I figured as much. But I don't agree with the premise of the book. Sure, we all "know" the jobs are bullshit, and yet they aren't. Let's go over the wikipedia summary at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs
>flunkies, who serve to make their superiors feel important, e.g., receptionists, administrative assistants, door attendants, makers of websites whose sites neglect ease of use and speed for looks;
They serve, hence, not a bullshit job. We might look down on it, but they are providing value to their employer. Sadly perhaps, humans are just deeply subjective. See again my religion example. Also, this seems really dismissive of receptionists/PAs. These people do a lot of real work.
>goons, who act to harm or deceive others on behalf of their employer, e.g., lobbyists, corporate lawyers, telemarketers, public relations specialists, community managers;
Not very nice no, but again they provide value to their bosses. Probably to themselves too.
>duct tapers, who temporarily fix problems that could be fixed permanently, e.g., programmers repairing bloated code, airline desk staff who calm passengers whose bags do not arrive;
This just seems to be naïve idealism.
>box tickers, who create the appearance that something useful is being done when it is not, e.g., survey administrators, in-house magazine journalists, corporate compliance officers, quality service managers;
Here it gets interesting. These people may actually be the first that don't provide value, but trick others into thinking they do.
>taskmasters, who manage—or create extra work for—those who do not need it, e.g., middle management, leadership professionals.
This is a mix of dumb (mis)managers, and malicious time wasters. I think it's obvious that a lot of resources of all kinds are wasted by inefficiencies caused by stupidity. That's a human (as in, we as a species) problem. Then there's malice, which fits into the "tricks others into believing they provide value" category.
> box tickers, who create the appearance that something useful is being done when it is not, e.g., survey administrators, in-house magazine journalists, corporate compliance officers, quality service managers;
IDK, I think these sort of workers provide value too. Some industries need QA (quality service manager), or else we'd see a lot more shoddy production across the board. Compliance officers provide a defense against fees/fines incurred by violations of law/policy. Survey administrators ensure the quality of survey collection via planning/organizing/QAing. In-house magazine journalists... well it depends on the company, but some company blogs are actually entertaining/useful. I always kind of hated the Graeber book because it's ultimately just a value judgement that people could be doing something better with their time... which is probably true... in a perfect world? But until then, the occasional corp blog post keeps me from bashing my head in on Monday morning :)
> flunkies, who serve to make their superiors feel important, e.g., receptionists, administrative assistants, door attendants, makers of websites whose sites neglect ease of use and speed for looks;
Imo, receptionists, administrative assistant and "makers of websites whose sites neglect ease of use and speed for looks" are all actually useful. Their function is not just to make someone feel superior. Instead, I would argue that whoever wrote that was caught in own feeling of superiority over service staff.
Exactly. I can't imagine running a doctors office without a reception. Or really any public facing company/office without a reception. Would anyone like to have the dentist use his time to answer the phone rather than fix teeth? Seems like that would under utilize the dentist's degree.
Reception at my doctor's in Norway are all qualified nurses. My sister on the other hand goes to a surgery in the UK has a dedicated receptionist. My sister's experience of visiting the surgery is considerably worse than mine. At the dental practice that I use the hygienists take turns to run the reception desk.
> Would anyone like to have the dentist use his time to answer the phone rather than fix teeth?
I don't care who answers the telephone as long as they are competent to answer questions and have authority to solve problems.
I don't know how things have changed over the past 25 years, but I used to work as a defense contractor and would frequently have to visit the Navy Annex in Virginia which was also HQ US Marine Corps.
It always struck me as weird that the guardhouse gate to enter was manned by a $12 hour off-brand security guard. I mentioned it to someone at one point, and I was told "Do you know how much it costs to train a Marine? It would be an outrageous waste of resources to staff that guardhouse with a Marine."
A relative who put in over 20 years in the army told me that a lot of their post gate guards were contractors these days. Considering that when he told me this it was the height of the occupation of Iraq ('05, maybe?), and that lots of the soldiers on these posts would soon be guarding gates and checkpoints in Iraq, it struck me as super fucking weird that they didn't use that as a training opportunity to get them experience doing that stateside—very different, sure, but any experience beats none, surely, and training's a ton of what they do when not deployed anyway, so seems like a win-win, but I guess either that's not true or whoever landed those contracts had some really good lobbyists.
