ensuring protection from pirates, ship repair, fuel supply for the ships, etc, all requires the modern banking system.
Maybe in a world without banking we'd all be happier, but a good portion of us would just be dead. Not an ideal solution, especially for the dead people
To that first category Idass greeters on grocery shops, warehouses, restaurants etc. Having a person whose ony purpose is to sit or stand in the drafty entrance of a place and say 'hi' or 'bye'...
To that first category Idass greeters on grocery shops, warehouses, restaurants etc.
Having a person whose ony purpose is to sit or stand in the drafty entrance of a place and say 'hi' or 'bye' was shocking to me when I visited the US a few years back.
It wasn't even about the establishments targeting filthy rich people that you want to pamper, but regular places for regular people. Like in a restaurant, why have an obviously elderly person sitting in the draft of the entrance all day when the other employees inside does the same anyways?
It makes people less likely to steal from the store, or at least the higher ups think it does. Given how much those big stores lose to shoplifting it makes sense economically to pay someone a...
It makes people less likely to steal from the store, or at least the higher ups think it does.
Given how much those big stores lose to shoplifting it makes sense economically to pay someone a small salary to stand around doing nothing, they'll make a net profit overall.
I've worked in shops when younger, and we were told this as well. Except we were told that it matters the most when people actually on the floor says hi and acknowledges that they see the person...
I've worked in shops when younger, and we were told this as well. Except we were told that it matters the most when people actually on the floor says hi and acknowledges that they see the person that is the customer, not just throw it out there.
But that was a local shop, much smaller in scale than the massive supermarkets you find in the US. It might not be comparable.
One of the arguments for greeters, which I have not personally looked for evidence for, is that greeters reduce shoplifting. Generally speaking though, I take outsider claims that a business’s...
One of the arguments for greeters, which I have not personally looked for evidence for, is that greeters reduce shoplifting.
Generally speaking though, I take outsider claims that a business’s jobs are “bullshit” and even some insider claims to be a little suspect.
Certainly there are people who fall through the cracks, ala “Office Space” but most business owners aren’t entirely stupid. Most of these middle managers and “box checkers” are in fact performing roles with some actual economic value, whether it’s obvious or not, even to the workers themselves.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a greeter in a restaurant before. I know about hosts, who greet diners before serving them but also manage things like waitlists and reservations. And I’ve been to...
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a greeter in a restaurant before. I know about hosts, who greet diners before serving them but also manage things like waitlists and reservations. And I’ve been to places where all the staff in the room will shout greetings when people enter, or thanks/goodbyes when they leave, or at some places they’ll even sing for tips. I’m curious though where you’ve seen Walmart-style greeters at a restaurant?
Okay, those are all bullshit jobs, no question. I've maintained for years that the gourmet/luxury/designer industries are a grift created to leech money from gullible or vain rich people. I guess...
Okay, those are all bullshit jobs, no question. I've maintained for years that the gourmet/luxury/designer industries are a grift created to leech money from gullible or vain rich people. I guess those people would counter that I'm just envious because I'm not rich, but no — I really think they're suckers. So much of that stuff is expensive but has very little real value.
Pampering the rich might be a waste of time, practically speaking, but is something that has followed humans whenever the concept of an established hierarchy with big differences in "value"...
Pampering the rich might be a waste of time, practically speaking, but is something that has followed humans whenever the concept of an established hierarchy with big differences in "value" between top and bottom exist.
But my experiences were with greeters in regular chain stores and restaurants.
Maybe I've answered my own question there. That it costs very little compared to the goodwill it creates when us regular folks feel pampered.
Arguably any customer service job is a "bullshit job". But it's one that has value to people. The major difference between a cruise with Carnival and a more expensive line like Disney or Cunard is...
Arguably any customer service job is a "bullshit job". But it's one that has value to people. The major difference between a cruise with Carnival and a more expensive line like Disney or Cunard is not so much because of the nicer accommodations, but because they have more staff who are better trained and who act with a higher level of service (which is another way of saying that they are expected to act more pleasantly and to try harder to be helpful). So strictly speaking it does have actual monetary value.
Tacking on to this with an edit, I just got to thinking that these people working in higher-end service jobs are much less likely to encounter angry people, so they're probably happier and less likely to think that their job is useless. So perhaps a lot of the animosity towards "bullshit jobs" are actually issues with the quality of work or the lack of pay for them. I, for one, would be a lot happier with my job if I didn't need to worry about money as much.
My most bullshit job (just over a year in the financial sector, early in my career) was one of my highest paid, and I hated every minute of it. It was the perfect storm of useless individually - I...
My most bullshit job (just over a year in the financial sector, early in my career) was one of my highest paid, and I hated every minute of it. It was the perfect storm of useless individually - I could sit and do nothing for days on end without anyone noticing - and harmful in aggregate. It actually got so bad for my mental health that I just left one day with no other source of income lined up.
That said, I’m in the overall fortunate position of enjoying working with tech: it didn’t take me long to find a more palatable alternative, and the lower pay was still enough to be comfortable, so it’s very easy for me to look at all of my past work through one lens. If that difference in pay were over the line between comfortable and struggling I can quite imagine my self-report would be different, even though “bullshit” is technically orthogonal to both pay and enjoyment.
This was somewhere in Minnesota, mid-2000s I believe. One of the places was an Olive Garden, another was one of those huge supermarkets/grocery stores. I remember those in particular because of...
This was somewhere in Minnesota, mid-2000s I believe. One of the places was an Olive Garden, another was one of those huge supermarkets/grocery stores. I remember those in particular because of the weather outside vs AC inside made the entryways very drafty with that bug clash between temperatures as well.
I always thought that this practice was in part to help deter people who may be considering shop lifting for the first time. But that could be my own anxiety as any time I walked by the greeters,...
I always thought that this practice was in part to help deter people who may be considering shop lifting for the first time. But that could be my own anxiety as any time I walked by the greeters, especially if I was just holding my items without a bag, I would feel nervous.
Without agreeing or disagreeing with the study, I can't help but consider that the methodology may be off. The data is based on self-reporting of workers and how they perceive their own work. In...
