Happy Wednesday morning. What are you doing today?
May 23, 2018 3:47 AM Subscribe
David Graeber has expanded his 2013 essay on bullshit jobs (previously) into a book. The Guardian has an edited excerpt. Are you a flunky, a goon, a duct-taper, a box-ticker, or a task-master? "I think," Graeber says, "we need a rebellion of what I call the 'caring class,' people who care about others and justice."
I quickly discovered that looking busy when you aren’t is one of the least pleasant office activities imaginable.
How true that is. This is one of the reasons why I am a committed field person rather than office person. At least in field-based jobs you get a shovel or something to lean on.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 5:01 AM on May 23, 2018 [5 favorites]
How true that is. This is one of the reasons why I am a committed field person rather than office person. At least in field-based jobs you get a shovel or something to lean on.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 5:01 AM on May 23, 2018 [5 favorites]
Goons
These are people whose jobs have an aggressive element but, crucially, who exist only because other people also employ people in these roles. The most obvious example of this are national armed forces. Countries need armies only because other countries have armies; if no one had an army, armies would not be needed. But the same can be said of most lobbyists, PR specialists, telemarketers and corporate lawyers.
No, these jobs exist because countries/companies cannot make credible commitments and thus cannot cooperate. Its like saying all insurance is bullshit, because we either need it or we don't. Insurance exists because we lack complete information. Its necessary, as are 'goons'.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 5:08 AM on May 23, 2018 [3 favorites]
MisantropicPainforest: No, these jobs exist because countries/companies cannot make credible commitments and thus cannot cooperate.
What prevents them from making credible commitments?
posted by clawsoon at 5:22 AM on May 23, 2018
What prevents them from making credible commitments?
posted by clawsoon at 5:22 AM on May 23, 2018
Bargaining theory 101: why would you trust someone’s commitment to not do something if you know it’s in their interest to do it?
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 5:34 AM on May 23, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 5:34 AM on May 23, 2018 [1 favorite]
That just means that without an army, one country can't force other countries to act against their own interests. It's not immediately apparent to me why that would be a problem.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 5:44 AM on May 23, 2018
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 5:44 AM on May 23, 2018
MisantropicPainforest: Bargaining theory 101: why would you trust someone’s commitment to not do something if you know it’s in their interest to do it?
Because they don't have goons and therefore can't do it? :-) (I.e., Graeber's point.) Or because you have an established relationship of trust? Or because the bargaining situation is in the large space of alternatives to prisoner's dilemma in which cooperation leads to straightforward payoffs for both parties?
posted by clawsoon at 5:48 AM on May 23, 2018
Because they don't have goons and therefore can't do it? :-) (I.e., Graeber's point.) Or because you have an established relationship of trust? Or because the bargaining situation is in the large space of alternatives to prisoner's dilemma in which cooperation leads to straightforward payoffs for both parties?
posted by clawsoon at 5:48 AM on May 23, 2018
Will no one think of the poor belligerents?
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:49 AM on May 23, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:49 AM on May 23, 2018 [1 favorite]
I mean, if the success of your bargaining strategy hinges on your ability to make credible death threats against your co-negotiator, I feel like something is seriously wrong.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 5:51 AM on May 23, 2018 [4 favorites]
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 5:51 AM on May 23, 2018 [4 favorites]
While I mostly agree with the author about bullshit jobs, I do get the sense that he doesn't see any value in emotional labour at all. Receptionists, doormen, front door staff, etc, might not be strictly needed, but as someone who worked in a place that had them, and then replaced them all with screens with information and buttons to click, it was clear to me that their role in lending a sense of personal connection, warmth, and humanness to the organisation is not, in fact, just bullshit. And yes, they also made the buildings in the organisation that had them feel more elevated and prestigious, but that was by design (that was meant to be the fancy building). "Providing a badge of importance" is actually a useful meaning-making device for humans. If part of the organisation is, in fact, more important than others, signalling that through all kinds of means (a grander building, nicer interior decoration, actual humans on the desks and doors) is a visual cue that helps us know how to behave in that place. It's not nothing.
Similarly, when he says some organisations "maintain their own in-house magazines or even television channels, the ostensible purpose of which is to keep employees up to date on interesting news and developments, but which, in fact, exist for almost no reason other than to allow executives to experience that warm and pleasant feeling that comes when you see a favourable story about yourself in the media", I find that unnecessarily snarky. They can, if done right, also create a sense of community in the organisation. But I wonder whether the author would think creating community is also bullshit, because it's not strictly necessary to the organisation's bottom line.
posted by lollusc at 5:55 AM on May 23, 2018 [19 favorites]
Similarly, when he says some organisations "maintain their own in-house magazines or even television channels, the ostensible purpose of which is to keep employees up to date on interesting news and developments, but which, in fact, exist for almost no reason other than to allow executives to experience that warm and pleasant feeling that comes when you see a favourable story about yourself in the media", I find that unnecessarily snarky. They can, if done right, also create a sense of community in the organisation. But I wonder whether the author would think creating community is also bullshit, because it's not strictly necessary to the organisation's bottom line.
posted by lollusc at 5:55 AM on May 23, 2018 [19 favorites]
lollusc, I pretty much agree with you—I think Graeber strays a little too far to the snarky and dismissive side of things, and that he conflates jobs whose actual purpose differs from their ostensible purpose with jobs that have no purpose at all.
I think his basic point is right, but I'd modify it a bit. Bullshit jobs aren't black and white. It's a gradient. Almost all jobs have some amount of bullshit built-in, many jobs are mostly bullshit, and some jobs are bullshit from top to bottom.
I also think it's crucial that the determinator of what is and is not bullshit is the employee.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 6:08 AM on May 23, 2018 [3 favorites]
I think his basic point is right, but I'd modify it a bit. Bullshit jobs aren't black and white. It's a gradient. Almost all jobs have some amount of bullshit built-in, many jobs are mostly bullshit, and some jobs are bullshit from top to bottom.
I also think it's crucial that the determinator of what is and is not bullshit is the employee.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 6:08 AM on May 23, 2018 [3 favorites]
Are you a flunky, a goon, a duct-taper, a box-ticker, or a task-master?
I'm on the tiger team!
posted by thelonius at 6:09 AM on May 23, 2018 [3 favorites]
I'm on the tiger team!
posted by thelonius at 6:09 AM on May 23, 2018 [3 favorites]
lollusc: I wonder whether the author would think creating community is also bullshit
He does have some history of community building, though you could argue that most of his communities haven't achieved permanence.
posted by clawsoon at 6:11 AM on May 23, 2018 [1 favorite]
He does have some history of community building, though you could argue that most of his communities haven't achieved permanence.
posted by clawsoon at 6:11 AM on May 23, 2018 [1 favorite]
Because they don't have goons and therefore can't do it? :-) (I.e., Graeber's point.) Or because you have an established relationship of trust? Or because the bargaining situation is in the large space of alternatives to prisoner's dilemma in which cooperation leads to straightforward payoffs for both parties?I guess, but the argument for abolishing all militaries assumes that you would have a relationship of trust, which you would assume would continue eternally, with every potential actor in the world (and hell, every potential extraterrestrial actor as well.) You have to believe that every single entity out there will abide by the agreement for eternity, because you don't have much recourse if they don't. In 500 years, someone shows up at your descendants doorstep with tanks and guns and intent to conquer, and all they can do as they lay waste to your homes is wave a piece of paper that says that 500 years ago, their ancestors agreed not to have armies. That seems real utopian. He's apparently an anarchist, so he's exactly that kind of utopian, but most people aren't. And unless you convince people that it's a viable alternative, then I think people are going to look askance at calling military service a bullshit job.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:18 AM on May 23, 2018 [5 favorites]
Because they don't have goons and therefore can't do it? :-) (I.e., Graeber's point.)
But why do they not have goons?
Its not some accident of history that firms have PR departments and states have armies. It solves a very real problem of these entities not being able to coordinate and credibly commit to things that each individual entity has an incentive not to do. Its a classic collective action problem, and Graeber misses the really important point that goons help mitigate this problem.
