
Bullshit Jobs - phantom_oracle
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs
======
imgabe
I would disagree with at least the first three as being bullshit.

1\. If your receptionist or assistant is only making you feel important, you
are wasting their salary. One example: In my job we have to maintain
professional licenses in many different states. Assistants help with this
paperwork, which is different for every state and requires hours of reading
and making phone calls to decipher. Yes, the engineer who bills their time at
$150/hr _could_ be doing this, but it's more efficient to pay an assistant.
That is _one_ small example of many, many vital tasks.

2\. "Goon" is maybe the second oldest profession. Usually we call it
"soldier". At some point you may be in conflict with an adversary. It's
helpful to have someone on your side who is good at whatever type of conflict
that is. I don't know why "telemarketer" is in there, it's not like the
others. That's sales, which is pretty vital to any business. Now, the entire
business and the product that a particular business is selling might be
bullshit, but the job of selling certainly isn't.

3\. I think the author vastly overestimates how preventable problems are.
Maybe someday we'll invent an airline system that is 100% perfect and never
loses anyone's bag. That's not the reality right now, though. Shit happens.
Having someone who is paid to deal with it is better than not having them.

~~~
sthomas1618
> Assistants help with this paperwork, which is different for every state and
> requires hours of reading and making phone calls to decipher.

Regardless of this, this still sounds like a market inefficiency. I have not
read the book (but I certainly will now), but I'm going to guess the author's
response would be that while the assistant's job is necessary for the engineer
to remain productive, it is still a bullshit job. What's needed instead is an
automated service that handles this for the engineer at far less of a cost or
less bullshit paperwork from government.

~~~
imgabe
I agree, these things are needed, but they don't exist. There have been great
strides made in that area, but professional licensing predates the office
computer. So, it's a legacy process that takes time to adapt.

There's also the issue of the quasi-sovereignty of states in the US. They are
not going to want to give up power to manage their own affairs.

The author seems to think about things this Pollyanna, blue-sky way where we
could just change everything magically to be more efficient, but back in the
real world there are entrenched interests and institutional inertia that
result in things happening a certain way. They don't change overnight. It's
not bullshit to pay people to deal with the world as it is. It's really the
only option you have if you want to get something done now, instead of in some
hypothetical future where we've automated away every inefficiency.

~~~
skybrian
Is there a better way to talk about jobs that only exist due to inefficiency?
It seems important to know that they could be automated away.

~~~
imgabe
If someone is convinced that it would be so easy to automate away X annoying
job that someone has to do, I would encourage them not to talk about it, but
to get busy doing the automation.

Best case, they were right and the task gets automated away, now we don't need
to talk about it at all. More likely, they might find that it's actually not
as easy to automate away as they initially thought.

------
haaen
David Graeber, the author of the book Bullshit Jobs, walked out of the room
twice when Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant confronted him with pitfalls in his
reasoning.

[https://www.volkskrant.nl/columns-opinie/-er-is-een-
ongeloof...](https://www.volkskrant.nl/columns-opinie/-er-is-een-
ongelooflijke-hoeveelheid-dode-tijd-bijgekomen-~bcc09392/)

~~~
ucaetano
Yep, people don't realize that Grarber is just a refresh of the fashionable
nonsense trend, particularly in economics.

From the article:

""Those two British and Dutch polls were the only ones I knew when I wrote the
book. _Since then, there has been a poll that came out at 10 percent. But I 'm
a bit skeptical about that, because the other two polls matched._ It depends
very much on what questions you ask people. In any case, I think that more
detailed work is needed. '"

The part I highlighted in Italic seals the deal: the guy is either blissfully
ignorant, or wildly dishonest.

------
motohagiography
When I read the original essay, my impression was the author generally
misunderstood what a business actually is. The purpose of a manager (a
flunky/goon bullshit job) is to abstract agents from principals to define that
separation. Most bullshit jobs form the demarcation between these
abstractions. It's delegation.

These people are essentially financial furniture who have engineered a kind of
managerial capture of the principals capital, and in turn pay themselves
exorbitantly. We talk about a tech bubble, but what have really seen is a 35
year management bubble.

Who are these principals, the owners of the capital? When you look at the
largest capital pools they belong to pensioners, tax payers, trusts,
depositors, saver/investors, insurance policy holders, and other collective
owners. Interestingly, managing these pools is where all the bullshit jobs
exist as well. These bullshit jobs with decadent pay differences are the
effect of managerial capture of these mutual/collective capital bases.

I'd speculate it's possible that a lot of political views across the spectrum
could be described in terms of a principals revolt against capture by their
agents.

------
michaelt
I'd be curious to hear, from someone who's actually read the book, what
arguments it makes to show receptionist is a bullshit job?

To me it seems like a pretty useful job in a large organisation.