Exemplary
Without agreeing or disagreeing with the study, I can't help but consider that the methodology may be off. The data is based on self-reporting of workers and how they perceive their own work. In gauging actual usefulness, wouldn't it be more relevant to ask whether the recipients of that work consider it useful or not?
The abstract mentions how "feelings of alienation" may skew the data, which I think is a valid concern, but still sticks to analyzing the self-reporting. People generally measure their view of a job, and their motivation to do it, via "autonomy, competence, and relatedness", which would affect how they perceive it and by extension report their feelings of it. This is a fine thing to study, but in gauging the usefulness of an occupation, is entirely focused on the self. And thus, arguably, if we're looping in factors of alienation, it's kind of like looking at that value in a vacuum.
To talk about the social or objective value of work, it seems like it would be more productive to poll the people who are on the receiving end of that work, who depend on or engage with the results of it. What is perceived as useless to the producer of that work ("hey, we're not exactly saving lives out here!") might be seen as valuable--or at least, not useless--to the end user that the work is for. Otherwise it's a bit like asking the chef if the meal was good, and not the diner who ate it.
I feel like there are at least three things going on in this study related to self-reporting. The first is that a large portion of society is depressed and anxious, and likely to feel that their...
I feel like there are at least three things going on in this study related to self-reporting.
The first is that a large portion of society is depressed and anxious, and likely to feel that their work is not valuable.
The second is that our political systems and news reinforce constantly the idea that many types of jobs are useless, or at least not worth very much.
The third is exactly the idea of "alienation" -- the idea that people who actually produce value will be separated from seeing that value.
I don't think these three things make the study useless, I think they make it more interesting and worth further study.
I can imagine the recipients of that work providing biased data as well. Especially with managers, whose position and status relies on the number of subordinates they have. Although, the paper...
The data is based on self-reporting of workers and how they perceive their own work. In gauging actual usefulness, wouldn't it be more relevant to ask whether the recipients of that work consider it useful or not?
I can imagine the recipients of that work providing biased data as well. Especially with managers, whose position and status relies on the number of subordinates they have.
Although, the paper also shows managers are considered having bullshit jobs quite often.
I was tech support for those screens in US doctor offices & lobbies that try to upsell prescription drugs. I did something useful, but my job was not just bullshit, but actively bad for people. I...
I was tech support for those screens in US doctor offices & lobbies that try to upsell prescription drugs. I did something useful, but my job was not just bullshit, but actively bad for people.
I don't agree with all the BS job criteria, but mine was a pretty good example.
Interesting take. Regarding when I sued to work as an admin assistant, I don't think admin assistants are just to make other people look good. E.g., when I was an admin assistant making $20/hr and...
Interesting take.
Regarding when I sued to work as an admin assistant, I don't think admin assistants are just to make other people look good. E.g., when I was an admin assistant making $20/hr and the execs were making I assume about $50+/hr.. it makes sense to have the lower paid person do whatever mundane tasks they can for the execs so that the execs can spend their time more efficiently on high-value high-impact tasks.
I think it’s important to remember that the categories are just the ones where they found a higher likelihood of work being (thought to be) unnecessary, not that the field as a whole is like that....
I think it’s important to remember that the categories are just the ones where they found a higher likelihood of work being (thought to be) unnecessary, not that the field as a whole is like that.
It makes total sense to have one person’s job essentially be clearing the path of obstructions so the specialist who’s running things can be more efficient. The status and pay questions grate a little on my personal sense of justice, but that’s primarily a me problem.
Thing is, an EA can also easily be in the employment of some trust fund kid sitting in a sinecure, or be a position created to give a particularly petulant upper-mid manager the appearance of actually being equal in status to the “real” executives. Cargo cult business management, basically. Hell, they might be working for an actual top level exec who just sucks at their own job.
It’s not that executive assistants aren’t ever needed, just that the nature of the job makes it more likely to exist in situations it isn’t needed as well as those where it is.
Totally not just you. The term 'unskilled labor' has really kneecapped a lot of EA's, support agents, retail & kitchen staff, etc. It absolutely takes skill to do almost all jobs well, and the...
The status and pay questions grate a little on my personal sense of justice, but that’s primarily a me problem.
Totally not just you. The term 'unskilled labor' has really kneecapped a lot of EA's, support agents, retail & kitchen staff, etc. It absolutely takes skill to do almost all jobs well, and the fact that its on-the-job doesn't make it worthless compared to Csuite pay. It suppresses wages & keeps seasoned employees competing with new ones.
I agree re the sense of justice. And also there were certainly times where some of my tasks as an admin assistant were stupid and the higher up the person I supporting was...the more help they...
I agree re the sense of justice. And also there were certainly times where some of my tasks as an admin assistant were stupid and the higher up the person I supporting was...the more help they needed. E.g., the highest person in the company required me to lay out a package of oatmeal/bowl/spoon each morning, always ensure he had a sticky paper pad, and that the pencils in rooms were very sharp in any meetings he attended. To be fair I can't imagine the kind of pressures he may have been under...but many other people I supported were more independent and even did their own travel expenses and flight/hotel bookings.
And oh boy the memories of being a dev (my careers have been all over the place) working for a middle manager who -wasn't- a dev...he wasn't needed AND he didn't believe in things like code reviews, tests, mentoring... And despite not being a dev, he'd say he could easily code something I worked on in two days...he really had no clue. And I'll stop there as I don't want to vent for the next 30 minutes. :D
Ha. When I did SaaS support, my boss just married into a connected family. He was an absolute. fucking. tool. Thank you for reminding me that he is the epitome of bullshit job. He truly, honestly...
Ha. When I did SaaS support, my boss just married into a connected family. He was an absolute. fucking. tool.
Thank you for reminding me that he is the epitome of bullshit job. He truly, honestly hindered progress on work. Just so, so awful to work for.
I appreciate your reminder/clarification. And I've also had parts of my jobs seem completely useless -- I think in my case it was I would always create projects for myself to improve efficiency,...
I appreciate your reminder/clarification. And I've also had parts of my jobs seem completely useless -- I think in my case it was I would always create projects for myself to improve efficiency, train others, etc. BUT if at any time I looked at what the core duties were, yeah I could certainly see a lot of silly busy work.
