Bullshit Jobs: A Theory

One winter afternoon, I patiently sat baking for 15 eternal minutes in a tiny, wood-fired, hillside sauna somewhere in the Vermont woods & then plunged directly into a freezing cold , nearby brook thru a freshly chopped hole in the ice.During the insanely fast rollercoaster sequence of limb flailing, spiking temperature gradients & spontaneous yelling that came next, I quickly realized that the old me had been summarily replaced & would never get a chance to appreciate the amazing refreshment now afforded the dripping wet & gasping eponymous substitute I had suddenly turned into !In a kindred shocking way, David Graeber’s immensely thrilling book , ‘Bull Shit Jobs’ swiftly yanks the curtain off our clownish & brutal world of modern employment w/ a joyful combination of calibrated insight & trenchant wit that fellow conceptual artists as variously inspired as Karl Marx ( ‘Grundrisse’ ) & Grace Slick ( ‘White Rabbit‘ ) would both seriously cherish while laughing their respective asses off .Fair warning! ‘Bull Shit Jobs’ is a transformative ‘gateway book ‘… a shaman-less ayahuasca of the human soul that unmistakably shows you exactly why most of today’s jobs mirror those “… pills that mother gives you “ ( Ibid. , ‘ White Rabbit ‘ - performed by either Grace Slick or Gillian Welch ) in that they ( you ) truly “ don’t do anything at all ! “-J.Joslin ( @ Detroit near Canada…)

I was doing a job that was only tangentially related to my chosen profession. It consisted mainly of attending Teams meetings and filling out meaningless paperwork. Since it paid well, it was only a matter of time that I hit my financial number, and once I did, I set a date and jumped off that treadmill. I lost 15 pounds over the next month and a half.

