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From : https://www.economist.com/business/2021/06/05/why-the-bullshit-jobs-thesis-may-be-well-bullshit https://www.economist.com/business/2021/06/05/why-the-bu

by sien 5y ago

From : https://www.economist.com/business/2021/06/05/why-the-bullshit-jobs-thesis-may-be-well-bullshit https://www.economist.com/business/2021/06/05/why-the-bullsh... "In his book, Mr Graeber relied heavily on surveys of British and Dutch workers that asked participants whether their job made a meaningful contribution to the world. This seems a high bar to clear; it is unsurprising that 37-40% of respondents thought their job didn’t qualify. By contrast, the academics used the European Working Conditions Surveys, which by 2015 had talked to 44,000 workers across 35 countries. They focused on those respondents who thought that the statement “I have the feeling of doing useful work” applied to them “rarely” or “never”. In contrast to the high share of bullshit jobs reported by Mr Graeber, in 2015 only 4.8% of respondents in the eu felt their work was useless. And this proportion had fallen, not risen, in recent years, from 5.5% in 2010 and 7.8% in 2005." [edit] Link to the paper discussed by the article: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/09500170211015067 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/09500170211015...

carschno 5y ago
The presumably rightful allegation of exaggerated numbers in Graeber's book does not necessarily render the existence of "bullshit jobs" untrue. I see that the (alleged) empirical flaws throw a shade on his hypothesis, but they do not disqualify it in its entirety.
- inter_netuser 5y ago
  work wouldn't be called work, if they did not have to pay you for it.
  - MattGaiser 5y ago
    There is a wide spectrum here though. I would still write code if not paid for it. I just wouldn’t write code for you. I am paid to use my code writing interests for your goals. I have no interest in ever being a toilet paper salesman and would never try to hawk toilet paper in my free time. You need to pay me a lot to do that.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
laserlight 5y ago
I couldn't read the article because of the paywall. Judging by the quote, there are significant problems with this report. First, “a meaningful contribution to the world” and “the feeling of doing useful work” are vastly different phrases. Comparing replies to them is meaningless. Second, the definition of a bullshit job is not if it makes “a meaningful contribution to the world”. Using replies to that phrase as the share of bullshit jobs is, therefore, wrong. A job is bullshit if the one who is doing it thinks it's bullshit according to Graeber.
- dukeyukey 5y ago
  > A job is bullshit if the one who is doing it thinks it's bullshit according to Graeber. Sounds reasonable. My understanding is that Graeber's work concentrates on what Marx described as "alienation of labour", where people are sufficiently specialised that they don't draw satisfaction from their work any more. Some of these bullshit jobs are probably actually useful, but if it makes the worker feel like this then it still has the same ruinous effect on them, and to a point, society. In this case, feelings can trump facts.
benrbray 5y ago
I agree it would be nice to have more concrete numbers, but this in itself is a pretty shallow criticism of the bullshit jobs idea. Part of Graeber's argument, too, is that many of us are employed doing useful jobs in service of others who have useless jobs. Think of all the office staff, product designers, marketers, janitors, factory workers hired by Juicero, for instance. They all had meaningful jobs in service of a product that should never had existed. I also don't think that Graeber's standard is unfair -- making a meaningful contribtion to the world is quite a low bar for something we spend our entire lives doing for 8hr/day. Besides, a useless job may be done by an employee who is unable or unwilling to realize it -- "it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it". It's really tough to find meaningful work that pays a living wage, so many of us try to find small amounts of meaning in the jobs that we have. It doesn't make our jobs any less useless, though.
- sien 5y ago
  Apologies for those who can't get around the paywal. It gets worse for Graeber's thesis. The next paragraph from the ones previously quoted: "Furthermore, those who work in clerical and administrative jobs are far less likely to view their jobs as useless than those who are employed in roles that Mr Graeber regarded as essential, such as refuse collection and cleaning. Indeed, the researchers found an inverse relationship between education and the feeling of usefulness. Less educated workers were likelier to feel that their jobs were useless. And student debt does not appear to be a factor. In Britain, where its level is the highest in Europe, non-graduates under 29 were twice as likely to feel useless as their indebted graduate peers." So not only are his numbers pretty poor his thesis gets the numbers the wrong way around for those who feel their jobs are of little value. Link to the paper : https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/09500170211015067 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/09500170211015...
  - benrbray 5y ago
    Perhaps that's where my own theory of bullshit jobs diverges from Graeber's then. I'd say a job can be bullshit regardless of whether or not the person doing it agrees. As for janitors feeling like their jobs are meaningless and office workers feeling meaningful, I'd say that's a reflection of our culture. Universities are full of administrators with fancy titles who probably feel very important, but it's not clear their presence furthers the very important goal of education.
blackbrokkoli 5y ago
"Meaningful contribution to the world" is now a high bar to clear? No wonder the suicide rates in the West are so high. We expect people to invest 90,000 hours of their life into a thing and are offended when they ask it to not be utterly point- and useless...