You're job definitely sounds like less bs than mine. The unsettling part of my bs job was that the better i was at it, the worse i was making the world. Not awful, but more ads are not what sick...
You're job definitely sounds like less bs than mine.
The unsettling part of my bs job was that the better i was at it, the worse i was making the world. Not awful, but more ads are not what sick people need.
Jobs are self perpetuating because the core of our current system says (almost) everyone needs a job or they don’t get food and shelter. Hours within those jobs are self perpetuating because...
Jobs are self perpetuating because the core of our current system says (almost) everyone needs a job or they don’t get food and shelter. Hours within those jobs are self perpetuating because apparently it only counts as a “proper” job if it takes up around 40 of them.
Neither of those things strike me as a good way to incentivise efficiency, and while they may have been the least-worst compromises at some point I think it’s at least worth reassessing what proportion of the population needs a job at all (we’ve gone from one job required per household to two in the last 50 years, despite significant increases in productivity), and how much time those jobs should reasonably take up.
Short of doing that, we’re just stuck in a situation where a given percentage employment is considered necessary and the availability of jobs has to match that, whether productively needed or not, to stop people from becoming destitute and rioting.
That was a great read. They took some great pains to lay out controlling for other factors, and fairly clearly demonstrates that any study that doesn't control for alienation and autonomy isn't...
Exemplary
That was a great read. They took some great pains to lay out controlling for other factors, and fairly clearly demonstrates that any study that doesn't control for alienation and autonomy isn't going to be capturing an accurate picture. I also think their statement about being mostly applicable to highly financialized countries also makes sense.
There are undoubtably actively harmful/bullshit jobs. The main question is how to identify them, and I think they've done some great groundwork on how to better figure that out.
Galactic Historian Douglas Adams explained how our planet came to be populated by purveyors of useless occupations through the humanitarian exile of a more advanced planet of their useless...
Galactic Historian Douglas Adams explained how our planet came to be populated by purveyors of useless occupations through the humanitarian exile of a more advanced planet of their useless occupation occupiers.
More seriously, Bucky Fuller actually quantitified this wrt the insurance industry and concluded the actual price of materially supporting most of its occupants was so high relative to value provided that it would cost companies less to simply pay most employees their full salary and direct them to stay home and do nothing.
A final note. Some occupations listed, such as elevator operators, do provide a lot of value. Operators can be comforting to those riding an elevator, and can provide a lot of social lubrication.
I don't have much sympathy for this idea. If a company considers employing someone to do something "bullshit", then it's theoretically in their financial incentive not to do so if it's truly...
I don't have much sympathy for this idea. If a company considers employing someone to do something "bullshit", then it's theoretically in their financial incentive not to do so if it's truly bullshit. But ultimately it's their own prerogative to make an unwise financial decision. If it's the government, they should be expected to balance the books (as in avoiding unnecessary deficits, paying down current debt obligations), but beyond that they should be able to do whatever they want with hiring. If the work is pernicious, society should simply regulate or pass laws against it.
I see wasted time as a negative externality just as much as pollution is. Something can easily be an economically rational decision for each individual organisation while still being terrible for...
I see wasted time as a negative externality just as much as pollution is. Something can easily be an economically rational decision for each individual organisation while still being terrible for society in aggregate: is the sliver of ROI above the cost of the employee’s pay really worth the opportunity cost of taking that person away from the other things, paid or unpaid, they might have spent that time on? Is there anything optimal for society about the 40 hour work week or is that just where inertia has landed us? How many “bullshit hours” are there within jobs that still clear the overall line of being non-bullshit?
Just quantifying output for a lot of jobs is tough, and doing so in relation to time spent is even harder. Contextualising that with the non-monetary value of the things a person might otherwise spend their time on is basically impossible. But I don’t think that means the answer is falling back on the calculations we do know with reasonable certainty - I think it means accepting that some problems are broadly unquantifiable, and boiling them down solely to financial incentives strongly risks a very suboptimal outcome hiding behind the numbers.
I think competition between firms and labour making demands about what working conditions they'll accept addresses these concerns (organizational inefficiency and unnecessary working hours,...
I think competition between firms and labour making demands about what working conditions they'll accept addresses these concerns (organizational inefficiency and unnecessary working hours, respectively). The solution I believe would be to ensure that both processes are protected and robust.
I have some concerns about that, but sure, in an ideal world it’d be a significant step in the right direction - but we live in a very non-ideal world, with a very skewed balance of wealth and...
I have some concerns about that, but sure, in an ideal world it’d be a significant step in the right direction - but we live in a very non-ideal world, with a very skewed balance of wealth and power, meaning that here and now there are an incomprehensibly huge number of hours wasted doing nothing of greater value to society.
For me, articles like this resonate so strongly precisely because they highlight how far the reality of our systems is away from that hypothetical ideal. Bullshit jobs are a tangible example of that disconnect.
For the book balancing on the gov side, firing a government employee, at least in the US, is notoriously difficult. To the point that there are many stories (some i've witnessed myself) of people...
For the book balancing on the gov side, firing a government employee, at least in the US, is notoriously difficult. To the point that there are many stories (some i've witnessed myself) of people who literally just show up to work and do nothing, but aren't fired because it'd be too much of a fight. So instead another employee is hired to do their work or the work is loaded on someone who's already there.
Now to be fair, the position they fill might be very important, it's just that they choose to not do the work, so it's not like you can easily remove the position to get rid of dead weight. It can happen pretty much anywhere.
Fixing the firing and hiring system should be the focus then, since if the job is categorically important it wouldn't be eliminated on the basis of eliminating bullshit jobs.
Fixing the firing and hiring system should be the focus then, since if the job is categorically important it wouldn't be eliminated on the basis of eliminating bullshit jobs.
Right, that was what I was trying to get at with my last part. Although "fixing the hiring system" is unfortunately the ultimate 'easier said than done'.
Right, that was what I was trying to get at with my last part. Although "fixing the hiring system" is unfortunately the ultimate 'easier said than done'.
As usual in the social sciences, multiple well-regarded papers disagree on whether an effect exists at all. In this case "Contrary to Soffia et al. (2022), this article finds robust support for...
