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Here is the data re. the claim that bullshit jobs are on the rise: https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/g0h77ytkkm/Opi_InternalResult

Here is the data re. the claim that bullshit jobs are on the rise: https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/g0h77ytkkm/Opi_InternalResults_150811_Work_W.pdf https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/docume... Notice its only ~800 adults, in one country (UK), and 50% said their job was meaningful. But crucially there was never any research to track this trend over time so there was never any quantitative study to see if this has changed or even gotten better over time. Instead it just assumes things are getting "worse" based on anecdotes.

notahacker 8y ago
"Meaningful contribution to the world" is also a very high threshold to cross. If my job involved picking fruit for a living, I think I'd find it very hard to believe that I was individually "meaningfully contributing to the world", but I don't think we'd survive without a food supply chain and certainly don't think my doubt about the scale and interchangeability of my efforts would suggest that agriculture has seen an excess of workers added to it by empire-building managers in recent years. I'd expect that if better survey data existed there probably would be a trend rise in it, because educated people who've chosen a particular career path are probably more likely to be introspective and regretful over career choices than people who were always destined to take over the family trade or work in the big local industry. The grass is always greener on the other side, and it's not difficult to think of jobs which could have a more meaningful impact on wider society than your current one unless you're Norman Borlaug. But I'm not sure that one person's envy of their friend who chose a career path which helps cure cancer instead of doing prep work clients rarely use in court, or another's envy of their friend who helps sets legal precedent in landmark cases instead of handling patient consent forms for unpromising drug trials provides a better basis for assigning worth to jobs than someone thinking their work is important enough to pay them, and that's not because I fetishise markets or think principal/agent problems don't exist.
- lovich 8y ago
  This is the second reference I've seen in this thread about bullshit jobs being something that actually does work everyday. Has no one here had a job that was literally useless? As in, if you dissapeared, there would be zero affect on anyone other than the company paying out less money every month. It's not a low skill job phenomena either. At one of my software jobs we we're tasked with generating reports that I later learned we're never read and we're actually auto trashed by the management it was sent to. The only reason we were still around was because the manager with authority to fire us didn't care about anything smaller than a few million, and it wasn't worth the effort for lower level managers to bring the issue through company politics. That's a bullshit job
  - notahacker 8y ago
    Few people would argue that literally useless functions cannot exist in sufficiently sclerotic organizations. What we are saying is that Graeber's claim that job satisfaction surveys indicating 40% of people would not describe their job as "making a meaningful contribution to the world" are clear evidence that enormous proportions of the workforce have no value to anyone is bullshit. (And particularly his original article, which put it in terms of a "poet musician" being rather more cynical about the merits of his day job than his apparently less commercially valued art, and this being evidence this creative output was undoubtedly worth more to society than the service he actually could get paid big bucks for)
  - JTbane 8y ago
    > At one of my software jobs we we're tasked with generating reports that I later learned we're never read and we're actually auto trashed by the management it was sent to. Yeeeeeah, if you could put the new cover sheet on those TPS reports, that'd be great.
bachbach 8y ago
I'm surprised it's as high as 50%. People have seriously suggested pumping lithium into the water supply. The UK issued 64.7 million prescriptions for antidepressants in a single year - I don't know the breakdown per person but that is a lot. I suspect that interpersonal relationships are systematically weaker - that is the cause of this phenomena and also the cause of Peter Thiel's complaints about institutions getting worse at complex coordination. I think that interpersonal relationships are weaker because people can depend on each other less, there's a technology replacement factor. People need repeated face to face interactions to form the strongest bonds and this is happening less. It could be why entrepreneurial activity rates are down and hikikomori exist. Most hikikomori wouldn't be useless at all but they lost confidence because the peer group that would have boosted them onto the initial stages of something doesn't exist. The network of "I know somebody who" is not as strong as it used to be and we all know recruitment agencies are a horrific mess even in the extremely limited niche version of "I know a guy/girl" they represent. tldr; If we were nicer everything would be nice.

notahacker 8y ago

"Meaningful contribution to the world" is also a very high threshold to cross. If my job involved picking fruit for a living, I think I'd find it very hard to believe that I was individually "meaningfully contributing to the world", but I don't think we'd survive without a food supply chain and certainly don't think my doubt about the scale and interchangeability of my efforts would suggest that agriculture has seen an excess of workers added to it by empire-building managers in recent years. I'd expect that if better survey data existed there probably would be a trend rise in it, because educated people who've chosen a particular career path are probably more likely to be introspective and regretful over career choices than people who were always destined to take over the family trade or work in the big local industry. The grass is always greener on the other side, and it's not difficult to think of jobs which could have a more meaningful impact on wider society than your current one unless you're Norman Borlaug. But I'm not sure that one person's envy of their friend who chose a career path which helps cure cancer instead of doing prep work clients rarely use in court, or another's envy of their friend who helps sets legal precedent in landmark cases instead of handling patient consent forms for unpromising drug trials provides a better basis for assigning worth to jobs than someone thinking their work is important enough to pay them, and that's not because I fetishise markets or think principal/agent problems don't exist.

lovich 8y ago
This is the second reference I've seen in this thread about bullshit jobs being something that actually does work everyday. Has no one here had a job that was literally useless? As in, if you dissapeared, there would be zero affect on anyone other than the company paying out less money every month. It's not a low skill job phenomena either. At one of my software jobs we we're tasked with generating reports that I later learned we're never read and we're actually auto trashed by the management it was sent to. The only reason we were still around was because the manager with authority to fire us didn't care about anything smaller than a few million, and it wasn't worth the effort for lower level managers to bring the issue through company politics. That's a bullshit job
- notahacker 8y ago
  Few people would argue that literally useless functions cannot exist in sufficiently sclerotic organizations. What we are saying is that Graeber's claim that job satisfaction surveys indicating 40% of people would not describe their job as "making a meaningful contribution to the world" are clear evidence that enormous proportions of the workforce have no value to anyone is bullshit. (And particularly his original article, which put it in terms of a "poet musician" being rather more cynical about the merits of his day job than his apparently less commercially valued art, and this being evidence this creative output was undoubtedly worth more to society than the service he actually could get paid big bucks for)
- JTbane 8y ago
  > At one of my software jobs we we're tasked with generating reports that I later learned we're never read and we're actually auto trashed by the management it was sent to. Yeeeeeah, if you could put the new cover sheet on those TPS reports, that'd be great.

bachbach 8y ago

I'm surprised it's as high as 50%. People have seriously suggested pumping lithium into the water supply. The UK issued 64.7 million prescriptions for antidepressants in a single year - I don't know the breakdown per person but that is a lot. I suspect that interpersonal relationships are systematically weaker - that is the cause of this phenomena and also the cause of Peter Thiel's complaints about institutions getting worse at complex coordination. I think that interpersonal relationships are weaker because people can depend on each other less, there's a technology replacement factor. People need repeated face to face interactions to form the strongest bonds and this is happening less. It could be why entrepreneurial activity rates are down and hikikomori exist. Most hikikomori wouldn't be useless at all but they lost confidence because the peer group that would have boosted them onto the initial stages of something doesn't exist. The network of "I know somebody who" is not as strong as it used to be and we all know recruitment agencies are a horrific mess even in the extremely limited niche version of "I know a guy/girl" they represent. tldr; If we were nicer everything would be nice.