Or because you have an established relationship of trust?
With thousands of businesses or hundreds of states? I don't think so.
Mefi's own Graeber is frustrating because at times he is unparalleled in his brilliance, but other times he's downright mediocre. I was blown away by his book on Debt. Then I got to the last chapter, which basically ignores a large body of literature I'm very familiar with, and it got so many basic points wrong. I left the book wondering if everything else was bullshit, or just that chapter.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 6:27 AM on May 23, 2018 [5 favorites]
But why do they not have goons?
Its not some accident of history that firms have PR departments and states have armies. It solves a very real problem of these entities not being able to coordinate and credibly commit to things that each individual entity has an incentive not to do. Its a classic collective action problem, and Graeber misses the really important point that goons help mitigate this problem.
Or because you have an established relationship of trust?
With thousands of businesses or hundreds of states? I don't think so.
Mefi's own Graeber is frustrating because at times he is unparalleled in his brilliance, but other times he's downright mediocre. I was blown away by his book on Debt. Then I got to the last chapter, which basically ignores a large body of literature I'm very familiar with, and it got so many basic points wrong. I left the book wondering if everything else was bullshit, or just that chapter.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 6:27 AM on May 23, 2018 [5 favorites]
He does have some history of community building, though you could argue that most of his communities haven't achieved permanence.
No communities anywhere ever are permanent, though.
posted by entropone at 6:31 AM on May 23, 2018
No communities anywhere ever are permanent, though.
posted by entropone at 6:31 AM on May 23, 2018
It seems like Graeber leaps over the chasm between "this job is not strictly necessary to society" to "this job is bullshit that should be eliminated." There are clearly make-work jobs out there, but most of the jobs he cites are not make-work. They just serve no higher purpose than generating revenue. It certainly can be spiritually corrosive to work a job like that, but it can also be spiritually corrosive to be a teacher, garbage collector, or construction worker. Even if we paid garbage collectors an amount that reflects their value to society, their work would still be repetitious, backbreaking, and dangerous. It's nice to have the feeling that your work is important to society's functioning, but that only goes so far in making someone spiritually fulfilled.
To me, it seems like it's actually a part of our ideological conditioning to think that we could be fulfilled if only we did work that served a higher purpose. Of course when you hate your job, it's easy to dwell on what bullshit it is and to imagine that the solution is purposive work. But when you have purposive work, it's typically still repetitive, time-consuming, and demeaningly hierarchical. A critique of work that focuses on purposiveness misses more fundamental reasons why people find their work spiritually corrosive.
posted by vathek at 6:32 AM on May 23, 2018 [12 favorites]
To me, it seems like it's actually a part of our ideological conditioning to think that we could be fulfilled if only we did work that served a higher purpose. Of course when you hate your job, it's easy to dwell on what bullshit it is and to imagine that the solution is purposive work. But when you have purposive work, it's typically still repetitive, time-consuming, and demeaningly hierarchical. A critique of work that focuses on purposiveness misses more fundamental reasons why people find their work spiritually corrosive.
posted by vathek at 6:32 AM on May 23, 2018 [12 favorites]
This reminds me of one my favorite Pogo music videos.
posted by Brocktoon at 6:33 AM on May 23, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by Brocktoon at 6:33 AM on May 23, 2018 [2 favorites]
duffell: it sounds like he needs to do a better job of defining what makes a job "bullshit" specifically vs. just "shitty"
As I understand it, he bases it mostly off of self-reports. If people think their job is bullshit, and tell Graeber so, he's willing to believe it.
He does differentiate between bullshit jobs and shit jobs in the mic.com interview (or, as I spelled it, intereview):
As I understand it, he bases it mostly off of self-reports. If people think their job is bullshit, and tell Graeber so, he's willing to believe it.
He does differentiate between bullshit jobs and shit jobs in the mic.com interview (or, as I spelled it, intereview):
When you talk about bullshit jobs, people think you mean stupid or bad jobs, and that’s not what I mean. I think it’s jobs that don’t mean anything. Jobs where the person doing them secretly believes that if they didn’t exist the world would be exactly the same or it might be slightly better.posted by clawsoon at 6:41 AM on May 23, 2018 [3 favorites]
A shit job is not like that. If I’m a cleaner, I know perfectly well that if I’m not there things get dirty. They don’t think they’re useless, they think rightly that they’re not treated very well.
I quickly discovered that looking busy when you aren’t is one of the least pleasant office activities imaginable.
So I learned early on that my role as an office manager/administrative assistant involves a lot of "just be on call". I mean, I do have tasks, but those tasks are often dependent on either a specific schedule or on other people giving me the tools first (a series of reports I compile into a single file on a weekly basis, putting together people's expense reports, sending my boss a rundown of his schedule for the following day, etc.), and there is no guarantee this will all occupy a full 8-hour day, or a 40-hour week. Sometimes things do; sometimes things don't. But I have to be around in case something comes up for me to tend to.
Like the front desk attendant in the Guardian link (a job I also held in college, by the way) I looked into pursuing my own things during the down time, as did all the other admins in every office I have ever worked in. However, most of the other admins were doing online shopping or arranging things for their personal lives; I conducted the bulk of my writing. In one office it was an open secret that that's what I was doing, and my own boss allowed me becuase at least I was doing something more interesting than going online at Zappos.
I'm a bit more covert about it at my current job, but that blog I got? yeah, that's where I write most of the posts.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:44 AM on May 23, 2018 [5 favorites]
So I learned early on that my role as an office manager/administrative assistant involves a lot of "just be on call". I mean, I do have tasks, but those tasks are often dependent on either a specific schedule or on other people giving me the tools first (a series of reports I compile into a single file on a weekly basis, putting together people's expense reports, sending my boss a rundown of his schedule for the following day, etc.), and there is no guarantee this will all occupy a full 8-hour day, or a 40-hour week. Sometimes things do; sometimes things don't. But I have to be around in case something comes up for me to tend to.
Like the front desk attendant in the Guardian link (a job I also held in college, by the way) I looked into pursuing my own things during the down time, as did all the other admins in every office I have ever worked in. However, most of the other admins were doing online shopping or arranging things for their personal lives; I conducted the bulk of my writing. In one office it was an open secret that that's what I was doing, and my own boss allowed me becuase at least I was doing something more interesting than going online at Zappos.
I'm a bit more covert about it at my current job, but that blog I got? yeah, that's where I write most of the posts.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:44 AM on May 23, 2018 [5 favorites]
Oh duh, I forgot to mention my ultimate point above -
The advantage to using writing as your "down time" thing is that this makes for a lot of typing into Word docs, and that can look an awful lot like "looking busy" at a glance.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:50 AM on May 23, 2018 [2 favorites]
The advantage to using writing as your "down time" thing is that this makes for a lot of typing into Word docs, and that can look an awful lot like "looking busy" at a glance.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:50 AM on May 23, 2018 [2 favorites]
To me these bullshit jobs seem like a lot better gigs than, say, a nurse who has to work every second of their 12 hour shift doing hard labor. Sure it helps people and is meaningful, but when I had an office gig I 'worked' about 90 minutes during an 8 hour shift.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 6:52 AM on May 23, 2018 [4 favorites]
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 6:52 AM on May 23, 2018 [4 favorites]
I'm sure there are a few bullshit jobs but this has to be written by some libertarian nutcase. I will never understand the idea that regulations are necessary but that there aren't supposed to be people whose job is to verify that they are being met. And every manager has that one person they have to spend all day managing because they just won't do their job without supervision. So the assumption that people will do their work without supervision is incorrect. Even if it is true of most, 'managers' aren't just doling out work to uncooperative employees, they are also deciding strategy, approving estimates, and other management work that sucks but has to be done.
"Everyone is familiar with the sort of jobs that don’t seem, to the outsider, really to do much of anything:"
Oh is that the standard now? What grandpa thinks work is?
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:02 AM on May 23, 2018 [4 favorites]
"Everyone is familiar with the sort of jobs that don’t seem, to the outsider, really to do much of anything:"
Oh is that the standard now? What grandpa thinks work is?