As usual in the social sciences, multiple well-regarded papers disagree on whether an effect exists at all. In this case "Contrary to Soffia et al. (2022), this article finds robust support for Graeber’s theory on BS jobs.". This always makes social science research fraught as repeatability is very difficult to achieve.
Sure, it's a young theory. It's going through the process of defining its theoretical posits, figuring out how to operationalize its claims, and determining what sorts of data are relevant. This...
Sure, it's a young theory. It's going through the process of defining its theoretical posits, figuring out how to operationalize its claims, and determining what sorts of data are relevant. This is ground clearing, and happens all over the sciences--you'll find similar disputes in biology and medicine. (Physics, as an exceptionless fundamental science is always a bit different)
They actually kind of find support for both, depending on methodology. If raw numbers are used like Soffia et al. did, the results confirm Soffia et al., but if the effects of other factors like...
They actually kind of find support for both, depending on methodology. If raw numbers are used like Soffia et al. did, the results confirm Soffia et al., but if the effects of other factors like alienation are properly controlled for, a modified version of Graeber is confirmed (just dropping the "people are usually correct" part).
This whole study is a bit sensational for me. I'd say they're exploring these categories with a bit of bias right through. There is such a huge range, even between sales and marketing, of people...
This whole study is a bit sensational for me. I'd say they're exploring these categories with a bit of bias right through. There is such a huge range, even between sales and marketing, of people to interview. I recognize that they point that out, but I don't agree with whatever sense of control they have over that factor. Later in the paper, they drop the term "marketing" from one of the five main job categories all together. Why? In that section, they emphasize their correct guess that "sales" would be such a dismal category.
The author seems to focus on corporate jobs, but, as trebory6 points out, as we see larger organizations, it's easy to oversimplify positions (like IT) that we don't understand. I don't believe the author has a grasp of the categories someone else defined for them. To me, this paper was written to make certain kinds of people feel important, which is socially damaging and feels like a waste of time to read, no matter how many languages it's been translated into.
I kind of had the opposite conclusion but I might have not fully understood the article. To me the article basically doesn't really confirm much other than it's not that specific positions are...
I kind of had the opposite conclusion but I might have not fully understood the article.
To me the article basically doesn't really confirm much other than it's not that specific positions are inherently useless. More people in certain positions are more willing to call their jobs useless.
But it really doesn't actually say anything about the job itself. They just state that the feelings of uselessness can be because of routine, lack of socialisation, and (oh no I forgot what the third one is).
So a very useful job can feel useless if it's routine and they don't feel appreciated I guess. A useless job can feel useful depending on the environment their in.
So there's no real objective reason that would dictate whether people think their job is useless or not. Certain sectors just have a higher percentage of people feeling like it's useless, it doesn't mean the industry is actually useless.
They did mention the public sector several times though. And they did say that people in the public sector are less likely to feel like their job is useless.
I don't think this article was a written to make certain people feel important. All I got from it was "Whether you consider your job useless or not completely depends on the situation you're in and even with these categories, it really doesn't say anything about the sectors other than more people self report that they feel it's useless. It doesn't mean it's actually useless or not useless."
It's an incredibly non-commital conclusion.
Edit: On that note, I feel like the topic title doesn't actually represent the findings of the study. It's dramatic for sure but unless I missed it, the study doesn't proclaim anything like that.
I disagree with your conclusion. If there really are bullshit jobs-- this article goes some way towards pointing to better ways of assessing that claim--then it's important for society to figure...
I disagree with your conclusion. If there really are bullshit jobs-- this article goes some way towards pointing to better ways of assessing that claim--then it's important for society to figure out why, and how better to distribute human effort. Wasted work is bad for everyone. Once we get a better pocture, this may bolster arguments for universal basic income, or provide leverage for changing tax policies.
That makes perfect sense. A lot of bullshit jobs in the corporate world are just administrative oversight because everything's too complicated and the right hand doesn't know what the left is doing, etc. Some exec creates a role for a particular reason that makes sense to them, then they depart the company but the role persists and nobody knows why (but it must be important). And whoever occupies that seat continues to appear busy, scrolling reddit all day and collecting a paycheck, until a proper audit reveals that there's zero justification to keep paying them.
I'm reminded of Dunbar's number. The lesson for business is simple there - your tribe of workers functions less and less well the larger it grows beyond one hundred and fifty individuals, more or less. We have created multiple galaxies of software programs for generations to try and scale better, and before that we encoded it in arcane manuals. Just follow the script and everything will be peachy. We fought two world wars and went to the moon on those scripts.
I don't know if it's a lack of understanding the system itself as much as everyone understands the problem but doesn't know the solution.
For years I worked at a company that started small and became huge. I watched a lot of these administrative jobs be created and a lot of it came about because nobody knew how else to manage these functions. You have teams of engineers who coordinate on projects but the burden of having engineers communicate status was felt as a waste of time by the engineers. We looked around at peer companies and brought in project managers who coordinate schedules. After a while the project managers become oversubscribed with projects so we brought more in. Then we needed to coordinate the project managers. Eventually you're in meetings that roll up status updates from other meetings and the whole thing just feels bizarre and disconnected.
There's also a tendency for leaders to think in terms of "lego blocks", where a lego block is a job function or a team, and so leaders want to spam the company with job functions and teams that roll up to other teams. It's probably for the best that leaders don't perform very avant-garde experiments on how to manage their people and interface with other teams, but I think there's plenty of room to explore bureaucratic organizational methods in labs and smaller settings. These are hard problems.
I think it's more of a matter of there being too wide of a variety of things needing to be done for any given business function.
Imagine a repair shop. It's possible for a single person to do everything, but it's not ideal. Just break down the repair of one thing into it's constituent tasks:
receive the thing from the customer
inspect the thing to find out what's wrong with it
generate an estimate for the parts and labor needed and send it to a customer
upon approval, order parts for the repair
enter parts into inventory when they arrive
perform the repair
remove the parts from inventory and generate a bill
receive payment and retreive the thing to return to the customer
That's actually a really rough teardown of the process, and many businesses will have other steps, like having an inspection fee or a warranty process. If one person does all of this, then their progress will be very slow. And because the person doing the repair is a skilled laborer, they're expensive, and they're doing work that someone without those skills could easily do for them. A big enough repair shop might have someone who's job is just to be the person who deals with the front-facing aspects. And at very large scale, it's easy to see how a manager might need to be put in place to handle when mistakes are inevitably made, or to have people with jobs so fine-tuned that their job appears to be useless.