~~~
diego
Curious why do you think it's useful. What do you imagine happens in large
organizations without full-time receptionists?

~~~
oconnore
Total chaos.

Even when we were 20 people in an office folks coming in for interviews or to
fix the WiFi/Coffee machine/plumbing would either be totally lost, or the
person sitting near the door would be significantly burdened with constant
distraction and less able to perform their primary function.

Furthermore no one would set up those maintenance tasks because they’re
focused on the product not on making sure the office is functioning properly.

~~~
bilbo0s
> _Furthermore no one would set up those maintenance tasks because they’re
> focused on the product not on making sure the office is functioning
> properly...._

Hmm.

Not trying to get in between you guys arguing, but I'm just throwing this out
there because I thought possibly it might help. Maybe you guys aren't really
disagreeing so much as using different language for different positions? Just
from my point of view, it _SOUNDS_ like what you are describing is more of an
Office Manager. So maybe in some organizations Office Manager is the same as
Receptionist in terms of job title? (I do hope you were _PAYING_ that person
at the level of an Office Manager though, and not a simple receptionist.
That's kind of shady if you weren't, because that person was doing a great
deal of work.)

~~~
close04
Imagine you work in a building of 5000+ people. What happens when dozens of
interview candidates walks in? Or just dozens of visitors? Or when someone
calls the company's contact phone? The actual tasks may vary depending on the
company, and probably so will the job title or pay (for the very same tasks).
But the job is very much real and someone will do it no matter what you call
it.

Some tasks may be more BS than others. But how many jobs would be considered
BS in the author's vision that either they can be done by someone else or not
at all because they involve addressing activities that should have been done
perfect from the beginning?

He's obviously aiming for controversy because controversy sells.

------
komali2
This has been discussed on hn before:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17433908](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17433908)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17874320](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17874320)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12157443](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12157443)

The last link has a comment with even further links.

------
duxup
It seems like there's a lot of wiggle room for what is a bullshit job or not
and the book takes a pretty expansive view of it.

So many of the jobs listed seem highly useful, but yeah bullshit at times, but
the same job very much not bullshit at other times.

I get the concept, I don't think it is wrong that these exist. I do question
if anyone could really accurately identify what jobs are bullshit and what
aren't and that makes me wonder about the overall concept here.

I sort of agree with his philosophical conclusions, but still I'm not sure how
it plays out exactly and not sure basic income and such really would change
anything, at least as far as people's choices and such.

Granted I've only read a handful of articles and this wiki article about this
so there may be a lot that I'm missing.

------
topkai22
Haven't read the book, but have read the original article. I think Graeber
noticed some important trends (the rise of administrative work, the
underwhelming reduction in total work hours in the US) and then tried to pull
them down two the individual, story telling level. Unfortunately, framing
these as BS jobs is vitriolic, not useful, and frankly incorrect. A lot of
these jobs and trends are not BS within the greater context in which we live,
but are reflective our changed technologies and social demands.

For a very vivid example, take a soldier (admittedly, a "goon" in the authors
parlance). In 1900, the most effective individual soldier was likely armed
with a repeating rifle. In 1965, an individual soldier (or small team) could
fire a nuclear armed rocket. The change in effectiveness was massive, but
necessitated massive changes in the workforce structure from "productive (or
destructive, for individual soldiers) to "administrative" roles. This was done
not only to support the creation of the weapon but to ensure it a) was placed
at the utmost position of effectiveness and b) ensure it was never used at
all. I'm rather happy the jobs in b in particular existed.

The same could be imagined of a mining worker- where there once were hundreds
of men with pickaxes and dynamite, there are now just a few driving very large
machines to do the work, but with a substantially more people in the backend
ensuring that these capital assets are used effectively, designed well, and
are safe.

That's not to say there aren't some extremely suspicious trends (the massive
growth in the health administration seems to me the most problematic), but for
the most part describing individual "jobs" as BS is incorrect.

------
jaclaz
Previous related discussion (with links to many other previous discussions):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17433908](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17433908)

------
mmaunder
Filing under bullshit books.

------
mirimir
I'm not so sure about the generality of "bullshit jobs". I mean, regardless of
the perceived importance of selling some tchotchke, it's still a business.

But meetings. Some people just love to hear themselves talk. And some people
need to hear something said N different ways, before they can take it in. So
someone who spends most of their time in meetings, that's arguably bullshit.

And yes, I do appreciate that stuff needs coordinating. But damn ...

------
charlesbradshaw
This boils down to "If you don't create something then you are more likely to
hate your job", which is why he can claim that maintaining bad code is
bullshit.

Companies are financially motivated to have these kinds of jobs, and if we
only use that metric then we could say that almost no job is bullshit, but
that doesn't mean people enjoy them.

That said I'm weary to extrapolate those ideas into any specific plans to
change society

------
theartfuldodger
I get the impression he has never actually worked a day in his life or has a
naive view of reality.

Admin assistants, for example are a linchpin of a successful office and an
