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I don't think it's fair to say that Graeber claims that all managerial work is pointless. Here's a relevant part of the essay in question: > In fact, I’m not

by mbrock 10y ago

I don't think it's fair to say that Graeber claims that all managerial work is pointless. Here's a relevant part of the essay in question: > In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever met a corporate lawyer who didn’t think their job was bullshit. The same goes for almost all the new industries outlined above. There is a whole class of salaried professionals that, should you meet them at parties and admit that you do something that might be considered interesting (an anthropologist, for example), will want to avoid even discussing their line of work entirely. Give them a few drinks, and they will launch into tirades about how pointless and stupid their job really is. It's not a scientific study, but he's talking about people who themselves believe their own job to be basically pointless. I've had such jobs myself, so I sympathize with the idea.

TeMPOraL 10y ago
> I've had such jobs myself, so I sympathize with the idea. Indeed. I am a programmer and I can sympathize too! So far all my jobs but one were of the utterly bullshit kind. That's the reason I decided to steer clear of the web world in the future - it seems to me that this part of our industry is made almost entirely out of bullshit, and is mostly about ad delivery, ad infrastructure and SaaS pseudo-products that operate on shitty business models.
- ashark 10y ago
  Pouring tons of hours of one's life into one project after another with goals you're apathetic about at best and which are probably doomed to failure before they even start definitely makes dev work feel rather nihilistic at times. The percentage of the time I've worked as a dev that has created real, lasting value for anyone is depressingly small. Yet my career is going fairly well. It's hard to complain about that since the money's still coming in, but that's not very satisfying, certainly.

by mbrock 10y ago

TeMPOraL 10y ago

> I've had such jobs myself, so I sympathize with the idea. Indeed. I am a programmer and I can sympathize too! So far all my jobs but one were of the utterly bullshit kind. That's the reason I decided to steer clear of the web world in the future - it seems to me that this part of our industry is made almost entirely out of bullshit, and is mostly about ad delivery, ad infrastructure and SaaS pseudo-products that operate on shitty business models.

ashark 10y ago
Pouring tons of hours of one's life into one project after another with goals you're apathetic about at best and which are probably doomed to failure before they even start definitely makes dev work feel rather nihilistic at times. The percentage of the time I've worked as a dev that has created real, lasting value for anyone is depressingly small. Yet my career is going fairly well. It's hard to complain about that since the money's still coming in, but that's not very satisfying, certainly.