In terms of raw resources, absolutely not true. We have more than enough resources for the world to be relatively comfortable for its current population and more. The issue is and has always been distribution of those respurces being incresibly unequal on a great number of levels.
Plenty of people do talk about this. The issue is that the people who do are typically either underinformed, eco-fascists, or racists using it as an excuse to criticize minorities for reproducing too much. Or all three.
I disagree that hunanity has outgrown the scale at which it can run sustainably, and I don't think it's possible to ethically reduce the global population to an extent that we would no longer be destroying the ecosystem. The number less of us that such a thing would require is extremely drastic -- even if we cut the human population in half, would that actually change anything about how we extract resources in a way that benefits the environment? We'd still be going to cut down the Amazon to feed livestock, still be going to operate oil rigs, and there would still be millions of people starving worldwide. At best, such a thing would slightly slow down our current unsustainable resource production and extraction, but that's not really going to do much for us or the environment. Even if it would, there's no ethical way to just reduce the population on a short enough timescale, much less reducing it to a small enough population that it would actually do anything useful for the environment.
It's far more useful to focus our efforts on improving the sustainability of our presence on earth and improving equality and quality of life worldwide as much as possible. Yes, this is more difficult than just culling humanity, but it has the bonus of actually being possible to do ethically AND actually potentially improving both people's lives and our impact on the environment. As a bonus, it's also likely to reduce the overall population long-term (it's a well-known trend that birth rates fall as countries develop).
I'm not quick to throw out the subject entirely -- I laid out my arguments for why it's not a good idea. It wouldn't be effective, and it's impossible to do ethically. "Culling" is just a literal descriptor of what you suggest -- reducing the population of a group of animals because there are too many. I know you object to it because it entails killing, but you seem unwilling to engage with the fact that killing is one of only two ways to actually accomplish the drastic population reduction you seek and the only way that does it on a short time scale. Even the other method, extremely authoritarian regulation of human reproduction, setting aside ethical issues with that, would take far too long and be extremely difficult to implement effectively.
This whole comment reads like doomerism, like we're inherently incapable of improving the world beyond where we're currently at. But we are. We've already improved it in a number of ways. But believing that we are incapable of doing so is a surefire way to prevent the world from improving further.
Is mental health really at an all time low globally or are you talking about a strictly US population reduction (which would admittedly have the largest impact)?
In their article "‘Bullshit’ After All? Why People Consider Their Jobs Socially Useless," Walo et al. analyze data from the 2015 American Working Conditions Survey to find which workers judge their jobs to be socially useless. They aim to find some more objective data to confirm the work of Graeber (2018), who less rigorously identified several categories of bullshit jobs (his term):
As they note, they don't provide independent, objective criteria for being socially useless--they explicitly do not want to articulate a theory of social value. Instead, they look at other measures of perceived usefulness: reported "feeling of making a positive impact on [their] community and society" and "feeling of doing useful work."
They find that Graeber's claim "that people are usually correct in assessing the usefulness of their own jobs" is "somewhat overstated, as results show that people’s perception is also affected by various factors unrelated to actual usefulness." But, "By giving up the assumption that people are usually right in their assessment, however, all other aspects of Graeber’s theory can be upheld. Thus, some jobs may in fact be useless to society, even if this is only one reason among others why people perceive them as such."
I'm curious if Graeber considers the entire military and the entire financial sector to be bullshit and harmful to society or just segments of them.
The claim of the article is that the listed professions have a higher than average share of people who will say that their job is socially useless when asked. Additionally, it didn't seem to actually verify the claim about military personnel, just a few of the other ones listed.
However, I think that if you ask military personnel whether or not their job is useless, the answers will depend on who exactly you ask.
Greek conscripts prior to 2022 for example, probably would largely consider their job to be useless. On the other hand, Ukrainian special forces in 2023 probably would not.
Even an American airman in charge of maintenance at some base in Alaska probably has a different idea of the value of his job than someone stationed in South Korea.
So depending on exactly who the study asked I wouldn't be at all surprised to see the military rank fairly high on a list like this. But again the article doesn't mention the methodology used for finding military personnel, because it doesn't verify that claim in the first place.
I could be a little more confident if I wasn't on my phone and I could read the article properly, however
It's not really a fair comparison to compare conscripts with professional soldiers who voluntarily chose to be there.
Yeah, I was asking about Graeber, the guy who they got that list from, not this study.
I mean does any rational person think that the entire military and financial sector is bullshit?
Banking, money lending, and investment have been among the most significant contributors to technological and societal progress in human history.
We can see right now the potential in bad actors like Russia that necessitate the existence of a military.
But if none of those institutions existed in the first place, wouldn't we be better off?
Humans are able to innovate without a financial incentive. We're naturally creative beings, invention is fun for us. Do you think the first humans to do cave paintings, or who invented the wheel did it because some banker gave them a lone to do it, or someone commissioned it? It's possible, but there's no evidence for it.
When it comes to military, if Russia had no military, or no one else for that matter, there wouldn't be a war in the first place.
Much as I dislike the extremes it’s led to, the baseline concept of a modern financial system is what’s incentivised the cooperation and grunt work needed to build huge chunks of modern society: medicines, infrastructure, waste disposal, energy generation, the list goes on. These are the very, very not-bullshit core of jobs that support the foundation all the bullshit sits on top of, and I’d be extremely surprised if we could get all of that done without the structure of markets to moderate self-organisation across the whole thing. At least until we get to Star Trek post scarcity, anyway. The problem here and now isn’t financial systems existing, it’s them being seen as a natural law and end goal in and of themselves, rather than a dangerous tool to be wielded carefully only as needed to reach a given result.
Beyond that, the idea that we could feasibly eliminate violent conflict seems implausibly utopian, no? You’re right that people will naturally create and innovate, but fighting is just as natural.
