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The same author that wrote "Debt: The First 5000 years" has a brilliant book called "Bullshit Jobs". After reading, it's hard to not frame any labor discussion

The same author that wrote "Debt: The First 5000 years" has a brilliant book called "Bullshit Jobs". After reading, it's hard to not frame any labor discussion from the book's perspective. There are two thoughts that came to me while reading this article that I think were a result of reading Bullshit jobs: 1. Not all labor is productive labor. We should be focusing on efficiency. By reducing hours I think this will cut down on the amount of 'unproductive' work. 2. A cultural change is needed, why do we automatically associate time with productivity?

perfunctory 7y ago
I created a poll a while ago which unfortunately didn't attract much attention. But with N=8, most HNers have bullshit jobs. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17880159 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17880159
- thrower123 7y ago
  I did not know it was possible to create polls on here
api 7y ago
Our cultural obsession with work = time = virtue comes from the Agricultural Age and early Industrial Age when there was a more direct linear relationship here.
- asark 7y ago
  Graeber asserts it's specifically a reaction to changing notions of career trajectory and adulthood as feudalism gradually turned into industrial capitalism and the normal life path, for practically everyone in society, of: 1) work for someone else to learn the ropes and get started (even aristocrats would leave home to serve in other households, unless they were top of the heap), 2) run your own farm/shop/manor/etc was changed to just: 1) work for someone else, selling your time directly, and... that's it, until you retire or die, for almost all people who aren't born rich. I don't have the background and haven't followed his references to dig into how accurate his portrayal is, but his does address this exact attitude in the book. He essentially claims moralizing about the virtues of hard (sold-by-the-hour) labor and long days is a reaction (by the upper classes, largely) against what was perceived to be a growing population of people stuck in perpetual adolescence—eternal apprentices, basically.
asark 7y ago
I finally read that book a few weeks ago, and one idea Graeber raises in it is something that'd been bugging me for a while: it seems like adding computers to a large proportion of activities and processes makes them less efficient, and increases the load of bullshit jobs to deal with making everything compatible with computer monitoring and computer-"aided" business processes, for gains that may be illusory and which surely do not make up for all the added layers (and cost) of bullshit. The stuff about the rise of the influence of finance folks and practices on (previously) traditional management staff was interesting, too. I'm not sure his timeline works out, as I'm aware of (fictional) books that treated of precisely this sort of thing (bullshit office jobs, in particular) as an entrenched phenomenon at least as far back as 1961, but I think both ideas are getting at something worth further examination.
- ThrustVectoring 7y ago
  Bureaucratic processes tend to get more and more complicated until the host organization is barely able to manage it. Computers allow better process management, so it allows complexity to expand for little overall gain.
- specialist 7y ago
  " adding computers to a large proportion of activities and processes makes them less efficient" Young technophilic me didn't distinguish between digitization and automation. I've since seen this mistake over and over. Automation is the removal of judgement. Automate before you digitize. Older technoskeptic me now assumes that whenever a big bang project fails (eg new payroll system for big org), it's because they tried to faithfully reimplement some legacy "processes" dependent on humans, in the form of social cognition and tribal knowledge, sometimes also called "culture". Also, automate after you digitize. In fact, redesign and reengineer to support automation.
martythemaniak 7y ago
I read "Debt" and I thought it was brilliant and personally very impactful. I've recommended it to many people. I've read a bunch of his summaries/essays on "Bullshit Jobs" and I'm astounded at the stupidity of his arguments, and I honestly have a hard time believing these two things are were written by the same person. I think it's because "Debt" was primarily an anthropological work, flavoured by his ideology, whereas "Bullshit Jobs" seems to be almost pure ideology. I'm deeply sceptical of all neo-primitivist arguments. Anyway, here's some things to think about: efficiency is important, but it cannot tell you much by itself - the actual amount of output matters, perhaps much more so. For example, a Hall effect thruster is immensely efficient, about 10-15x more so than a chemical rocket engine, however it's output in Newtons is so low, it is impossible to get to orbit. If you want to get to space, it this efficiency doesn't matter, it's never going to get you there. Likewise, perhaps your first hour of work is immensely efficient, yet your actual output might be so low that having everyone work 1hr/day would lead to stagnation and decline.
- jefflombardjr 7y ago
  Interesting, I didn't get that sense at all from the book. It did not strike me as 'neo-primitivist' at all. Much more as a critique from the structural perspective [0]. And I'm not so sure saying that it wasn't anthropology is fair. It is definitely different. One historical, the other modern - both valid anthropological pursuits. I would agree with you on efficiency though. Though I think the bullshit jobs described in the book are more akin to turning the rocket upside down and expecting it to leave orbit. Certain non-profits and industries are not even pointed in the right direction. Graeber asserts that this is intentional as a way to siphon funds. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_Marxism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_Marxism
  - martythemaniak 7y ago
    What really got to me is that in one of his promotional essays, he describes how his primary classification is how people feel about their jobs. There were lots of examples, one of which was how someone spent months compiling a report for a shareholders, only to have the report never read, or about how people feel they're not useful. In no case was the question of whether the job/work itself was useful, only how the workers felt about it. There was also a categorization of his "Bullshit Jobs" and as I reading it, I kept thinking "those are actually useful jobs that someone needs to do." It is a common way of thinking about work that I've seen in friends, etc. I just think it's very cynical and self-centred and ultimately self-defeating, like the whole "follow your passion" advice. Asking how your job is useful to someone else, rather than how gratifying it is to yourself is a much more useful way to look at work. Being useful to other people is also an alternate way to find meaning in what would otherwise be derided as a "bullshit" job.

