On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs • Hacker News Board

Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

#101

Post by jeremy6d » Wed, Nov 05, 2014, 1:40 PM UTC

spindritf wrote: post #14

How is this weak political agitation on top of HN? It reads like a paroody. You’re an anthropology professor, what’s the ‘need’ for that?” (And indeed a lot of tabloid readers would take the existence of my job as the very definition of wasteful social expenditure.) Yes, yes, if you disagree with our good professor here then you must be a tabloid-reading simpleton. A person of any sophistication would easily recogniz…

What in the hell is wrong with political agitation? Had no idea the system was working so well for you! :)

Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

#102

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Nov 05, 2014, 1:40 PM UTC

rakoo wrote: post #44

> 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…

[deleted]

Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

#103

Post by sauere » Wed, Nov 05, 2014, 1:41 PM UTC

As long as the President's success is measured by the unemployment rate, these jobs will exist.

Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

#104

Post by VBprogrammer » Wed, Nov 05, 2014, 1:42 PM UTC

ams6110 wrote: post #86

jug6ernaut wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not going to deny anything you said, its almost 100% true. But I believe your missing an important "fact"(maybe). That is its not really physically/physiologically/mentally possible to put in 40 hours of true "work". Not consistently anyways. So as much as it is we not truly putting in 40 hours, its the entire effort to be available for 40 hours IMO that you are getting paid for.

It is possible and commonplace in jobs where you physically work. Construction, any of the trades, factory work, food service... if you work 40 hours you have actually worked very close to 40 hours. There isn't any real opportunity to slack off or stand around in those jobs. Office jobs, yeah. Many of those are bullshit jobs.

I know what you're getting at, but I'd be reasonably confident in speculating that there is just as much slacking off on construction projects as any other employment. Some of it maybe genuinely waiting for something to happen (crane to move something, cement truck to arrive etc). I'm not sure whether you'd count that as slacking off but it's certainly not working.

Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

#105

Post by Zarel » Wed, Nov 05, 2014, 1:45 PM UTC

jseliger wrote: post #92

furyg3 wrote: post #48

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. Howe…

White-collar employees 'work' (periods of focused concentration) a lot less than 40 hours There's definite truth to this, but it's also true that, as many hackers have attested, moments of downtime and wandering attention are often where new ideas come from. Sample: I suspect a lot of people aren't sure what's the top idea in their mind at any given time. I'm often mistaken about it. I tend to think it's the idea I'd…

Can't that kind of "work" be done just as well while doing yardwork or cooking or similar things? I don't see a strong reason to confine employees for 40 hours a week for that.

Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

#106

Post by crdoconnor » Wed, Nov 05, 2014, 1:45 PM UTC

hammerzeit wrote: post #54

This reads like a classic Graeber piece, in that he's starts off by tackling some fascinating questions -- why are there 2x the administrative workers in the US as in Europe -- but then skips straight to the anarchist polemics. Most of the jobs he categorizes as "bullshit" all share an element of arms-race components to them. i.e. if my competitor has really good telemarketers/lobbyists/corporate lawyers, I'd better…

>To me, the tell that he defined "bullshit" as "jobs I don't like or understand" is that he lumped in actuaries with telemarketers -- does he think providing insurance has no value?

Quite a lot of it doesn't, and the less value it creates the more profitable it tends to be. Take PPI for instance.

While some of it has value, it swallows up a LOT more of our GDP than it should (much like the rest of the FIRE sector) and creates a multitude of bullshit jobs.

>Similarly he writes: "What does it say about our society that it seems to generate an extremely limited demand for talented poet-musicians, but an apparently infinite demand for specialists in corporate law?" There are more musicians employed in this country [1] than there are people in biglaw [2].

I bet those corporate lawyers earn more in aggregate.

>Ultimately, it seems like Graeber wants to return to a butcher-and-baker economy, where all our jobs are focused on directly providing services to consumers.