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:02 AM on May 23, 2018 [4 favorites]
Instead of whining about 'bullshit' jobs, he should be using his anarchist/libertarian skillz to push back against the 40 hour work week or something.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:03 AM on May 23, 2018
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:03 AM on May 23, 2018
Instead of whining about 'bullshit' jobs, he should be using his anarchist/libertarian skillz to push back against the 40 hour work week or something.That is his ultimate argument, for what it's worth. He thinks there's not enough non-bullshit work to go around anymore, so everyone should have a guaranteed income, and then most people can spend their time however they please. And the non-bullshit jobs would be spread out between more people, so the non-bullshit workers would be working a lot less.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:08 AM on May 23, 2018 [4 favorites]
Isn't that what he's doing though? His whole premise is that industrialization and automation offered an explicit promise of less work and more leisure, but that this pronise never materialized because it suits those who benefit from existing power structures if people are kept working full time on pain of starvation and homelessness. Hence, the creation of bullshit jobs.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 7:09 AM on May 23, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 7:09 AM on May 23, 2018 [3 favorites]
That's another thing I like about field-based work, by the way. Quite often, if you run out of work to do for the day, you can just go home early.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 7:14 AM on May 23, 2018
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 7:14 AM on May 23, 2018
Isn't that what he's doing though?
No, because he's identifying a portion of jobs that he either doesn't understand or agree is necessary - declaring that the whole of what said person does, and declaring it bullshit. Baby with bathwater I guess.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:17 AM on May 23, 2018
No, because he's identifying a portion of jobs that he either doesn't understand or agree is necessary - declaring that the whole of what said person does, and declaring it bullshit. Baby with bathwater I guess.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:17 AM on May 23, 2018
He’s basing nearly everything not on his definitions, but on interviews with actual people doing these actual jobs.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 7:20 AM on May 23, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 7:20 AM on May 23, 2018 [1 favorite]
While I mostly agree with the author about bullshit jobs, I do get the sense that he doesn't see any value in emotional labour at all.
the importance of emotional labor is one of the major themes of the book. his argument is that, for various reasons, the denigration of emotional labor is the other side of the coin of the rise of bullshit jobs -- we have an attitude that if something involves genuinely caring for and helping other people, that should be its own reward. you should only get paid for doing something if it makes you feel despair and misery.
posted by vogon_poet at 7:36 AM on May 23, 2018 [7 favorites]
the importance of emotional labor is one of the major themes of the book. his argument is that, for various reasons, the denigration of emotional labor is the other side of the coin of the rise of bullshit jobs -- we have an attitude that if something involves genuinely caring for and helping other people, that should be its own reward. you should only get paid for doing something if it makes you feel despair and misery.
posted by vogon_poet at 7:36 AM on May 23, 2018 [7 favorites]
also I don't think he believes the job of receptionist is a bullshit job, inherently.
one of the people he interviewed had a bullshit job as a receptionist, and she believed it was bullshit because nobody ever came to the building, she had to answer one phone call a day, and her only other responsibility was winding a grandfather clock once a week.
if people regularly came to the building, or called the phone, presumably it would have been different.
posted by vogon_poet at 7:39 AM on May 23, 2018 [2 favorites]
one of the people he interviewed had a bullshit job as a receptionist, and she believed it was bullshit because nobody ever came to the building, she had to answer one phone call a day, and her only other responsibility was winding a grandfather clock once a week.
if people regularly came to the building, or called the phone, presumably it would have been different.
posted by vogon_poet at 7:39 AM on May 23, 2018 [2 favorites]
He’s basing nearly everything not on his definitions, but on interviews with actual people doing these actual jobs.
1st one: yeah that sucks.
2nd one: "There was some disagreement between managers that led to a standardisation that nullified the automation.” That's not how automation works. It used to be standardized when it was automated, but that meant it was useless for one of the managers so they turned it off instead of spending the money to make it acceptable to both. Fair enough that it should be automated, but that has a cost that was less than employing someone.
3rd one:"I was at my job for 2 whole days (maybe the trainer was on vacation? Should have stayed home apparently didn't need the money) before they gave me any tasks".
Let's check the 4th one:
"My job is useless because I have to prevent packages from being stolen and answer questions over the phone (which I've had this job for 3 years but still can't do competently) ". I've actually done this job - there is more to it than that.
I just don't think these are making his case.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:40 AM on May 23, 2018
1st one: yeah that sucks.
2nd one: "There was some disagreement between managers that led to a standardisation that nullified the automation.” That's not how automation works. It used to be standardized when it was automated, but that meant it was useless for one of the managers so they turned it off instead of spending the money to make it acceptable to both. Fair enough that it should be automated, but that has a cost that was less than employing someone.
3rd one:"I was at my job for 2 whole days (maybe the trainer was on vacation? Should have stayed home apparently didn't need the money) before they gave me any tasks".
Let's check the 4th one:
"My job is useless because I have to prevent packages from being stolen and answer questions over the phone (which I've had this job for 3 years but still can't do competently) ". I've actually done this job - there is more to it than that.
I just don't think these are making his case.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:40 AM on May 23, 2018
Some of his complaints feel to me like a natural side effect of scaling up. When the volume of work increases and the size of an organization increases and you start to specialize, to delegate ever-narrower tasks to a certain person or class of people, I think a lot of jobs take on this quality, where they are a tiny and possibly deadly boring part of a much larger goal. I say this having read the article (and a previous one by the same author) but not the full book, so maybe there is more to it than this.
Pushing back in a different way for a moment, let’s imagine that many jobs really are bullshit and the tasks they require don’t add a lot of value to the world. In a large and heterogenous society it seems to me there’s still value in whatever modest mixing of people happens in the workplace. If we didn’t have workplaces to accomplish this we’d need to invent some other means. I mean, maybe we could, maybe some other structure would do it better! I’m just saying that an alternative world in which we most of us stay at home and are focused entirely on our families doesn’t seem super compatible with maintaining the social-structural integrity of a large country. What’s his answer for what we should do instead, anyone know?
posted by eirias at 7:47 AM on May 23, 2018
Pushing back in a different way for a moment, let’s imagine that many jobs really are bullshit and the tasks they require don’t add a lot of value to the world. In a large and heterogenous society it seems to me there’s still value in whatever modest mixing of people happens in the workplace. If we didn’t have workplaces to accomplish this we’d need to invent some other means. I mean, maybe we could, maybe some other structure would do it better! I’m just saying that an alternative world in which we most of us stay at home and are focused entirely on our families doesn’t seem super compatible with maintaining the social-structural integrity of a large country. What’s his answer for what we should do instead, anyone know?
posted by eirias at 7:47 AM on May 23, 2018
In a large and heterogenous society it seems to me there’s still value in whatever modest mixing of people happens in the workplace. If we didn’t have workplaces to accomplish this we’d need to invent some other means
I agree with this - I think you can see the horrible results of limited interaction, except mostly transaction-based, with suburbia - where the basic model is the only people you interact with are of your own personal choosing. Many people like this model, but many also don't considering how many, even in suburbia, are begging for old timey squares and fairs for public, non-transactional interactions.
I've also never read his book and every sample and quoting I've ever seen is the opposite of what people are saying here about its larger points, but maybe he does deserve another chance.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:00 AM on May 23, 2018 [2 favorites]
I agree with this - I think you can see the horrible results of limited interaction, except mostly transaction-based, with suburbia - where the basic model is the only people you interact with are of your own personal choosing. Many people like this model, but many also don't considering how many, even in suburbia, are begging for old timey squares and fairs for public, non-transactional interactions.