perfunctory 7y ago

I created a poll a while ago which unfortunately didn't attract much attention. But with N=8, most HNers have bullshit jobs. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17880159 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17880159

thrower123 7y ago
I did not know it was possible to create polls on here

api 7y ago

Our cultural obsession with work = time = virtue comes from the Agricultural Age and early Industrial Age when there was a more direct linear relationship here.

asark 7y ago
Graeber asserts it's specifically a reaction to changing notions of career trajectory and adulthood as feudalism gradually turned into industrial capitalism and the normal life path, for practically everyone in society, of: 1) work for someone else to learn the ropes and get started (even aristocrats would leave home to serve in other households, unless they were top of the heap), 2) run your own farm/shop/manor/etc was changed to just: 1) work for someone else, selling your time directly, and... that's it, until you retire or die, for almost all people who aren't born rich. I don't have the background and haven't followed his references to dig into how accurate his portrayal is, but his does address this exact attitude in the book. He essentially claims moralizing about the virtues of hard (sold-by-the-hour) labor and long days is a reaction (by the upper classes, largely) against what was perceived to be a growing population of people stuck in perpetual adolescence—eternal apprentices, basically.

asark 7y ago

I finally read that book a few weeks ago, and one idea Graeber raises in it is something that'd been bugging me for a while: it seems like adding computers to a large proportion of activities and processes makes them less efficient, and increases the load of bullshit jobs to deal with making everything compatible with computer monitoring and computer-"aided" business processes, for gains that may be illusory and which surely do not make up for all the added layers (and cost) of bullshit. The stuff about the rise of the influence of finance folks and practices on (previously) traditional management staff was interesting, too. I'm not sure his timeline works out, as I'm aware of (fictional) books that treated of precisely this sort of thing (bullshit office jobs, in particular) as an entrenched phenomenon at least as far back as 1961, but I think both ideas are getting at something worth further examination.

ThrustVectoring 7y ago
Bureaucratic processes tend to get more and more complicated until the host organization is barely able to manage it. Computers allow better process management, so it allows complexity to expand for little overall gain.
specialist 7y ago
" adding computers to a large proportion of activities and processes makes them less efficient" Young technophilic me didn't distinguish between digitization and automation. I've since seen this mistake over and over. Automation is the removal of judgement. Automate before you digitize. Older technoskeptic me now assumes that whenever a big bang project fails (eg new payroll system for big org), it's because they tried to faithfully reimplement some legacy "processes" dependent on humans, in the form of social cognition and tribal knowledge, sometimes also called "culture". Also, automate after you digitize. In fact, redesign and reengineer to support automation.

martythemaniak 7y ago

I read "Debt" and I thought it was brilliant and personally very impactful. I've recommended it to many people. I've read a bunch of his summaries/essays on "Bullshit Jobs" and I'm astounded at the stupidity of his arguments, and I honestly have a hard time believing these two things are were written by the same person. I think it's because "Debt" was primarily an anthropological work, flavoured by his ideology, whereas "Bullshit Jobs" seems to be almost pure ideology. I'm deeply sceptical of all neo-primitivist arguments. Anyway, here's some things to think about: efficiency is important, but it cannot tell you much by itself - the actual amount of output matters, perhaps much more so. For example, a Hall effect thruster is immensely efficient, about 10-15x more so than a chemical rocket engine, however it's output in Newtons is so low, it is impossible to get to orbit. If you want to get to space, it this efficiency doesn't matter, it's never going to get you there. Likewise, perhaps your first hour of work is immensely efficient, yet your actual output might be so low that having everyone work 1hr/day would lead to stagnation and decline.

jefflombardjr 7y ago
Interesting, I didn't get that sense at all from the book. It did not strike me as 'neo-primitivist' at all. Much more as a critique from the structural perspective [0]. And I'm not so sure saying that it wasn't anthropology is fair. It is definitely different. One historical, the other modern - both valid anthropological pursuits. I would agree with you on efficiency though. Though I think the bullshit jobs described in the book are more akin to turning the rocket upside down and expecting it to leave orbit. Certain non-profits and industries are not even pointed in the right direction. Graeber asserts that this is intentional as a way to siphon funds. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_Marxism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_Marxism
- martythemaniak 7y ago
  What really got to me is that in one of his promotional essays, he describes how his primary classification is how people feel about their jobs. There were lots of examples, one of which was how someone spent months compiling a report for a shareholders, only to have the report never read, or about how people feel they're not useful. In no case was the question of whether the job/work itself was useful, only how the workers felt about it. There was also a categorization of his "Bullshit Jobs" and as I reading it, I kept thinking "those are actually useful jobs that someone needs to do." It is a common way of thinking about work that I've seen in friends, etc. I just think it's very cynical and self-centred and ultimately self-defeating, like the whole "follow your passion" advice. Asking how your job is useful to someone else, rather than how gratifying it is to yourself is a much more useful way to look at work. Being useful to other people is also an alternate way to find meaning in what would otherwise be derided as a "bullshit" job.