In Germany, the "nurse" (it's a separate profession from nursing) performs a variety of medical tasks (like vaccinations, blood tests, allergy tests) and does prioritization of incoming patients based on initial assessments. I've also had the "nurse" complete initial medical history with me.
This model is strongly influenced by the size of the clinic: we usually have small clinics owned and run by the only doctor in the clinic (though they sometimes team up). As the amount of patients per day is hard-limited by the doctors time, such small clinics have no need for a full-time receptionists.
That's the crux, isn't it? What kind of "value" are we talking about? The argument doesn't hold unless we start defining this in concrete terms. That's where you'll find that there are many different ways to attribute value. Inevitably, value attributing is inherently human and therefor subjective. "value", such as it is, is a social construct.
Sure, many of the "bullshit jobs" "provide value to employers", but that doesn't invalidate the argument to grant them the moniker "bullshit job".
So, what makes a job a "bullshit job"? Well, the defining criteria would be that they only exist to the benefit of their employer. They don't generate any value as far as the stakeholders of an employer is concerned: clients, customers, members, patrons, patients, visitors, other employees, etc.
Dedicating staff to calm passengers whose bags do not arrive is a clear cost/benefit trade-off as far as the airline is concerned. Clearly, it's cheaper / easier to have staff comfort passengers, then fix the issue in a structural fashion. The example of a "bullshit job" is apt, because the customers of the airline can clearly push through the illusion that the airline would actually care about their luggage.
Context matters as far as public perception is concerned, though. Things are not always that clear cut.
For instance, corporations aren't necessarily "evil" or "good" in binary terms. Their impact on the world tends to be judged in a morally ambivalent fashion. A corporate lawyer may defend not just their employer, but also squarely aligns their convictions / principles with the ambiguous impact their employer may or may not have on the world, for better or worse. Arguably, the tobacco industry has enabled the social mobility of millions of people, and at the same time, their product has caused the death of millions as well. Depending on what moral stance you'd take, it's valid to perceive a corporate lawyer both as a "goon" defending a reprehensible view on the world, as well as a honest employee defending the livelihoods of many. (note: I'm not taking sides here, it's just an example!)
In a complex and ambiguous world, "bullshit jobs" are labelled as such because they are perceived as such through the lens of current morals, values, socio-economic, political, cultural zeitgeist. A corporate lawyer is seen as a "bullshit job" because society accepts the ambivalence in what they do, and why their role is a thing, even though it's role most people feel the world wouldn't have to need in the first place.
> So, what makes a job a "bullshit job"? Well, the defining criteria would be that they only exist to the benefit of their employer.
That makes the definition pretty useless though.
To use an example from the comments, the charcoal maker takes wood and turns it to charcoal, and a blacksmith takes charcoal and turns it into iron.
Okay so two friends organize a charcoal making scheme both doing the same thing making charcoal. They sell to blacksmiths so they are providing them with value so their jobs are not bullshit.
One day a blacksmith asks if one of the friends would make charcoal for him, and he'll pay for what they work, and that friend agrees. The other continues on her own. So now one friend suddenly has a bullshit job despite not doing anything much different, and the other friend's job is not bullshit despite doing almost exactly the same thing as the bullshit job.
I haven't read Bullshit Jobs, but if that really is his definition then it sounds like it's just some unhinged anti-employer rant that fails to understand what value is or how organizations work.
> So, what makes a job a "bullshit job"? Well, the defining criteria would be that they only exist to the benefit of their employer. They don't generate any value as far as the stakeholders of an employer is concerned: clients, customers, members, patrons, patients, visitors, other employees, etc.
Lets not forget the most significant stakeholder from many business's perspectives, investors.
Many of these "bullshit jobs" enable businesses to operate at the scale required for continual economic growth.
Except for very tiny businesses, execs are generally going to be too busy to answer the company phone line or greet guests.
Graeber sees these as inefficiencies, leaning on his experience as an academic lifer, but academia is a very different, if adjacent, market to the capital-driven industrial world.
He seems to miss his own point that so many of these jobs are in the service of ever-increasing economic expectations.