It seems to me that our modern financial system is moreso a way to quantify those incentives, as opposed to money representing an incentive in and of itself.
I absolutely think that should be the case, that it plausibly could be with a few not-too-onerous structural changes, but at the highest levels it’s not what I see in the world right now.
The very wealthy - the people who actually control the majority of money in the system - have been steadily growing their share for decades. They already had enough for a hundred lifetimes of total luxury, there was no material incentive for more, but they keep pushing for it at the direct expense of the workers and the environment.
Nations reference GDP with little if any mention of distribution, or free time, or happiness, or sometimes even health. If money represented incentives, I’d expect the distribution of it among the population and the outcomes achieved to be considered at least as important as the total amount.
Financial derivatives represent somewhere between half and two thirds of all “value” in the global economy - and while I do accept the usefulness of more complex financial products in targeted situations, the idea that their notional value equals or outweighs literally all goods and services on the planet is… challenging, to say the least. At best it would suggest a significant divorce between underlying incentive and financial valuation; at worst the whole thing is effectively gambling with stakes that could buy and sell nations.
Both of these are pretty irrelevant though aren’t they?
Cave paintings don’t require massive capital. If you want to go to the moon, you are going to need that — and when you leave the realm of trivial barter systems, you need banking to manage it, and abstract ways of accounting for and valuing investment.
As for pretending there were no militaries — I don’t know what to say. This is basically asking how humans would be if humans were some alien species that behaves entirely differently than humans.
Also, this entirely reverses the arrow of causality. Militaries aren’t the cause of conflict — resources are the cause of conflict and militaries are a tool for conflict resolution.
Agreed. Until people stop acting like, well, people, militaries will be a necessity.
The problem is there's too many people for banks to just go away. Food imports are a necessity to avoid mass starvation, and the effort required to make sure enough food gets sent to the right places, plus ensuring protection from pirates, ship repair, fuel supply for the ships, etc, all requires the modern banking system.
Maybe in a world without banking we'd all be happier, but a good portion of us would just be dead. Not an ideal solution, especially for the dead people
I agree...that's a big part of why I ask. It is a stupid opinion but you see it a lot online.
To that first category Idass greeters on grocery shops, warehouses, restaurants etc.
Having a person whose ony purpose is to sit or stand in the drafty entrance of a place and say 'hi' or 'bye' was shocking to me when I visited the US a few years back.
It wasn't even about the establishments targeting filthy rich people that you want to pamper, but regular places for regular people. Like in a restaurant, why have an obviously elderly person sitting in the draft of the entrance all day when the other employees inside does the same anyways?
It makes people less likely to steal from the store, or at least the higher ups think it does.
Given how much those big stores lose to shoplifting it makes sense economically to pay someone a small salary to stand around doing nothing, they'll make a net profit overall.
I've worked in shops when younger, and we were told this as well. Except we were told that it matters the most when people actually on the floor says hi and acknowledges that they see the person that is the customer, not just throw it out there.
But that was a local shop, much smaller in scale than the massive supermarkets you find in the US. It might not be comparable.
One of the arguments for greeters, which I have not personally looked for evidence for, is that greeters reduce shoplifting.
Generally speaking though, I take outsider claims that a business’s jobs are “bullshit” and even some insider claims to be a little suspect.
Certainly there are people who fall through the cracks, ala “Office Space” but most business owners aren’t entirely stupid. Most of these middle managers and “box checkers” are in fact performing roles with some actual economic value, whether it’s obvious or not, even to the workers themselves.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a greeter in a restaurant before. I know about hosts, who greet diners before serving them but also manage things like waitlists and reservations. And I’ve been to places where all the staff in the room will shout greetings when people enter, or thanks/goodbyes when they leave, or at some places they’ll even sing for tips. I’m curious though where you’ve seen Walmart-style greeters at a restaurant?
Fancy restaurants have several such roles. There may be a person to pen your car door, open the front door, stand by the bathroom, etc.
Okay, those are all bullshit jobs, no question. I've maintained for years that the gourmet/luxury/designer industries are a grift created to leech money from gullible or vain rich people. I guess those people would counter that I'm just envious because I'm not rich, but no — I really think they're suckers. So much of that stuff is expensive but has very little real value.
Pampering the rich might be a waste of time, practically speaking, but is something that has followed humans whenever the concept of an established hierarchy with big differences in "value" between top and bottom exist.
But my experiences were with greeters in regular chain stores and restaurants.
Maybe I've answered my own question there. That it costs very little compared to the goodwill it creates when us regular folks feel pampered.
Arguably any customer service job is a "bullshit job". But it's one that has value to people. The major difference between a cruise with Carnival and a more expensive line like Disney or Cunard is not so much because of the nicer accommodations, but because they have more staff who are better trained and who act with a higher level of service (which is another way of saying that they are expected to act more pleasantly and to try harder to be helpful). So strictly speaking it does have actual monetary value.
Tacking on to this with an edit, I just got to thinking that these people working in higher-end service jobs are much less likely to encounter angry people, so they're probably happier and less likely to think that their job is useless. So perhaps a lot of the animosity towards "bullshit jobs" are actually issues with the quality of work or the lack of pay for them. I, for one, would be a lot happier with my job if I didn't need to worry about money as much.
My most bullshit job (just over a year in the financial sector, early in my career) was one of my highest paid, and I hated every minute of it. It was the perfect storm of useless individually - I could sit and do nothing for days on end without anyone noticing - and harmful in aggregate. It actually got so bad for my mental health that I just left one day with no other source of income lined up.
That said, I’m in the overall fortunate position of enjoying working with tech: it didn’t take me long to find a more palatable alternative, and the lower pay was still enough to be comfortable, so it’s very easy for me to look at all of my past work through one lens. If that difference in pay were over the line between comfortable and struggling I can quite imagine my self-report would be different, even though “bullshit” is technically orthogonal to both pay and enjoyment.
This was somewhere in Minnesota, mid-2000s I believe. One of the places was an Olive Garden, another was one of those huge supermarkets/grocery stores. I remember those in particular because of the weather outside vs AC inside made the entryways very drafty with that bug clash between temperatures as well.