I've also never read his book and every sample and quoting I've ever seen is the opposite of what people are saying here about its larger points, but maybe he does deserve another chance.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:00 AM on May 23, 2018 [2 favorites]
it seems like these interviews make his argument appear much more glib than it is. (and I'm not completely satisfied with it! but it is a thoughtful book, not just a rant about How Society Sucks.) I don't think it is as good as Debt, but it is worth reading.
the first section spends a lot of time trying to pin down what really counts as "bullshit". ultimately he leans a lot on how the employee actually feels about it, but not totally. the ultimate definition is:
later he argues that domestic work, cleaning, cooking, as well as emotional and caring labor, are sort of the anti-bullshit jobs, maximally useful, which paradoxically is why they are so poorly compensated if at all.
posted by vogon_poet at 8:14 AM on May 23, 2018 [5 favorites]
the first section spends a lot of time trying to pin down what really counts as "bullshit". ultimately he leans a lot on how the employee actually feels about it, but not totally. the ultimate definition is:
a bullshit job is a form of paid employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence even though, as part of the conditions of employment, the employee feels obligated to pretend this is not the case.on the feminist front, there's a tendency to dismiss a lot of female coded work as bullshit, which he rejects, in a section titled "Why hairdressers are a poor example of a bullshit job".
later he argues that domestic work, cleaning, cooking, as well as emotional and caring labor, are sort of the anti-bullshit jobs, maximally useful, which paradoxically is why they are so poorly compensated if at all.
posted by vogon_poet at 8:14 AM on May 23, 2018 [5 favorites]
It's weird to me that we can have one thread where we all agree that a (properly implemented) UBI would be a great thing and would free people up to self-actualize and pursue more personally and societally beneficial goals, and then another where people straight-facedly express a fear that without the forced socialization of the workplace, society would suffer because people would just stay home and do nothing.
Sometimes this place just feels like one huge downer.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 8:32 AM on May 23, 2018 [7 favorites]
Sometimes this place just feels like one huge downer.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 8:32 AM on May 23, 2018 [7 favorites]
There are probably a few people who think they have bullshit jobs who don't understand the necessity of them, but I doubt there are that many. When I was doing field work (something that you really have to love or it's utter hell) we had one guy who thought our job was completely useless. We literally just hung out and watched other people work. BUT: what we were doing was making sure that a construction firm was living up to the quality, safety, and environmental clauses in their contract. It was boring, and most of the time we felt useless. After more than three years doing this, however, we had an extremely strong case that the contractor had been acting in bad faith, and we had saved taxpayers (we were working on behalf of a Crown Corporation) millions of dollars and had nipped quite a few things in the bud (especially w/r/t quality and the environment) before they became substantial issues. Most of the value of that work wasn't visible until much, much later, and I only got to see it because I was kept on to do the end-of-job stuff, and that guy wasn't. He never got to see the full picture of what all his boredom actually accomplished.
That being said: most of the time that isn't true. Most of the time it's extremely clear what value your job does or does not have, and it's hugely demoralizing when you know it isn't something worth doing. I have an example from my current job that I'm not allowed to share, but it essentially involves hiring people to work on projects that serve no purpose but to stroke the ego of someone quite high up on the food chain, and it has caused us to lose skilled people who do the actual work that is at the core of our "mission".
My graduate school work was technically "interdisciplinary humanities", but it was a kind of stealth policy analysis program, and one of the things were were explicitly trained to do was go into an organization and "read" it the way we would any other text. What do they say about who they are and how do the choices they make align with those statements? What about the dynamics of the work environment? And on and on. And by "explicitly trained" I mean they literally sent us into organizations to practice this. We did the work there, but we also did this other work. There are so, so many jobs that exist mainly to pay lip service to what organizations say they do or believe in, or even what they are legally required to do (talk to somebody who works in records management some time... a job that should be useful, and is when it's allowed to be, but often isn't because those jobs are regularly filled so an organization can look like it's doing responsible records management rather than actually doing it--three guesses what my partner does for a living).
While I agree that Graeber's tone is often glib, there's very little in his conclusions that doesn't ring true.
posted by Fish Sauce at 8:40 AM on May 23, 2018 [6 favorites]
That being said: most of the time that isn't true. Most of the time it's extremely clear what value your job does or does not have, and it's hugely demoralizing when you know it isn't something worth doing. I have an example from my current job that I'm not allowed to share, but it essentially involves hiring people to work on projects that serve no purpose but to stroke the ego of someone quite high up on the food chain, and it has caused us to lose skilled people who do the actual work that is at the core of our "mission".
My graduate school work was technically "interdisciplinary humanities", but it was a kind of stealth policy analysis program, and one of the things were were explicitly trained to do was go into an organization and "read" it the way we would any other text. What do they say about who they are and how do the choices they make align with those statements? What about the dynamics of the work environment? And on and on. And by "explicitly trained" I mean they literally sent us into organizations to practice this. We did the work there, but we also did this other work. There are so, so many jobs that exist mainly to pay lip service to what organizations say they do or believe in, or even what they are legally required to do (talk to somebody who works in records management some time... a job that should be useful, and is when it's allowed to be, but often isn't because those jobs are regularly filled so an organization can look like it's doing responsible records management rather than actually doing it--three guesses what my partner does for a living).
While I agree that Graeber's tone is often glib, there's very little in his conclusions that doesn't ring true.
posted by Fish Sauce at 8:40 AM on May 23, 2018 [6 favorites]
I mean, I enjoy a well-sanitized telephone as much as anyone, but haven't we all had a job at some point that just seemed soul-crushingly pointless? Wouldn't it be nice if we could recognize that this is a problem and take steps to fix it? Wouldn't it be great if society could be re-organized so that that meaningless work (and sure, the line there is fuzzy) could be converted into leisure? I feel like that's the nut of the argument that Graeber is trying to make.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 8:42 AM on May 23, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 8:42 AM on May 23, 2018 [2 favorites]
I'm a duct taper.
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:53 AM on May 23, 2018
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:53 AM on May 23, 2018
It looks like these issues are all symptoms of poor management. But when you have a hammer everything looks like a nail, so...
1) Job is not bullshit but worker thinks it is - I'm not the expert at any of the roles reporting to me, but my job is to ensure everyone knows exactly where they fit in the organization and how critical they are to the running of the whole. (sense of place and contribution) I have always had a "big picture" systems view of the world, and it shocks me to often find people unaware of how systems work - even people who have spent years working in the field, they have a very narrow understanding of only what they do, and don't have the sense of curiosity to find out what every other person in the organization really does or why they do it.
2) Job is actually bullshit - that's the business owner being silly wasting money hiring people to do pointless work, and likely a symptom of a un-competitive environment (public sector is notorious for this)
3) Underutilization - I can easily identify who is working 4 hours out of 8 hours, and who is working 6 hours out of 8, and who is working 8 out of 8. A person who gets all their work done in 4 hours out of 8 (and spends the rest of time on Facebook or something) is not necessarily a major problem. They may be someone with low aspirations at the moment, and their spare capacity (slack) in the system is valuable for the moments when we do need extra resource - if you're working everyone to 100% capacity all the time it's a fragile system. Otherwise, my role is to help them identify other development goals / workstreams and interests that will engage them at 8 hours out of 8 if that is what they wants.
4) Goons - yeah this is true, somewhat, but his examples aren't a slam dunk. If you want a functioning legal system, you need people who understand the law and apply them so you get... a job called a corporate lawyer, who sometimes end up helping clients sue other businesses for violations of law. If you want a functioning tax system, you need people who understand tax law and how to apply it... so you get a job called corporate accountant... who sometimes end up helping clients evade taxes. And you could argue Coke vs Pepsi, if they both ceased all marketing activity, their market share relative to each other would remain the same and they'd both save billions of dollars, but... it's also likely that total soft drink consumption would plummet. Which is not a bad thing, mind you. But it's not the a zero sum game he makes it out to be.
5) Flunkies - a form of luxury good, more typically used in countries where labor is cheap. You won't find too many of them in countries with high minimum wage.
posted by xdvesper at 8:57 AM on May 23, 2018 [2 favorites]
1) Job is not bullshit but worker thinks it is - I'm not the expert at any of the roles reporting to me, but my job is to ensure everyone knows exactly where they fit in the organization and how critical they are to the running of the whole. (sense of place and contribution) I have always had a "big picture" systems view of the world, and it shocks me to often find people unaware of how systems work - even people who have spent years working in the field, they have a very narrow understanding of only what they do, and don't have the sense of curiosity to find out what every other person in the organization really does or why they do it.