important and irreplaceable part of client interactions in small businesses.

Perhaps, the wikipedia article lacks context or nuance, at face value his
entire concept seems laughably idiotic.

------
sleepysysadmin
I have worked for MSPs for virtually my entire career. The vast majority of
people are not doing anything at their job.

------
charliesharding
Put the pitchforks away, folks. I know the "ackshually" impulse is strong, but
how likely is it that the one sentence wikipedia summary is a full, accurate
representation of the authors complete thoughts on each job type?

Interesting premise and, like most things in life, further investigation is
required.

------
temp-dude-87844
I first heard about this book a month ago, when an essay [1] tried to connect
some vacuous dissatisfaction with social networking with deep insights about
the powerlessness of people who work, in a pivot I found odd and unconvincing
[2].

It's tempting to be swayed by the anecdotes of actual people describing the
absurdities of their jobs. It's almost like a satire of pointlessness and
dysfunction, despite being very real. But it's colored by perspective of
people who expect some amount of self-actualization because of the nature of
their workplace, when such an expectation is a unilateral construct influenced
by their observations of social class.

Despite the author's elaborate taxonomy of the types of bullshit work, they're
all cases of delegating the least palatable, most mechanical, and least
intellectual aspects of an actual decision maker's duties and tasks. It's
fashionable to pick on middle management, but they form a translation between
boots on the ground and high-level business goals, and serve as a containment
layer for the inevitable political turf war. It's common to scoff at rubber
stampers, but this serves as a way to tie an abstract policy to a human who
can be blamed, when process of the organization is brought under scrutiny.
These are standard features of bureaucracies since forever, and while they
provide insight into human psychology, they don't speak for broad implications
about labor relations and the human condition.

And secretaries? They're vital component to smooth operations and screen for
potential distractions. The underutilized receptionist is more than just
signalling: by definition, they're there for times of need, the same way a
security guard is. A security guard isn't pointless just because they never
have to intervene: their presence is an effective deterrence against behavior
that would call them into visible action.

It's difficult for me to derive a meaningful lesson from this book, other than
people are prone to be dissatisfied unless they feel like their efforts impart
meaningful good in the world. But in my opinion, the privilege of wishing for
self-actualization through one's labor is a recent phenomenon. Not too long
ago, it was common knowledge that work was drudgery to earn to living, so we
didn't expect more out of it beyond that.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18800421](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18800421)
[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18802087](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18802087)

------
40acres
I haven't read the book but based on the summary it seems like the author does
not have a firm grasp on the fact that advanced economies are transitioning to
being service based.

------
jcfrei
In the long term capitalism and free markets should weed out any jobs which
don't create shareholder value. At least that's the promise of the system and
there's plenty of evidence which shows that this is what's happening. I'm
curious which counterpoints the book offers.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
That's a very naive view, for three reasons.

Firstly "quarterly profits" are not necessarily synonymous with "shareholder
value" over the long term - although the entire financial industry operates on
the basis that they are.

In reality it's perfectly possible to produce stellar quarterly returns while
driving a solid, productive company into the ground and denying investors
future returns.

Secondly, shareholders are proxied by senior management. Senior management has
its own goals, which include status management as well as profit.

Profit is only a partial proxy for status, which is why senior management in
some companies likes to play some standard management games like "reorg" and
"rebrand" that do nothing at all for returns, except possibly waste them, but
make managers feel like they're critically important wielders of corporate
power.

The third reason is that if you concentrate enough wealth among shareholders,
the rest of your economy - the part that does most of the consuming, as well
as most of the actual work - atrophies and eventually implodes under a pile of
debt and consequent violent social dislocation.

This is not a good thing. But it seems to be a lesson that generations of
shareholders need to keep relearning.

------
romanovcode
> programmers repairing shoddy code

How is this pointless?

~~~
jackpirate
The article is pretty clear that the author thinks that the code should have
been written correctly to begin with. It's the fact that management prevented
this from happening that causes people to have to fix the code. The idea is
that if the job was "done right the first time" then the total labor expenses
would be much, much lower.

~~~
ganeshkrishnan
Code can never be written "correctly" whatever that means. Even if it was,
library changes will break it.

And none of the other jobs mentioned are bullshit. They are all required in
various degrees.

I call it bullshit book

~~~
MaulingMonkey
Even when cleaning up preventable messes in code, those messes were often
caused or made worse by trying to "do it right the first time" and tacking on
a bunch of extra complexity in the process instead of just doing the simple
thing that works for now.

Start small. Iterate. Do it wrong. Embrace the fact that we're imperfect, not
oracles of the future. I'll gladly prefer fixing up some shoddy code over
needing to tear down and re-architecture from scratch a larger, even well
designed system, that solves the wrong problem.

Not all preventable problems are worth preventing. Preventing them causes
other problems, if only the problem of wasting a lot of time fixing many non-
problems that you mistakenly thought _were_ potential problems in an attempt
to do so.