by sien 5y ago

carschno 5y ago

The presumably rightful allegation of exaggerated numbers in Graeber's book does not necessarily render the existence of "bullshit jobs" untrue. I see that the (alleged) empirical flaws throw a shade on his hypothesis, but they do not disqualify it in its entirety.

inter_netuser 5y ago
work wouldn't be called work, if they did not have to pay you for it.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  There is a wide spectrum here though. I would still write code if not paid for it. I just wouldn’t write code for you. I am paid to use my code writing interests for your goals. I have no interest in ever being a toilet paper salesman and would never try to hawk toilet paper in my free time. You need to pay me a lot to do that.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]

laserlight 5y ago

I couldn't read the article because of the paywall. Judging by the quote, there are significant problems with this report. First, “a meaningful contribution to the world” and “the feeling of doing useful work” are vastly different phrases. Comparing replies to them is meaningless. Second, the definition of a bullshit job is not if it makes “a meaningful contribution to the world”. Using replies to that phrase as the share of bullshit jobs is, therefore, wrong. A job is bullshit if the one who is doing it thinks it's bullshit according to Graeber.

dukeyukey 5y ago
> A job is bullshit if the one who is doing it thinks it's bullshit according to Graeber. Sounds reasonable. My understanding is that Graeber's work concentrates on what Marx described as "alienation of labour", where people are sufficiently specialised that they don't draw satisfaction from their work any more. Some of these bullshit jobs are probably actually useful, but if it makes the worker feel like this then it still has the same ruinous effect on them, and to a point, society. In this case, feelings can trump facts.

benrbray 5y ago

I agree it would be nice to have more concrete numbers, but this in itself is a pretty shallow criticism of the bullshit jobs idea. Part of Graeber's argument, too, is that many of us are employed doing useful jobs in service of others who have useless jobs. Think of all the office staff, product designers, marketers, janitors, factory workers hired by Juicero, for instance. They all had meaningful jobs in service of a product that should never had existed. I also don't think that Graeber's standard is unfair -- making a meaningful contribtion to the world is quite a low bar for something we spend our entire lives doing for 8hr/day. Besides, a useless job may be done by an employee who is unable or unwilling to realize it -- "it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it". It's really tough to find meaningful work that pays a living wage, so many of us try to find small amounts of meaning in the jobs that we have. It doesn't make our jobs any less useless, though.

sien 5y ago
Apologies for those who can't get around the paywal. It gets worse for Graeber's thesis. The next paragraph from the ones previously quoted: "Furthermore, those who work in clerical and administrative jobs are far less likely to view their jobs as useless than those who are employed in roles that Mr Graeber regarded as essential, such as refuse collection and cleaning. Indeed, the researchers found an inverse relationship between education and the feeling of usefulness. Less educated workers were likelier to feel that their jobs were useless. And student debt does not appear to be a factor. In Britain, where its level is the highest in Europe, non-graduates under 29 were twice as likely to feel useless as their indebted graduate peers." So not only are his numbers pretty poor his thesis gets the numbers the wrong way around for those who feel their jobs are of little value. Link to the paper : https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/09500170211015067 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/09500170211015...
- benrbray 5y ago
  Perhaps that's where my own theory of bullshit jobs diverges from Graeber's then. I'd say a job can be bullshit regardless of whether or not the person doing it agrees. As for janitors feeling like their jobs are meaningless and office workers feeling meaningful, I'd say that's a reflection of our culture. Universities are full of administrators with fancy titles who probably feel very important, but it's not clear their presence furthers the very important goal of education.

blackbrokkoli 5y ago

"Meaningful contribution to the world" is now a high bar to clear? No wonder the suicide rates in the West are so high. We expect people to invest 90,000 hours of their life into a thing and are offended when they ask it to not be utterly point- and useless...