2) Job is actually bullshit - that's the business owner being silly wasting money hiring people to do pointless work, and likely a symptom of a un-competitive environment (public sector is notorious for this)
3) Underutilization - I can easily identify who is working 4 hours out of 8 hours, and who is working 6 hours out of 8, and who is working 8 out of 8. A person who gets all their work done in 4 hours out of 8 (and spends the rest of time on Facebook or something) is not necessarily a major problem. They may be someone with low aspirations at the moment, and their spare capacity (slack) in the system is valuable for the moments when we do need extra resource - if you're working everyone to 100% capacity all the time it's a fragile system. Otherwise, my role is to help them identify other development goals / workstreams and interests that will engage them at 8 hours out of 8 if that is what they wants.
4) Goons - yeah this is true, somewhat, but his examples aren't a slam dunk. If you want a functioning legal system, you need people who understand the law and apply them so you get... a job called a corporate lawyer, who sometimes end up helping clients sue other businesses for violations of law. If you want a functioning tax system, you need people who understand tax law and how to apply it... so you get a job called corporate accountant... who sometimes end up helping clients evade taxes. And you could argue Coke vs Pepsi, if they both ceased all marketing activity, their market share relative to each other would remain the same and they'd both save billions of dollars, but... it's also likely that total soft drink consumption would plummet. Which is not a bad thing, mind you. But it's not the a zero sum game he makes it out to be.
5) Flunkies - a form of luxury good, more typically used in countries where labor is cheap. You won't find too many of them in countries with high minimum wage.
posted by xdvesper at 8:57 AM on May 23, 2018 [2 favorites]
then another where people straight-facedly express a fear that without the forced socialization of the workplace, society would suffer because people would just stay home and do nothingI mean I've only seen like one comment to that effect and generally speaking different people have different opinions?
I'm generally on the "let forced socialization rot in hell" side, which has also been criticized because how dare I prefer not to directly interact with people for rote transactional things; however the trope of "what will I do with myself if I retire????" is pretty well known even if it is not applicable to every person. To me that's partly a matter of personality and partly a matter of habit and social expectation, and the last item is I think what is being addressed by calls for more "third places".
posted by inconstant at 9:07 AM on May 23, 2018 [1 favorite]
I can see Graeber's point, but I'm reluctant to completely agree with it. I think it's likely his ideas will be misused and fire people who actually have some use or even useful jobs.
Also, basing whether a job is bullshit or not on what a group employee feels about it is kind of anecdotal. Maybe the job isn't a fit for that person for various reasons, but does it mean that entire occupation is useless?
posted by FJT at 9:20 AM on May 23, 2018 [1 favorite]
Also, basing whether a job is bullshit or not on what a group employee feels about it is kind of anecdotal. Maybe the job isn't a fit for that person for various reasons, but does it mean that entire occupation is useless?
posted by FJT at 9:20 AM on May 23, 2018 [1 favorite]
xdvesper: their spare capacity (slack) in the system is valuable for the moments when we do need extra resource - if you're working everyone to 100% capacity all the time it's a fragile system.
Firefighters are the extreme example of this. If you cut your firefighter workforce enough to make sure that they're fighting fires all the time, you're basically guaranteeing that lots of stuff will burn down. So they sit around doing nothing much most of the time, but it's still a critical role - not bullshit.
On the other side, I think you could put much of U.S. healthcare administration and insurance. Everyone in the system has a role, and is doing something useful in terms of how the system is currently organized. Most of them are constantly busy.
However, if you compare the U.S. healthcare system to single-payer systems, you start asking whether 50-80% of the administration and insurance jobs in the system are bullshit jobs. Do they make healthcare work better? If they were eliminated by switching to a single-payer system, would they be missed?
posted by clawsoon at 9:34 AM on May 23, 2018 [2 favorites]
Firefighters are the extreme example of this. If you cut your firefighter workforce enough to make sure that they're fighting fires all the time, you're basically guaranteeing that lots of stuff will burn down. So they sit around doing nothing much most of the time, but it's still a critical role - not bullshit.
On the other side, I think you could put much of U.S. healthcare administration and insurance. Everyone in the system has a role, and is doing something useful in terms of how the system is currently organized. Most of them are constantly busy.
However, if you compare the U.S. healthcare system to single-payer systems, you start asking whether 50-80% of the administration and insurance jobs in the system are bullshit jobs. Do they make healthcare work better? If they were eliminated by switching to a single-payer system, would they be missed?
posted by clawsoon at 9:34 AM on May 23, 2018 [2 favorites]
Countries need armies only because other countries have armies
Yes, but an army can exist without having a career military. Some countries use conscription, while others use mercenaries. And even if you eliminate the military as a profession, countries can still rely on the traditional way of telling a bunch of people to grab their pitchforks and meet somewhere at a certain time.
posted by FJT at 9:36 AM on May 23, 2018
Yes, but an army can exist without having a career military. Some countries use conscription, while others use mercenaries. And even if you eliminate the military as a profession, countries can still rely on the traditional way of telling a bunch of people to grab their pitchforks and meet somewhere at a certain time.
posted by FJT at 9:36 AM on May 23, 2018
I can't help but notice a few taskmasters in this thread living up to Graeber's characterization of them as a "class of people who genuinely don’t realise their own jobs are bullshit."
posted by One Second Before Awakening at 9:44 AM on May 23, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by One Second Before Awakening at 9:44 AM on May 23, 2018 [2 favorites]
"class of people who genuinely don’t realise their own jobs are bullshit."
Wait, but Graeber's own definition of "bullshit" jobs says that they are:
"one so completely pointless that even the person who has to perform it every day cannot convince themselves there’s a good reason for them to be doing it. "
If you fail to realize your job is bullshit, isn't your job not bullshit then?
posted by FJT at 9:52 AM on May 23, 2018 [2 favorites]
Wait, but Graeber's own definition of "bullshit" jobs says that they are:
"one so completely pointless that even the person who has to perform it every day cannot convince themselves there’s a good reason for them to be doing it. "
If you fail to realize your job is bullshit, isn't your job not bullshit then?
posted by FJT at 9:52 AM on May 23, 2018 [2 favorites]
I wonder if, given that enough box-tickers realize that their job is bullshit, it automatically makes the task-master job bullshit even if they don't realize it. If all the box-ticker jobs are eliminated, the task-master has nothing to do.
posted by clawsoon at 9:56 AM on May 23, 2018
posted by clawsoon at 9:56 AM on May 23, 2018
I mean, 40% of the time I'm convinced my job is bullshit, but I think that might be burnout, not some sort of clear-eyed evaluation of the utility of my job. What I do know is that the state legislature thinks my job is bullshit, because they think that higher education is 90% bullshit. I don't think that Graeber would agree, but he's also not deciding on state appropriations to public ed.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 9:58 AM on May 23, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 9:58 AM on May 23, 2018 [1 favorite]
FWIW, I work with task-masters whose job is clearly useful. In computer animation, there are dozens of people working in parallel on tasks which all depend on each other in complicated ways. Without the task-masters, you tend to get expensive chaos. A task-master who does their job well (or not) means profit (or not).
Whether it's all bullshit might depend on how much you value entertainment for children. My valuation of it went up considerably after I had a child...
posted by clawsoon at 10:01 AM on May 23, 2018 [1 favorite]
Whether it's all bullshit might depend on how much you value entertainment for children. My valuation of it went up considerably after I had a child...
posted by clawsoon at 10:01 AM on May 23, 2018 [1 favorite]
I've just started reading Corey Robin's The Reactionary Mind, where he recounts how, during several large-scale strikes in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the bosses expressed their greatest consternation at the workers' (largely successful, it would seem) attempts to make the trains and municipal institutions function without managers overseeing them. It seems like, for a moment, Graeber's taskmasters started to suspect that their own jobs were bullshit and responded with predictable violence.
