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Boss: "Hicks, how come you're not working." Bill: "There's nothing to do." Boss: "Well, you pretend like you're working." Perhaps the biggest sink on the eco

Boss: "Hicks, how come you're not working." Bill: "There's nothing to do." Boss: "Well, you pretend like you're working." Perhaps the biggest sink on the economy and environment is perfomative work that David Graeber calls "bullshit jobs". Commuting 100 miles to sit in an office to be seen to perform is tragic and borne of insecurity of both manager and worker colluding in a game. I think what constitutes work exists at a deep, invisible level that approximates to something like loyalty or duty. It is whether one holds the task/company in mind. And it happens 24/7. Some of the most important work I've done for clients happened while out walking, or shopping. I've cut short social events or vacations to rush back and test an idea I had. Problem is, you can't measure that. And even if you could, I wouldn't let you. It's a private space. The more any "boss" tries to intrude, observe or manage that process, the faster it evaporates. That's not to say that structured tools, planning, presentation and other forms of explicating and evidence aren't part of work. They're just not the most important parts, and actually play very little role in the big leaps and "paradigm shifts" in creative work. By "problem" I mean problem for someone whose only role is to monitor and report what others do. "I'm still thinking about it" is something they don't want to hear.

eru 4y ago
The topic of bullshit jobs has been overhyped. Btw, even if they are a problem, their impact on the economy pales in comparison with restrictions on migration and construction.
- nonrandomstring 4y ago
  > The topic of bullshit jobs has been overhyped. I think that's true and it's a shame Graeber's choice of language basically offends. Who wants to hear that their job is "bullshit"? And let's face it, sometimes we feel good name-calling all those people whose work we don't understand. Unfortunately that over-hyping subtracts from real and serious questions about why we're burning resources (human and material) doing perfomative acts. Even the things you mention, like mobility and development regulation can be "perfomative", as "acting out" of things we think we ought to be seen to do but no longer have the courage to examine. This is down to the cult of "the system" as a Big Other, which must be appeased - something I'm not sure Graeber articulated well. But it was a key step in the unravelling of the Soviet system, and I think we are repeating it now in the West.
  - thaumasiotes 4y ago
    > it's a shame Graeber's choice of language basically offends. Who wants to hear that their job is "bullshit"? A very large number of people who already believe that about their job.
    - yamtaddle 4y ago
      Indeed, the core of the book is built on interviews with people who self-report that their jobs are bullshit. Graeber goes on to cover some systemically-bullshit jobs (largely escalating zero-sum games like advertising or the military—"we had to spend more because the other guy spent more, so the status quo is preserved") but all the stuff about ordinary jobs at ordinary companies that are bullshit come from surveys and interviews. All I can figure is people who bristle at the term or at the notion that there might indeed be a whole lot of bullshit jobs haven't had a very broad set of work experience, and run in a social circle that's very similar to them. It seems impossible not to notice, otherwise.
  - marcosdumay 4y ago
    It's also a language that implies that entire jobs are it, and entire jobs are not. There probably exist jobs that are entirely bullshit or entirely not-bullshit, but if they exist, they are extremely rare.
MaxikCZ 4y ago
>Perhaps the biggest sink on the economy and environment is perfomative work that David Graeber calls "bullshit jobs". Commuting 100 miles to sit in an office to be seen to perform is tragic and borne of insecurity of both manager and worker colluding in a game. For years (5+), at my job there's often nothing to do, so after lunch I just go home, and declare 4 hours worked that day (8-12, instead of normal 8) at the end of a month. Of 5 of us employees I am the only one doing that. Never once has my boss confronted me about it, neither subtracted from my full salary. I feel kinda blessed.
- j-bos 4y ago
  How did you declare the hours? An email? "Unpaid time off" submission?
  - badpun 4y ago
    In many companies, there are systems into which you enter how many hours you worked each day. (often you also need to break down the work per department/budget, so that you as an expense can be tracked across multiple company budgets).
- hansel_der 4y ago
  > I feel kinda blessed. you should
- b4je7d7wb 4y ago
  I do the same, but report 8 hours. I automated this task in every job that required to report hours. I refuse to work in a clock in clock out fashion. Thankfully I now have a job that autoreports 8 hours. I never even opened the software to edit hours.
- pcurve 4y ago
  Man I wish everyone did that. I managed a team of twenty with a layer of managers and it was just impossible to get a pulse on workload. The truth is there is always work to be done. It doesn’t have to be feature work but it could be product health, process health, or pie in the sky thinking work. Some employees were great about utilizing downtime to tackle these but many were not. I loved the ones who were confident to tell me “hey boss I got some time. What do you want me to focus on ?”
npteljes 4y ago
>Perhaps the biggest sink on the economy and environment is perfomative work I think nothing illustrates this better, than the productivity output of Japan vs other developed nations[0]. In Japan, there's a lot that you need to do at your job performatively: strict schedules, logging what you do have been doing in small intervals like 30 minutes, checking in and out formally, having to keep up with coworkers outside of work, tons of pressure and appearances, and long hours. And yet, productivity is not great. [0] https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h01196/ https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h01196/