I always thought that this practice was in part to help deter people who may be considering shop lifting for the first time. But that could be my own anxiety as any time I walked by the greeters, especially if I was just holding my items without a bag, I would feel nervous.
Without agreeing or disagreeing with the study, I can't help but consider that the methodology may be off. The data is based on self-reporting of workers and how they perceive their own work. In gauging actual usefulness, wouldn't it be more relevant to ask whether the recipients of that work consider it useful or not?
The abstract mentions how "feelings of alienation" may skew the data, which I think is a valid concern, but still sticks to analyzing the self-reporting. People generally measure their view of a job, and their motivation to do it, via "autonomy, competence, and relatedness", which would affect how they perceive it and by extension report their feelings of it. This is a fine thing to study, but in gauging the usefulness of an occupation, is entirely focused on the self. And thus, arguably, if we're looping in factors of alienation, it's kind of like looking at that value in a vacuum.
To talk about the social or objective value of work, it seems like it would be more productive to poll the people who are on the receiving end of that work, who depend on or engage with the results of it. What is perceived as useless to the producer of that work ("hey, we're not exactly saving lives out here!") might be seen as valuable--or at least, not useless--to the end user that the work is for. Otherwise it's a bit like asking the chef if the meal was good, and not the diner who ate it.
I feel like there are at least three things going on in this study related to self-reporting.
The first is that a large portion of society is depressed and anxious, and likely to feel that their work is not valuable.
The second is that our political systems and news reinforce constantly the idea that many types of jobs are useless, or at least not worth very much.
The third is exactly the idea of "alienation" -- the idea that people who actually produce value will be separated from seeing that value.
I don't think these three things make the study useless, I think they make it more interesting and worth further study.
I can imagine the recipients of that work providing biased data as well. Especially with managers, whose position and status relies on the number of subordinates they have.
Although, the paper also shows managers are considered having bullshit jobs quite often.
I was tech support for those screens in US doctor offices & lobbies that try to upsell prescription drugs. I did something useful, but my job was not just bullshit, but actively bad for people.
I don't agree with all the BS job criteria, but mine was a pretty good example.
Interesting take.
Regarding when I sued to work as an admin assistant, I don't think admin assistants are just to make other people look good. E.g., when I was an admin assistant making $20/hr and the execs were making I assume about $50+/hr.. it makes sense to have the lower paid person do whatever mundane tasks they can for the execs so that the execs can spend their time more efficiently on high-value high-impact tasks.
I think it’s important to remember that the categories are just the ones where they found a higher likelihood of work being (thought to be) unnecessary, not that the field as a whole is like that.
It makes total sense to have one person’s job essentially be clearing the path of obstructions so the specialist who’s running things can be more efficient. The status and pay questions grate a little on my personal sense of justice, but that’s primarily a me problem.
Thing is, an EA can also easily be in the employment of some trust fund kid sitting in a sinecure, or be a position created to give a particularly petulant upper-mid manager the appearance of actually being equal in status to the “real” executives. Cargo cult business management, basically. Hell, they might be working for an actual top level exec who just sucks at their own job.
It’s not that executive assistants aren’t ever needed, just that the nature of the job makes it more likely to exist in situations it isn’t needed as well as those where it is.
Totally not just you. The term 'unskilled labor' has really kneecapped a lot of EA's, support agents, retail & kitchen staff, etc. It absolutely takes skill to do almost all jobs well, and the fact that its on-the-job doesn't make it worthless compared to Csuite pay. It suppresses wages & keeps seasoned employees competing with new ones.
I agree re the sense of justice. And also there were certainly times where some of my tasks as an admin assistant were stupid and the higher up the person I supporting was...the more help they needed. E.g., the highest person in the company required me to lay out a package of oatmeal/bowl/spoon each morning, always ensure he had a sticky paper pad, and that the pencils in rooms were very sharp in any meetings he attended. To be fair I can't imagine the kind of pressures he may have been under...but many other people I supported were more independent and even did their own travel expenses and flight/hotel bookings.
And oh boy the memories of being a dev (my careers have been all over the place) working for a middle manager who -wasn't- a dev...he wasn't needed AND he didn't believe in things like code reviews, tests, mentoring... And despite not being a dev, he'd say he could easily code something I worked on in two days...he really had no clue. And I'll stop there as I don't want to vent for the next 30 minutes. :D
Ha. When I did SaaS support, my boss just married into a connected family. He was an absolute. fucking. tool.
Thank you for reminding me that he is the epitome of bullshit job. He truly, honestly hindered progress on work. Just so, so awful to work for.
I appreciate your reminder/clarification. And I've also had parts of my jobs seem completely useless -- I think in my case it was I would always create projects for myself to improve efficiency, train others, etc. BUT if at any time I looked at what the core duties were, yeah I could certainly see a lot of silly busy work.
You're job definitely sounds like less bs than mine.
The unsettling part of my bs job was that the better i was at it, the worse i was making the world. Not awful, but more ads are not what sick people need.
That's an unfortunate situation and I'm glad you had the mindset to frame it that way and that got out.
Jobs are self perpetuating because the core of our current system says (almost) everyone needs a job or they don’t get food and shelter. Hours within those jobs are self perpetuating because apparently it only counts as a “proper” job if it takes up around 40 of them.
Neither of those things strike me as a good way to incentivise efficiency, and while they may have been the least-worst compromises at some point I think it’s at least worth reassessing what proportion of the population needs a job at all (we’ve gone from one job required per household to two in the last 50 years, despite significant increases in productivity), and how much time those jobs should reasonably take up.
Short of doing that, we’re just stuck in a situation where a given percentage employment is considered necessary and the availability of jobs has to match that, whether productively needed or not, to stop people from becoming destitute and rioting.
That was a great read. They took some great pains to lay out controlling for other factors, and fairly clearly demonstrates that any study that doesn't control for alienation and autonomy isn't going to be capturing an accurate picture. I also think their statement about being mostly applicable to highly financialized countries also makes sense.
There are undoubtably actively harmful/bullshit jobs. The main question is how to identify them, and I think they've done some great groundwork on how to better figure that out.