On another note entirely, I find it interesting to think about the role that "bullshit jobs" play in the biographies of many Soviet artists and intellectuals. It's almost a commonplace of the genre that the young poet, musician, etc. had a nominal job that paid very little and involved very little work, which allowed him (usually) to focus on other priorities. The emphasis is not on the stultifying nature of the non-work, but on the space of relative freedom that it carves out. Of course, no such thing would be possible in the case of the guy guarding an empty room. But it makes me wonder if the extent to which it is painful to feel like your job is bs depends on the extent to which that feeling conflicts with a certain set of cultural values about the importance and usefulness of work.
posted by a certain Sysoi Pafnut'evich at 10:40 AM on May 23, 2018 [5 favorites]
On another note entirely, I find it interesting to think about the role that "bullshit jobs" play in the biographies of many Soviet artists and intellectuals. It's almost a commonplace of the genre that the young poet, musician, etc. had a nominal job that paid very little and involved very little work, which allowed him (usually) to focus on other priorities. The emphasis is not on the stultifying nature of the non-work, but on the space of relative freedom that it carves out. Of course, no such thing would be possible in the case of the guy guarding an empty room. But it makes me wonder if the extent to which it is painful to feel like your job is bs depends on the extent to which that feeling conflicts with a certain set of cultural values about the importance and usefulness of work.
posted by a certain Sysoi Pafnut'evich at 10:40 AM on May 23, 2018 [5 favorites]
A previous thread on this topic that did not, ah, go so well.
posted by No Robots at 10:51 AM on May 23, 2018
posted by No Robots at 10:51 AM on May 23, 2018
It struck me that a lot of this was just "tragedy of the commons" stuff. If marketers didn't exist, products could be cheaper, and people would still spend their money on *something,* so marketing is a "bullshit job." But as soon as one person starts marketing, it's an insanely good return on investment, so it turns out that you do have to market. Doesn't make people spend more money over all, but it is hard to stop if everyone else is doing it.
We see the same thing over and over again. Labor-saving devices for cleaning lead to higher standards of cleanliness, so the amount of time saved in the long run isn't that much. But without a proposed solution, it's just another of the same observation that's been made dozens of times.
UBI is a great solution, but it's not necessarily the solution to this problem.
posted by explosion at 10:54 AM on May 23, 2018 [2 favorites]
We see the same thing over and over again. Labor-saving devices for cleaning lead to higher standards of cleanliness, so the amount of time saved in the long run isn't that much. But without a proposed solution, it's just another of the same observation that's been made dozens of times.
UBI is a great solution, but it's not necessarily the solution to this problem.
posted by explosion at 10:54 AM on May 23, 2018 [2 favorites]
I'm always interested this isn't spoken about in the same space as "impostor syndrome." I was part of a field team, and I was horrified whenever there wasn't something for me to go out and do. I'd pester office folks and sales staff, not realizing that they were often also horrified that there was nothing for them to do. I could have easily sat at my desk either educating myself or pretending to (as I'm sure most of the office folks did all day) or try to strengthen my interoffice relationships, but instead I was paralyzed by fear. Meanwhile, the bosses never gave us any real reason to think we were superfluous or that the company wasn't growing more than fast enough to support
us. (That I was hourly + Catholic guilt probably didn't help me). Almost everyone of my friends has felt the same way.
No wonder millennials all feel like impostors. Didn't the last generation just goof off and drink in these situations, Sterling Cooper style?
posted by es_de_bah at 12:40 PM on May 23, 2018 [3 favorites]
us. (That I was hourly + Catholic guilt probably didn't help me). Almost everyone of my friends has felt the same way.
No wonder millennials all feel like impostors. Didn't the last generation just goof off and drink in these situations, Sterling Cooper style?
posted by es_de_bah at 12:40 PM on May 23, 2018 [3 favorites]
Of course, no such thing would be possible in the case of the guy guarding an empty room.
I think such a job is never going to be acceptable except to certain, limited personality types in the first place.
It's not like being a security guard at a bank is going to have you constantly fighting off robbers - it's just you walking around with a flashlight bored out of your mind.
But my office building (for example) has security because 3 times in 10 years angry people have come inside and caused property damage and it's no different than arming teachers to deal with crazed kids -there has to be some kind of plan that doesn't distract from the actual work being done but it's also so rare that guys itching for action wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole - so there's no way for it to not exist and also not be insanely boring without the world being a horrible place.
posted by The_Vegetables at 12:46 PM on May 23, 2018 [1 favorite]
I think such a job is never going to be acceptable except to certain, limited personality types in the first place.
It's not like being a security guard at a bank is going to have you constantly fighting off robbers - it's just you walking around with a flashlight bored out of your mind.
But my office building (for example) has security because 3 times in 10 years angry people have come inside and caused property damage and it's no different than arming teachers to deal with crazed kids -there has to be some kind of plan that doesn't distract from the actual work being done but it's also so rare that guys itching for action wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole - so there's no way for it to not exist and also not be insanely boring without the world being a horrible place.
posted by The_Vegetables at 12:46 PM on May 23, 2018 [1 favorite]
But it makes me wonder if the extent to which it is painful to feel like your job is bs depends on the extent to which that feeling conflicts with a certain set of cultural values about the importance and usefulness of work.
What makes the difference I think is whether or not you have to act like it's not a bunch of bullshit. If a worker can finish their job in four hours and then just openly go home, or work on a writing project, or knit, or people watch, or socialize with their coworkers or whatever, and not be penalized for it, that's not such a big deal. If they then have to spend four hours anxiously pretending to work and hoping that nobody notices, or if they're punished by their supervisors for slacking off, that's much more painful to have to live with. It's a bit orthogonal to whether the work itself is bullshit or not, though. One can have a totally necessary and meaningful job that nonetheless doesn't actually occupy them for 40 hours per week.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 1:26 PM on May 23, 2018 [4 favorites]
What makes the difference I think is whether or not you have to act like it's not a bunch of bullshit. If a worker can finish their job in four hours and then just openly go home, or work on a writing project, or knit, or people watch, or socialize with their coworkers or whatever, and not be penalized for it, that's not such a big deal. If they then have to spend four hours anxiously pretending to work and hoping that nobody notices, or if they're punished by their supervisors for slacking off, that's much more painful to have to live with. It's a bit orthogonal to whether the work itself is bullshit or not, though. One can have a totally necessary and meaningful job that nonetheless doesn't actually occupy them for 40 hours per week.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 1:26 PM on May 23, 2018 [4 favorites]
In Marxian terms, when you work for an hourly wage, you are essentially selling your “labor power”, or your potential for labor, which encompasses among other things:
-The time you spent working that you could have spent doing something else
-Your exclusive physical presence in the workplace
-Your availability for work-related social relations
-Your emotional involvement in the work
-The labor you put into the work
-The biological energy you expended that you will need to replenish with food and sleep
It's bad enough that you have to do this in order to feed yourself and survive. I think Graeber's big point here is that this is all even worse when you can't even tell yourself that your work matters. When you are forced to spend your potential for labor doing something that is not meaningful to you or the world, then you lack even the flimsiest justification for your wage slavery.
posted by One Second Before Awakening at 1:37 PM on May 23, 2018 [5 favorites]
-The time you spent working that you could have spent doing something else
-Your exclusive physical presence in the workplace
-Your availability for work-related social relations
-Your emotional involvement in the work
-The labor you put into the work
-The biological energy you expended that you will need to replenish with food and sleep
It's bad enough that you have to do this in order to feed yourself and survive. I think Graeber's big point here is that this is all even worse when you can't even tell yourself that your work matters. When you are forced to spend your potential for labor doing something that is not meaningful to you or the world, then you lack even the flimsiest justification for your wage slavery.
posted by One Second Before Awakening at 1:37 PM on May 23, 2018 [5 favorites]
and then another where people straight-facedly express a fear that without the forced socialization of the workplace, society would suffer because people would just stay home and do nothing.
I think you’re talking about me? Hi, I’m new here, so please don’t judge the site based on me!