This book originated in an article on the phenomenon of meaningless (but proliferating) jobs. Hundreds of thousands of individuals responded to it and their comments were utilized to fashion a taxonomy of what the author terms ‘bullshit’ jobs. For example: 'duct-tape jobs' in which individuals patch together things already available; 'box ticking jobs' in which people are employed to respond to a claimed but fatuous need. The book is fascinating in its anecdotes and examples. These satisfy the terms for success which the author establishes: "The main point of this book was not to propose concrete policy prescriptions, but to start us thinking and arguing about what a genuine free society might actually be like" (p. 285).Thinking about what a genuinely free society might be like is a worthy task, one that might well occupy the time of a trapped paper pusher preparing reports that no one will read or ticking boxes on forms that will be audited by reviewers who will then forward them to supervisors who will file them in drawers that no one will ever open again. The author gives several examples of individuals who spend their days avoiding work that strikes them as worthless and devoting their hours to more wholesome and useful tasks.The very real problem is that these largely meaningless jobs are an omnipresent (and growing) phenomenon and solving the problems they create is a significant desideratum. For example, in universities the number of non-teaching staff has increased by 240% over the last few years. These people contribute very little to the overall effort. If they disappeared the money saved could be used to lower tuition (a true problem) or to hire individuals to teach freshman composition (a real need). Many were hired to palliate university constituencies which senior administrators want to silence or keep at arm's length.While this is interesting to 'think about' it is even more compelling as a problem requiring a solution. The solution: hiring senior administrators with the fortitude to confront aggrieved constituencies and inform them that the purpose of the university is to teach and do research, not create comfort zones. This requires trustees who share the goal of focusing on central functions rather than peripheral ones. The problem grows because these deanlings, deanlets and assistant deputy vice provosts are careerists who seek advancement. Advancement is achieved through the creation of 'programs'; these programs require additional staff, assistants to the additional staff, work space, heat/light/air conditioning and so on. There is no incentive to do anything but proliferate. Solution: hire senior administrators who only solve real problems and recruit underlings with the charge that they are to save money, not spend more, and solve problems, not create new ones by forcing the reallocation of funds from central functions to (their) peripheral ones.The author's perspective is both helpful and challenging. He is a self-professed anarchist. The good thing is that he is skeptical of both large governments and large corporations. The bad thing is that he is skeptical of 'policy' changes; his preference is to find grassroots movements that might be singled out and encouraged. This gives him a unique perspective; he criticizes both the left and the right. Bravo. However, he is unable to suggest solutions to the horrific problem which he has identified. For example, within universities one of the most frequently-recommended solutions (most recently articulated by Richard Vedder) to bureaucratic proliferation, the politicization of student support staff, grade inflation, the gutting of core curricula, and other problems is the closing of all colleges of education. That will require a battle plan and an actual battle, not just the thinking about an ideal world.He offers two major metaphors for our current condition. The first is a neo-feudalization of society in which a hierarchical system of dependency is created within workspaces, one that can ultimately be seen as a morbid desire to control. I think this is imprecise, because there was a reciprocal relationship within feudalism in which the lord would protect his serfs by ceding land to them and by risking his life for them in battle. That is different than having a martinet or power-tripping boss who brutalizes subordinates in order to salve his or her own ego.Another metaphor or, better, point of analysis, is far more interesting. He suggests that we are seeing the ethos of 'finance' extending to all aspects of human work. In other words, instead of having an individual capitalist invest his own money in a business, hiring workers, selling products, and so on, we have (for example) complex organizations created by large company takeovers. A film studio, e.g., once run by an entrepreneur who knew the entertainment industry, loved movies, hired his writing crew and his acting crew, etc. and greenlighted pictures by himself or with one other individual is now taken over by some other large, non-filmmaking organization. Instead of a 'clean' and orderly operation the company is suddenly infested with individuals who want to personally capitalize on a viable operation, rent-seek for themselves within that operation and, often, create ways for making money that are tangential to the original organization. For example, car makers do not make money selling cars; they make money on car loans with high interest rates or infinitely-complex 'insurance deals' that customers succumb to as a result of obfuscation or duplicity.Another way to think about it: I grew up in Cincinnati where there was a great proliferation of Savings and Loans. The notion was that the community pooled its savings and money was then lent to fellow citizens so that they could own homes. The loans were at, let us say, 7%; the investors/savers received 3-4% on their money and the savings and loan took the 3-4% as their profit. Clean. Simple. Compare that with a world in which money is made by selling unintelligible financial derivatives. This is 'capitalism' but it is a betrayal of 'purer' and 'cleaner' forms of capitalism. It is the case, e.g., that business schools are contemptuous of 'manufacturing' as an academic track (if they consider it at all) and tend to privilege 'finance' as their key area. 'Finance' is the top field at the nation's top business school. I think Professor Graeber is onto something here; certainly the modern university has been despoiled by a vast and growing school of lampreys who drain its resources and divert it from its original, central purposes.One last caveat. Professor Graeber tends to make easy generalizations that are highly questionable. For example, in defending the notion of a guaranteed basic income, he writes, "Most people would prefer not to spend their days sitting around watching TV and the handful who really are inclined to be total parasites are not going to be a significant burden on society, since the total amount of work required to maintain people in comfort and security is not that formidable. The compulsive workaholics who insist on doing far more than they really have to would more than compensate for the occasional slackers" (p. 281) Say what? He needs to have a look at the patterns of behavior of contemporary college students enumerated by Professors Arum and Roksa in their book ACADEMICALLY ADRIFT. “Socializing” has displaced “studying.”Bottom line: the book is very thought-provoking (which is its purpose) but the subject is so important that we need to hear more.

There are times in life where I like to reread this book to remind myself that life is too short to waste it working for anything that is unfulfilling. I highly recommend you get this book and read it.

Was hesitant - the title made me think it would be 300 pages of people complaining. Instead it is a thoughtful look at the social value of different jobs and how we need to rethink the value of work.

Really enjoyed this book, easy to read and to understand. Nice and light heart for when you do not want a heavy going read.

Rekommenderas. Till skillnad från olika managementböcker beskriver den det grundläggande faktum att flera av de akademiska yrken vi tror är betydelsefulla, i själva verket inte betyder någonting alls.

I wholeheartedly recommend this book to everybody. Especially those who feel constant need to justify their job and hard work.

This book should be a must read for everyone