Galactic Historian Douglas Adams explained how our planet came to be populated by purveyors of useless occupations through the humanitarian exile of a more advanced planet of their useless occupation occupiers.
More seriously, Bucky Fuller actually quantitified this wrt the insurance industry and concluded the actual price of materially supporting most of its occupants was so high relative to value provided that it would cost companies less to simply pay most employees their full salary and direct them to stay home and do nothing.
A final note. Some occupations listed, such as elevator operators, do provide a lot of value. Operators can be comforting to those riding an elevator, and can provide a lot of social lubrication.
I don't have much sympathy for this idea. If a company considers employing someone to do something "bullshit", then it's theoretically in their financial incentive not to do so if it's truly bullshit. But ultimately it's their own prerogative to make an unwise financial decision. If it's the government, they should be expected to balance the books (as in avoiding unnecessary deficits, paying down current debt obligations), but beyond that they should be able to do whatever they want with hiring. If the work is pernicious, society should simply regulate or pass laws against it.
I see wasted time as a negative externality just as much as pollution is. Something can easily be an economically rational decision for each individual organisation while still being terrible for society in aggregate: is the sliver of ROI above the cost of the employee’s pay really worth the opportunity cost of taking that person away from the other things, paid or unpaid, they might have spent that time on? Is there anything optimal for society about the 40 hour work week or is that just where inertia has landed us? How many “bullshit hours” are there within jobs that still clear the overall line of being non-bullshit?
Just quantifying output for a lot of jobs is tough, and doing so in relation to time spent is even harder. Contextualising that with the non-monetary value of the things a person might otherwise spend their time on is basically impossible. But I don’t think that means the answer is falling back on the calculations we do know with reasonable certainty - I think it means accepting that some problems are broadly unquantifiable, and boiling them down solely to financial incentives strongly risks a very suboptimal outcome hiding behind the numbers.
I think competition between firms and labour making demands about what working conditions they'll accept addresses these concerns (organizational inefficiency and unnecessary working hours, respectively). The solution I believe would be to ensure that both processes are protected and robust.
I have some concerns about that, but sure, in an ideal world it’d be a significant step in the right direction - but we live in a very non-ideal world, with a very skewed balance of wealth and power, meaning that here and now there are an incomprehensibly huge number of hours wasted doing nothing of greater value to society.
For me, articles like this resonate so strongly precisely because they highlight how far the reality of our systems is away from that hypothetical ideal. Bullshit jobs are a tangible example of that disconnect.
For the book balancing on the gov side, firing a government employee, at least in the US, is notoriously difficult. To the point that there are many stories (some i've witnessed myself) of people who literally just show up to work and do nothing, but aren't fired because it'd be too much of a fight. So instead another employee is hired to do their work or the work is loaded on someone who's already there.
Now to be fair, the position they fill might be very important, it's just that they choose to not do the work, so it's not like you can easily remove the position to get rid of dead weight. It can happen pretty much anywhere.
Fixing the firing and hiring system should be the focus then, since if the job is categorically important it wouldn't be eliminated on the basis of eliminating bullshit jobs.
Right, that was what I was trying to get at with my last part. Although "fixing the hiring system" is unfortunately the ultimate 'easier said than done'.
As usual in the social sciences, multiple well-regarded papers disagree on whether an effect exists at all. In this case "Contrary to Soffia et al. (2022), this article finds robust support for Graeber’s theory on BS jobs.". This always makes social science research fraught as repeatability is very difficult to achieve.
Sure, it's a young theory. It's going through the process of defining its theoretical posits, figuring out how to operationalize its claims, and determining what sorts of data are relevant. This is ground clearing, and happens all over the sciences--you'll find similar disputes in biology and medicine. (Physics, as an exceptionless fundamental science is always a bit different)
They actually kind of find support for both, depending on methodology. If raw numbers are used like Soffia et al. did, the results confirm Soffia et al., but if the effects of other factors like alienation are properly controlled for, a modified version of Graeber is confirmed (just dropping the "people are usually correct" part).
This whole study is a bit sensational for me. I'd say they're exploring these categories with a bit of bias right through. There is such a huge range, even between sales and marketing, of people to interview. I recognize that they point that out, but I don't agree with whatever sense of control they have over that factor. Later in the paper, they drop the term "marketing" from one of the five main job categories all together. Why? In that section, they emphasize their correct guess that "sales" would be such a dismal category.
The author seems to focus on corporate jobs, but, as trebory6 points out, as we see larger organizations, it's easy to oversimplify positions (like IT) that we don't understand. I don't believe the author has a grasp of the categories someone else defined for them. To me, this paper was written to make certain kinds of people feel important, which is socially damaging and feels like a waste of time to read, no matter how many languages it's been translated into.
I kind of had the opposite conclusion but I might have not fully understood the article.
To me the article basically doesn't really confirm much other than it's not that specific positions are inherently useless. More people in certain positions are more willing to call their jobs useless.
But it really doesn't actually say anything about the job itself. They just state that the feelings of uselessness can be because of routine, lack of socialisation, and (oh no I forgot what the third one is).
So a very useful job can feel useless if it's routine and they don't feel appreciated I guess. A useless job can feel useful depending on the environment their in.
So there's no real objective reason that would dictate whether people think their job is useless or not. Certain sectors just have a higher percentage of people feeling like it's useless, it doesn't mean the industry is actually useless.
They did mention the public sector several times though. And they did say that people in the public sector are less likely to feel like their job is useless.
I don't think this article was a written to make certain people feel important. All I got from it was "Whether you consider your job useless or not completely depends on the situation you're in and even with these categories, it really doesn't say anything about the sectors other than more people self report that they feel it's useless. It doesn't mean it's actually useless or not useless."
It's an incredibly non-commital conclusion.
Edit: On that note, I feel like the topic title doesn't actually represent the findings of the study. It's dramatic for sure but unless I missed it, the study doesn't proclaim anything like that.
I disagree with your conclusion. If there really are bullshit jobs-- this article goes some way towards pointing to better ways of assessing that claim--then it's important for society to figure out why, and how better to distribute human effort. Wasted work is bad for everyone. Once we get a better pocture, this may bolster arguments for universal basic income, or provide leverage for changing tax policies.