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On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

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Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

#41

Post by coldtea »

dnautics wrote: post #2

"Sure, in the old inefficient socialist states like the Soviet Union, where employment was considered both a right and a sacred duty" Well, to be honest in the United States employment is considered to be such a right and sacred duty that we elect politicians based on employment and even make modulation of employment a core function of the central bank. A lot of laws also require people to be at their desks for 40 ho…

>Well, to be honest in the United States employment is considered to be such a right and sacred duty that we elect politicians based on employment and even make modulation of employment a core function of the central bank.

Yeah, part of this is because few have inherited or other wealth, so without employement you just die homeless and hungry in the streets.

Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

#43

Post by coldtea »

jcfrei wrote: post #35

The author himself notices half way through the text that he might have gone out on a limb. If his description of "bullshit jobs" was at least followed by some statistics on marginal valued added (to a product, service) by that particular job (and how this margin has become lower and lower) then we could start a serious discussion about it. But now his extraordinary claims just stand there as a shallow rant, more lik…

So, essentially he has to add some bullshit statistics to his description of bullshit jokes...

I find those kind of statistics pointless. Most of the time they are based on incomplete data and as much guesswork as any rant.

An intelligent opinion on the other hand, based on observation and with a coherent point of view, is worth more than all those statistics (to paraphrase Alan Kay, who said "A point of view is worth 80 IQ points").

Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

#44

Post by rakoo »

> The answer clearly isn’t economic

I beg to differ. I totally agree with the paradox (with the advances in technology, humans should be working less) but the problem, today, is economic:

- In order to live you need money

- In order to obtain money you need to work (except for the lucky too few)

- Therefore, work needs to exist to provide people with money, to the point of creating "useless" jobs if needs be

How are you going to remove jobs if it so directly means no more revenue for those people ? The problem here is that we're conflating revenue with work. The only answer is to decouple them, and introduce something like basic income (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income)

Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

#45

Post by binarymax »

tomp wrote: post #37
binarymax wrote: post #28

I just had a great trip to a cousins wedding and saw a lot of family. My Parents' generation are now just past the 'age of retirement' and are in their late 60s and early 70s. The majority of them are still working in their bullshit jobs. I asked several if they were going to retire soon and they all replied the same. If they retire what would they do? Even though their work is mostly pointless from a job function pe…

I can't help but pity people who say "there is nothing better to do" (but then again, maybe that's because I'm employed, working 10 hours a day). We live at a time when "I have nothing to do" is a really bullshit excuse. You have the whole internet available! - learn languages (e.g. Portuguese, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Spanish - to cover most of the world's population) - learn new stuff (statistics/machine…

Great points - but honestly, I could classify most of those as jobs. Want to be a translator, or a teacher, or an open source developer? We can all do those things alone, sure. But going (or remoting) to a workplace gives us a collaborative experience. And not to mention, not all people can easily motivate themselves to keep something going on their own, and need external pressure and motivation. The vibe I was getting was that my elders were afraid of devolving into couch potatoes, were they to leave the jobs they enjoyed.

Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

#46

Post by insickness »

What he seems to be railing against is hierarchy. It is easy to see what nurses do in a hospital. They walk around and treat the sick. The nurses have managers (or whatever they're called). These managers don't treat the sick themselves but they help organize the nurses. All the managers at the hospital are organized by the hospital administrator, and so on.

The higher up the hierarchy, the less obvious it is what people do. And with hierarchy, there is also more chance of waste and having a bullshit job.

But those bullshit jobs can come at almost any level. My first job out of college was at an environmental firm with extensive government contracts. The firm got paid for every hour they logged under my name on maintenance of projects that didn't require much maintenance except on paper. So the firm got paid for me showing up and doing nothing.

But I can confirm that it was horrible. At first I liked that I could come in at 10 and leave at 3. After a while though, it killed me inside.

Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

#47

Post by protonfish »

The simple social rule that explains this is pecking order. One of the most basic human desires is dominance over others. When you have the money, you hire as many submissive minions as you can. "Bullshit jobs" are just an entourage. Then you display dominance over them by making them do meaningless work - the more humiliating the better. If you hired people that were actually useful, you'd be reliant on them so only get as many as you actually need to keep your organization from going under.

Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

#48

Post by furyg3 »

While there's a lot to debate in the article, kudos to Graeber for talking about a taboo.

White-collar employees 'work' (periods of focused concentration) a lot less than 40 hours. There are exceptions, and HNers may deny this fact (because the demographic is different or because the taboo is more powerful in this circle), but Graeber's inebriated cocktail party confessions match my own discussions with friends.

However... We've learned a skill, learned the job, and are available for 40 hours. Western culture really doesn't allow us to just show up for the 15-20 hours we really work and get paid the same salary as the 40 we say we do. So instead of going home early and cooking, working in the garden, bettering themselves, or watching tv, many show up to work and have strange meetings about nothing, conversations at the coffee corner, work unproductively on a tasks that could be done efficiently if they hadn't already been at work for 7 hours, or fuck around online while nobody is looking. It's great for eBay and Facebook, not so much for the kids in day care.

To some extent, everybody knows this. Employers are starting to tolerate working from home a lot more, which I think is a tacit acknowledgement of the situation. I hope that our culture can come to grips with this and acknowledge that most people in creative jobs can't really put in a solid 40 hours of truly productive work, while at the same time not condemning them to work as consultants with no savings or pensions.

Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

#49

Post by tomp »

binarymax wrote: post #45
tomp wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't help but pity people who say "there is nothing better to do" (but then again, maybe that's because I'm employed, working 10 hours a day). We live at a time when "I have nothing to do" is a really bullshit excuse. You have the whole internet available! - learn languages (e.g. Portuguese, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Spanish - to cover most of the world's population) - learn new stuff (statistics/machine…

Great points - but honestly, I could classify most of those as jobs. Want to be a translator, or a teacher, or an open source developer? We can all do those things alone, sure. But going (or remoting) to a workplace gives us a collaborative experience. And not to mention, not all people can easily motivate themselves to keep something going on their own, and need external pressure and motivation. The vibe I was getti…

> but honestly, I could classify most of those as jobs.

Ok, so maybe that is where we differ. A "job", for me, is "work I do for money". If I had a passive source of money that would give me the option of not working ever again (and fully supporting my family, and future generations, etc), even if I still "worked" on the same stuff as I do now, I wouldn't call it "a job" (as it would be completely voluntary and optional) but "a hobby".

Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

#50

Post by pjc50 »

vanderZwan wrote: post #32
tmylk wrote: post #9

Graeber's idea on the solution to the problem: "revolt of the caring classes" instead of mass dropout is even more interesting in this interview. http://www.salon.com/2014/06/01/help_us_thomas_piketty_the_1... To put it in a naive tech twist - maybe there should be an online tool that allows me to distribute a proportion of my wages to a list of "people who care for me and things I care about". Basically, can I creat…

Off-topic: I've seen that link a few times, and have yet to figure out why it reads "help us thomas piketty the 1s sick and twisted new scheme"

Cry for help from the person running the CMS?
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