Anyway, I definitely didn’t mean that people would stay home and do nothing. There’s plenty you can do that is useful and brings joy to you and your friends but does not contribute to integrating a diverse and large society. Right now work is, for some people, the main place they encounter others who are unlike them. (True, some of us don’t even get that at work to any real extent.) I believe that to retain a sense of unity in society, we need to be working together sometimes on shared goals. If we as a society went back to farmsteading+homeschooling or something, we would need to think about how to accomplish the same thing by other means. Or decide that it doesn’t matter, I guess, if we’re cool devolving lots of stuff to a hyper local level.
I am not sure whether I’ve ever had a bullshit job. My last job felt like a box ticker sort of job, but the ultimate goal of the work was important (there’s an enjoyably horrifying nonfiction book about life before clinical trials). That’s part of my knee jerk reaction against the argument I’m seeing in the excerpts, I think. But again, maybe the book is better.
posted by eirias at 1:38 PM on May 23, 2018
I think you’re talking about me? Hi, I’m new here, so please don’t judge the site based on me!
Anyway, I definitely didn’t mean that people would stay home and do nothing. There’s plenty you can do that is useful and brings joy to you and your friends but does not contribute to integrating a diverse and large society. Right now work is, for some people, the main place they encounter others who are unlike them. (True, some of us don’t even get that at work to any real extent.) I believe that to retain a sense of unity in society, we need to be working together sometimes on shared goals. If we as a society went back to farmsteading+homeschooling or something, we would need to think about how to accomplish the same thing by other means. Or decide that it doesn’t matter, I guess, if we’re cool devolving lots of stuff to a hyper local level.
I am not sure whether I’ve ever had a bullshit job. My last job felt like a box ticker sort of job, but the ultimate goal of the work was important (there’s an enjoyably horrifying nonfiction book about life before clinical trials). That’s part of my knee jerk reaction against the argument I’m seeing in the excerpts, I think. But again, maybe the book is better.
posted by eirias at 1:38 PM on May 23, 2018
This all is reminding me of the last time I had a bullshit job as a box ticker for an SEO company, which is itself an industry completely dedicated to box-ticking. I was so bored that I ended up turning my box ticking into a parody of itself and it got made into a MeFi post.
posted by One Second Before Awakening at 1:43 PM on May 23, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by One Second Before Awakening at 1:43 PM on May 23, 2018 [2 favorites]
Yeah, that wasn't my best comment; sorry, eirias.
If I'd been being a better version of myself, I think I would just have said that I would hope it wouldn't be too hard for people to find ways to get together even if they didn't have to work. Human beings seem to like congregating. I think that if people were free to do whatever they wanted with their time, there would be a lot more group-oriented, interest-based activities going on. Not that there isn't already quite a bit of that now, but I'd expect to see even more of it.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 1:44 PM on May 23, 2018 [2 favorites]
If I'd been being a better version of myself, I think I would just have said that I would hope it wouldn't be too hard for people to find ways to get together even if they didn't have to work. Human beings seem to like congregating. I think that if people were free to do whatever they wanted with their time, there would be a lot more group-oriented, interest-based activities going on. Not that there isn't already quite a bit of that now, but I'd expect to see even more of it.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 1:44 PM on May 23, 2018 [2 favorites]
These comments make me feel lucky. Either I’ve been lucky in getting hired, managers I report too, or companies I’ve worked for (or maybe all 3), but I’ve never felt like my positions were bullshit. I’ve always been on the operations side of things, and frankly I always have to be delivering some kind of service to someone at some point. If I stopped “doing” the company may not have fell apart, but certainly things would degrade and cost the business money.
I don’t know, maybe it’s naive, but if you think you have a bullshit job, then your management is failing to ensure the business is producing value. And at the end of the day, that’s their job.
posted by herda05 at 2:24 PM on May 23, 2018
I don’t know, maybe it’s naive, but if you think you have a bullshit job, then your management is failing to ensure the business is producing value. And at the end of the day, that’s their job.
posted by herda05 at 2:24 PM on May 23, 2018
herda05: I don’t know, maybe it’s naive, but if you think you have a bullshit job, then your management is failing to ensure the business is producing value. And at the end of the day, that’s their job.
I suspect that Graeber believes many bullshit jobs are in management.
posted by clawsoon at 3:21 PM on May 23, 2018 [3 favorites]
I suspect that Graeber believes many bullshit jobs are in management.
posted by clawsoon at 3:21 PM on May 23, 2018 [3 favorites]
I realised last night I think of people who primarily produce for the internet as having bullshit jobs. Not in the sense that they're producing bullshit (I mean, they mostly are) but in the way that I think of a 'real' job as contributing something to the community that the community would be poorer for if it didn't exist. (This is how I square the argument above about people getting fulfilment from a job, which is a real thing I've definitely had myself, with the idea of bullshit jobs, which is also a real thing I've definitely had myself.) I think Patreon-supported writing isn't anywhere near as nourishing as, say, volunteering at the old people's home, and seeing an actual person who is actually grateful you're there, instead of performing for a nebulous and possibly non-existent audience. I think people need to feel like someone would miss them if they were gone.
This is, I think, part of my hardening position that the internet isn't real, and that a lot of the problems that people on the internet seem to be having with authenticity and coping is fundamentally caused by relying on the simulacra of community the internet provides.
Like, MetaFilter is fine, but if I didn't have real friends, it would be a form of self-medication. (I've really scaled back my participation in the politics catch-alls because I recognised obsessing over American politics, as a non-American only affected by it if Trump launches nukes, was self-medicating.)
posted by Merus at 4:39 PM on May 23, 2018 [2 favorites]
This is, I think, part of my hardening position that the internet isn't real, and that a lot of the problems that people on the internet seem to be having with authenticity and coping is fundamentally caused by relying on the simulacra of community the internet provides.
Like, MetaFilter is fine, but if I didn't have real friends, it would be a form of self-medication. (I've really scaled back my participation in the politics catch-alls because I recognised obsessing over American politics, as a non-American only affected by it if Trump launches nukes, was self-medicating.)
posted by Merus at 4:39 PM on May 23, 2018 [2 favorites]
Because they don't have goons and therefore can't do it? :-) (I.e., Graeber's point.) Or because you have an established relationship of trust? Or because the bargaining situation is in the large space of alternatives to prisoner's dilemma in which cooperation leads to straightforward payoffs for both parties?
I have to admit I find this kind of comment a little disheartening, in that it seems to substitute reasoning from vague ideals for any attempt at grappling with the empirical evidence and therefore makes all idealism look a little silly. The literature on why contracts, and thus contract lawyers--"goons," if you will--exist is not esoteric. If a contract is economically rewarding for all parties, then it often is self-enforcing. However, it turns out that it is not always possible for all parties to accurately predict today what will be economically rewarding tomorrow. Maybe the major client for your widgets goes bankrupt and so you have no use for the widget components you've contracted to buy anymore. Maybe the cost of an element that goes into your widget components rises dramatically due to civil unrest in the country in which it is mined, meaning that to deliver the widgets to a buyer at the contract price would mean wiping out the company. Maybe you think you can deliver a widget with a certain set of specifications at a certain time and contract to that effect, but it turns out that despite your best efforts, you can't. Maybe you contract to sell a particular widget a customer wants at a particular price, but then it turns out that your customer had a different understanding of the widget's specs which would make it unprofitable at that price. Maybe a new technology comes along that makes the widget you've contracted to buy so outdated as to be worthless. Maybe you've contracted to buy one of three widget components from one seller, only to learn that the sellers of the other two widget components consider them so valuable that to pay all three would make the widget unprofitable. Maybe your contracted widget price was based on an anticipated cost of financing their production, and for some reason interest rates shoot up, so that the contract price would be a loss for you. I feel a little silly giving so many examples, but apparently these were all unimaginable? There are many more. Ultimately, not all human conflict can be attributed to bad-faith actors and self-perpetuating conflict institutions.
I think Patreon-supported writing isn't anywhere near as nourishing as, say, volunteering at the old people's home, and seeing an actual person who is actually grateful you're there, instead of performing for a nebulous and possibly non-existent audience. I think people need to feel like someone would miss them if they were gone.