I don't think so. He is just highlighting the fact that the almighty market is not so efficient and has a lot of us doing a lot of pointless bullshit a lot of the time for no reason.

i.e. we're developing the worst excesses of the Soviet Union.

Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

#107

Post by martingordon » Wed, Nov 05, 2014, 1:46 PM UTC

I wonder if the problem is exacerbated in the US by the lack of guaranteed time off.

That is, European workers (for example) can better fill a 35-40 hour work week because they only have to work ~47 weeks of the year, whereas in the US, many feel lucky to have even two weeks off.

Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

#108

Post by byEngineer » Wed, Nov 05, 2014, 1:46 PM UTC

I work at a large bank in the US. We build websites. Internal websites. The company employs maybe 300k people in the US alone. None of the websites gets more than 10 hits a day! There are 5 websites. And we have 40-50 people to support just that! If all these websites disappeared overnight there would be no difference to the bank. And to the society. The best part: the bank has been rescued by tax payer money. If it went bankrupt -- as it should have -- I would be working productively somewhere else. Unless "somewhere" else is also supported by the tax payer money and artificially cheap credit, FED rates at 0% full economic cycle now. The solution is more capitalism, not socialism. I.e. let them go bankrupt! This is what capitalism is all about. You take risks. You win, big payout! You loose, you go bankrupt! This is capitalism, not tax funded corporations. That's socialism for the rich. But don't call that capitalism, please! Interest rates at 0% for 7 years?! Set by whom? Capitalist free markets? Or socialist bureaucrats who know it all better?! Who sets the rates? Mr. Market or Ms. Yellen? Get rid of the FED too. You will see jobs like mine disappearing. And forcing me to do something more productive than slacking off for $120k / year curtesy of the tax payer.

Capitalism in crisis is all about reallocating work force from unproductive work at looser companies to do something great at productive companies! That's what bankruptcies are all about. Yes, my bank should be history long time ago. Its assets should be taken over by a bank that didn't make the stupid mistakes. And smart people who avoided those mistakes. This is what the bankruptcy process is about. Then this new CEO that weathered 2008 crisis making his small bank winning party here and taking over assets of bankrupted banks -- would see that nonsense and fire half of the staff. So they can go do something productive! This is how it works in true capitalism. We don't have it though because we believe in socialism. So yep, pay for your zombie bank (and my salary!) because the people who you voted into the office, didn't let the markets work!

Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

#109

Post by yodsanklai » Wed, Nov 05, 2014, 1:46 PM UTC

furyg3 wrote: post #48

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. Howe…

> 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.

There are exceptions. As an academic, I have that freedom. If I don't feel like working, I have no pressure to stay at my office. On the other hand, I often work during the evenings, weekends and vacation. I wonder how I would adjust if I had to switch to a regular job.

Re: On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

#110

Post by sunnybg » Wed, Nov 05, 2014, 1:46 PM UTC

cstross wrote: post #21

dnautics wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it interesting that the one example Graeber comes up with is possibly the profession writ large whose demand is largely influenced by a social structure outside of the free-market? Likewise, a over promulgation of workers in finance is suggestive that maybe there is some non-free-market force is incentivising individuals to go into that field...

"A social structure outside of the free-market" describes, by some estimates, over 75% of all human interactions. Non-market interactions are invisible to conventional economics because they're not priced, but they're by no means insignificant. They range from developing-world peasants farming land to which they simply have no title deeds, through to the form of communist praxis which is the dominant social structure…

Volunteerism too, providing services or simply comfort to others free of charge, whether they be family, friends, neighbors, the elderly, the sick, the poor, is a non-free-market activity. The less free time a person has though, time away from market-driven, payment-required jobs, the less freedom they have to: work on tasks pro bono, pursue hobbies, interests, contribute to a vibrant caring community, participate in government or petition it, learn new things, experiment, think, write, get creative, explore, and simply pursue their own happiness in life.