eru 4y ago

The topic of bullshit jobs has been overhyped. Btw, even if they are a problem, their impact on the economy pales in comparison with restrictions on migration and construction.

nonrandomstring 4y ago
> The topic of bullshit jobs has been overhyped. I think that's true and it's a shame Graeber's choice of language basically offends. Who wants to hear that their job is "bullshit"? And let's face it, sometimes we feel good name-calling all those people whose work we don't understand. Unfortunately that over-hyping subtracts from real and serious questions about why we're burning resources (human and material) doing perfomative acts. Even the things you mention, like mobility and development regulation can be "perfomative", as "acting out" of things we think we ought to be seen to do but no longer have the courage to examine. This is down to the cult of "the system" as a Big Other, which must be appeased - something I'm not sure Graeber articulated well. But it was a key step in the unravelling of the Soviet system, and I think we are repeating it now in the West.
- thaumasiotes 4y ago
  > it's a shame Graeber's choice of language basically offends. Who wants to hear that their job is "bullshit"? A very large number of people who already believe that about their job.
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    Indeed, the core of the book is built on interviews with people who self-report that their jobs are bullshit. Graeber goes on to cover some systemically-bullshit jobs (largely escalating zero-sum games like advertising or the military—"we had to spend more because the other guy spent more, so the status quo is preserved") but all the stuff about ordinary jobs at ordinary companies that are bullshit come from surveys and interviews. All I can figure is people who bristle at the term or at the notion that there might indeed be a whole lot of bullshit jobs haven't had a very broad set of work experience, and run in a social circle that's very similar to them. It seems impossible not to notice, otherwise.
- marcosdumay 4y ago
  It's also a language that implies that entire jobs are it, and entire jobs are not. There probably exist jobs that are entirely bullshit or entirely not-bullshit, but if they exist, they are extremely rare.

MaxikCZ 4y ago

>Perhaps the biggest sink on the economy and environment is perfomative work that David Graeber calls "bullshit jobs". Commuting 100 miles to sit in an office to be seen to perform is tragic and borne of insecurity of both manager and worker colluding in a game. For years (5+), at my job there's often nothing to do, so after lunch I just go home, and declare 4 hours worked that day (8-12, instead of normal 8) at the end of a month. Of 5 of us employees I am the only one doing that. Never once has my boss confronted me about it, neither subtracted from my full salary. I feel kinda blessed.

j-bos 4y ago
How did you declare the hours? An email? "Unpaid time off" submission?
- badpun 4y ago
  In many companies, there are systems into which you enter how many hours you worked each day. (often you also need to break down the work per department/budget, so that you as an expense can be tracked across multiple company budgets).
hansel_der 4y ago
> I feel kinda blessed. you should
b4je7d7wb 4y ago
I do the same, but report 8 hours. I automated this task in every job that required to report hours. I refuse to work in a clock in clock out fashion. Thankfully I now have a job that autoreports 8 hours. I never even opened the software to edit hours.
pcurve 4y ago
Man I wish everyone did that. I managed a team of twenty with a layer of managers and it was just impossible to get a pulse on workload. The truth is there is always work to be done. It doesn’t have to be feature work but it could be product health, process health, or pie in the sky thinking work. Some employees were great about utilizing downtime to tackle these but many were not. I loved the ones who were confident to tell me “hey boss I got some time. What do you want me to focus on ?”

npteljes 4y ago

>Perhaps the biggest sink on the economy and environment is perfomative work I think nothing illustrates this better, than the productivity output of Japan vs other developed nations[0]. In Japan, there's a lot that you need to do at your job performatively: strict schedules, logging what you do have been doing in small intervals like 30 minutes, checking in and out formally, having to keep up with coworkers outside of work, tons of pressure and appearances, and long hours. And yet, productivity is not great. [0] https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h01196/ https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h01196/