The Patreon writer I support mostly spends the money he earns describing his wanderings through the country on caring for the highly traumatized rescue dog who travels with him. I guess I think that's pretty nourishing.
posted by praemunire at 12:16 AM on May 24, 2018 [2 favorites]
I have to admit I find this kind of comment a little disheartening, in that it seems to substitute reasoning from vague ideals for any attempt at grappling with the empirical evidence and therefore makes all idealism look a little silly. The literature on why contracts, and thus contract lawyers--"goons," if you will--exist is not esoteric. If a contract is economically rewarding for all parties, then it often is self-enforcing. However, it turns out that it is not always possible for all parties to accurately predict today what will be economically rewarding tomorrow. Maybe the major client for your widgets goes bankrupt and so you have no use for the widget components you've contracted to buy anymore. Maybe the cost of an element that goes into your widget components rises dramatically due to civil unrest in the country in which it is mined, meaning that to deliver the widgets to a buyer at the contract price would mean wiping out the company. Maybe you think you can deliver a widget with a certain set of specifications at a certain time and contract to that effect, but it turns out that despite your best efforts, you can't. Maybe you contract to sell a particular widget a customer wants at a particular price, but then it turns out that your customer had a different understanding of the widget's specs which would make it unprofitable at that price. Maybe a new technology comes along that makes the widget you've contracted to buy so outdated as to be worthless. Maybe you've contracted to buy one of three widget components from one seller, only to learn that the sellers of the other two widget components consider them so valuable that to pay all three would make the widget unprofitable. Maybe your contracted widget price was based on an anticipated cost of financing their production, and for some reason interest rates shoot up, so that the contract price would be a loss for you. I feel a little silly giving so many examples, but apparently these were all unimaginable? There are many more. Ultimately, not all human conflict can be attributed to bad-faith actors and self-perpetuating conflict institutions.
I think Patreon-supported writing isn't anywhere near as nourishing as, say, volunteering at the old people's home, and seeing an actual person who is actually grateful you're there, instead of performing for a nebulous and possibly non-existent audience. I think people need to feel like someone would miss them if they were gone.
The Patreon writer I support mostly spends the money he earns describing his wanderings through the country on caring for the highly traumatized rescue dog who travels with him. I guess I think that's pretty nourishing.
posted by praemunire at 12:16 AM on May 24, 2018 [2 favorites]
I guess I think that's pretty nourishing.
Yeah, that seems pretty good. It's using Patreon to correct for the kind of emotional labour that is valuable but poorly compensated by capitalism, and that's a different thing to the kind of bullshit jobs I'm thinking about.
posted by Merus at 12:39 AM on May 24, 2018
Yeah, that seems pretty good. It's using Patreon to correct for the kind of emotional labour that is valuable but poorly compensated by capitalism, and that's a different thing to the kind of bullshit jobs I'm thinking about.
posted by Merus at 12:39 AM on May 24, 2018
I tend to think a lot of my work is at least second order bullshit.
I usually describe myself as being on the Golgafrincham B Ark.
I do a job which I ideologically disagree with generally and which in an ideal world wouldn't exist, but is, to some extent improving the world, just in the most minor sense and using completely the wrong channels.
My Wife's test is, the easier it is to explain your job to a 5 year old the more important it is.
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 3:29 AM on May 24, 2018 [3 favorites]
I usually describe myself as being on the Golgafrincham B Ark.
I do a job which I ideologically disagree with generally and which in an ideal world wouldn't exist, but is, to some extent improving the world, just in the most minor sense and using completely the wrong channels.
My Wife's test is, the easier it is to explain your job to a 5 year old the more important it is.
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 3:29 AM on May 24, 2018 [3 favorites]
I think that if people were free to do whatever they wanted with their time, there would be a lot more group-oriented, interest-based activities going on. Not that there isn't already quite a bit of that now, but I'd expect to see even more of it.
I think that’s true, I’m just not sure it’s responsive to what I’m concerned about. My hunch is that interest groups that people self-select into might not provide the kind of diversity a workplace can. I mean, this is an empirical question at bottom and probably some sociologist has looked into it. What proportions of white people encounter black people in their churches, folk dance groups, political associations, etc versus at work? And so on, across other salient divides-that-need-bridging.
If my intuition is right about this book - that both his complaint and my worry about his solution boil down to an issue of scaling up - then there might be a second layer of argument here, that societies that are too large do not lend themselves to human fulfillment. I was talking about this with a coworker yesterday and she pointed out that assembly lines have this quality too, and then I thought, funny how making a thing can be so fulfilling that people do it in their spare time, but once you start disarticulating the work like a chicken you take all the meaning out of it. Like how securing a building could be a fun and rewarding problem but guarding an empty room is the opposite of that.
posted by eirias at 5:36 AM on May 24, 2018 [1 favorite]
I think that’s true, I’m just not sure it’s responsive to what I’m concerned about. My hunch is that interest groups that people self-select into might not provide the kind of diversity a workplace can. I mean, this is an empirical question at bottom and probably some sociologist has looked into it. What proportions of white people encounter black people in their churches, folk dance groups, political associations, etc versus at work? And so on, across other salient divides-that-need-bridging.
If my intuition is right about this book - that both his complaint and my worry about his solution boil down to an issue of scaling up - then there might be a second layer of argument here, that societies that are too large do not lend themselves to human fulfillment. I was talking about this with a coworker yesterday and she pointed out that assembly lines have this quality too, and then I thought, funny how making a thing can be so fulfilling that people do it in their spare time, but once you start disarticulating the work like a chicken you take all the meaning out of it. Like how securing a building could be a fun and rewarding problem but guarding an empty room is the opposite of that.
posted by eirias at 5:36 AM on May 24, 2018 [1 favorite]
P.S. I think I’ve talked myself into reading this book. Good job, MeFi marketing. ;)
posted by eirias at 5:57 AM on May 24, 2018
posted by eirias at 5:57 AM on May 24, 2018
I think patreons are generally not bullshit because writing does nourish people. However, I think people would not need as much nourishment or have as much time to read if they weren't in bullshit jobs.
posted by tofu_crouton at 7:48 AM on May 24, 2018
posted by tofu_crouton at 7:48 AM on May 24, 2018
eirias: I was talking about this with a coworker yesterday and she pointed out that assembly lines have this quality too, and then I thought, funny how making a thing can be so fulfilling that people do it in their spare time, but once you start disarticulating the work like a chicken you take all the meaning out of it.
Sounds like you'd be into (at least parts of) the Marxist theory of alienation.
posted by clawsoon at 8:08 AM on May 24, 2018 [4 favorites]
Sounds like you'd be into (at least parts of) the Marxist theory of alienation.
posted by clawsoon at 8:08 AM on May 24, 2018 [4 favorites]
Thank you, clawsoon, indeed I liked parts of that. However, I’m skeptical that working an assembly line (e.g.) would have much more meaning to a person if it happened in the context of a worker-owned cooperative than it does in the context of some other ownership scheme. I have the subjective sense that meaning comes not only from self direction (which for me is distinct from democratically-derived direction, anyway) but also from the subjective sense of how parts fit together into a satisfying whole.
I’m a career changer, so I think about work and its meaning a lot.
posted by eirias at 2:17 PM on May 24, 2018
I’m a career changer, so I think about work and its meaning a lot.
posted by eirias at 2:17 PM on May 24, 2018
In that case, eirias, you might like this bit of Marx even more:
posted by clawsoon at 4:13 PM on May 24, 2018 [3 favorites]
For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic. This fixation of social activity, this consolidation of what we ourselves produce into an objective power above us, growing out of our control, thwarting our expectations, bringing to naught our calculations, is one of the chief factors in historical development up till now.I'm not sure how far he pursued that thought.
posted by clawsoon at 4:13 PM on May 24, 2018 [3 favorites]
if bullshit here means “wasted energy” then my personal definition of wasted energy leads me to conclude that every job which exists post Big Bang is a bullshit job.
posted by nikaspark at 5:32 PM on May 24, 2018
posted by nikaspark at 5:32 PM on May 24, 2018
« Older Bitcoin as explained by AI | They Sound Like Angry 12 Year Olds Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
posted by clawsoon at 3:57 AM on May 23, 2018