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Cowen's review misses the point, which is that Graeber is probably right about academia (not coincidentally, that's where he worked). Academia has no profit mot

Cowen's review misses the point, which is that Graeber is probably right about academia (not coincidentally, that's where he worked). Academia has no profit motive so all the money gets sunk into an ever-expanding bureaucracy rather than lowering prices or paying dividends to shareholders. The thing is, Graeber is wrong about the entire rest of the economy, where 99% of people live and work.

spencerflem 3y ago
The book is based of interviews, so certainly some people feel that way. Anecdotally, plenty of people I talk to (in industry) question the usefulness of whatever widget they're building.
- jdm2212 3y ago
  I don't think he got a book deal to write this doorstop about the utterly banal claim that some people find their jobs unfulfilling. Like, duh, that's why they pay you. He got the book deal because his pitch is that the jobs are actually bullshit, i.e. the kind of jobs some salarymen have in Japan where the company is expected to keep you employed and you are expected to show up for 12 hours a day but whether actual work gets done productively is sort of beside the point.
  - spencerflem 3y ago
    I'm glad you don't feel your job is that way. This book, however, is an anthropology of people who Themselves, feel that their job is pointless. You can argue that they are incorrect, but Graeber's point is - Who is more likely to know whether a job is valuable: you, or the person actually working it?
    - jdm2212 3y ago
      I'd trust their manager or skip-level manager more than I'd trust them. Lots of rank-and-file workers really have no idea how they generate value for the organization. Until you've spent a lot of time managing people or at least sitting in on management decisions, it's hard to understand the kinds of concerns that drive corporate decision-making. The fact that a corporate minion thinks their job is pointless means the job actually is pointless like 10% of the time, or that the minion just has no idea how the org works like 90% of the time.
  - m-ee 3y ago
    I think this misses the point. At the beginning he states very clearly that the people providing the labor are best positioned to determine if the labor is bullshit, which seems like a reasonable starting point. The purpose of the book is probing how a system that's supposed to be ruthlessly efficient and profit seeking could waste so much money on bullshit. For those who haven't read the book the answer is largely what he terms "managerial feudalism". The economic motives of any individual manager, up to and including the CEO, often don't align with the abstract ideal of a brutally efficient capitalist firm. They get money and status by having a large "court" of underlings. If you've worked at a growth stage company it seems impossible to deny that this doesn't happen in the tech industry.
    - jdm2212 3y ago
      Sure, managerial feudalism is totally a thing but also CEOs are aware of that and shareholders are aware of that which is why layoffs and reorgs and such happen periodically at any company in a competitive business. But the rank-and-file employee who's trying to assess whether their job generates value will have a very hard time doing this at all accurately. You need a lot of business strategy context to understand why the company is actually employing you (as opposed to what they tell you, which is always going to be "because you're amazing and talented and a valued team member")
    - notahacker 3y ago
      > At the beginning he states very clearly that the people providing the labor are best positioned to determine if the labor is bullshit, which seems like a reasonable starting point seems like a pretty questionable starting point tbh, especially when he starts conflating the idea of actual bullshit with would prefer to be doing something else, like his example of his corporate lawyer friend who thinks his job is bullshit mainly because he'd rather concentrate on being a 'poet-musician'. It's not 'managerial feudalism' causing people to get paid more to solve large organizations' legal problems than scratch their own musical itches. And at the other end of the scale, some of the most parasitical workers really love what they do, whether that's because they love the thrill of browbeating people into giving them money or because they have a genuinely bullshit "strategy" job for internal politics reasons which has been designed to make them feel much more important than they actually are. (and there's lots of pre-existing material on the efficiencies and inefficiencies of fields like law and adverse selection problems within firms, most of which works from better assumptions. Plus of course Marx's theory of alienation - one of his better theories - offering a theory for why people become more dissatisfied with the work they do as industrial processes become more efficient)
PeterStuer 3y ago
Having worked long time in both academia and industry, I can assure you the differences when it comes to bullshit jobs are minor. You might argue about the color of the turd, but it still tastes like shit.
- censor_me 3y ago
  [dead]
- jdm2212 3y ago
  In the US this is completely untrue. Research universities basically never have layoffs. In contrast, Google alone has in the last year laid off more people than the combined faculties Harvard, Princeton, Yale and Stanford. Private sector layoffs are harder in Europe and academia is less well funded, so it might be true-ish in Europe.
  - goodpoint 3y ago
    That proves nothing.

spencerflem 3y ago

The book is based of interviews, so certainly some people feel that way. Anecdotally, plenty of people I talk to (in industry) question the usefulness of whatever widget they're building.

jdm2212 3y ago
I don't think he got a book deal to write this doorstop about the utterly banal claim that some people find their jobs unfulfilling. Like, duh, that's why they pay you. He got the book deal because his pitch is that the jobs are actually bullshit, i.e. the kind of jobs some salarymen have in Japan where the company is expected to keep you employed and you are expected to show up for 12 hours a day but whether actual work gets done productively is sort of beside the point.
- spencerflem 3y ago
  I'm glad you don't feel your job is that way. This book, however, is an anthropology of people who Themselves, feel that their job is pointless. You can argue that they are incorrect, but Graeber's point is - Who is more likely to know whether a job is valuable: you, or the person actually working it?
  - jdm2212 3y ago
    I'd trust their manager or skip-level manager more than I'd trust them. Lots of rank-and-file workers really have no idea how they generate value for the organization. Until you've spent a lot of time managing people or at least sitting in on management decisions, it's hard to understand the kinds of concerns that drive corporate decision-making. The fact that a corporate minion thinks their job is pointless means the job actually is pointless like 10% of the time, or that the minion just has no idea how the org works like 90% of the time.
- m-ee 3y ago
  I think this misses the point. At the beginning he states very clearly that the people providing the labor are best positioned to determine if the labor is bullshit, which seems like a reasonable starting point. The purpose of the book is probing how a system that's supposed to be ruthlessly efficient and profit seeking could waste so much money on bullshit. For those who haven't read the book the answer is largely what he terms "managerial feudalism". The economic motives of any individual manager, up to and including the CEO, often don't align with the abstract ideal of a brutally efficient capitalist firm. They get money and status by having a large "court" of underlings. If you've worked at a growth stage company it seems impossible to deny that this doesn't happen in the tech industry.
  - jdm2212 3y ago
    Sure, managerial feudalism is totally a thing but also CEOs are aware of that and shareholders are aware of that which is why layoffs and reorgs and such happen periodically at any company in a competitive business. But the rank-and-file employee who's trying to assess whether their job generates value will have a very hard time doing this at all accurately. You need a lot of business strategy context to understand why the company is actually employing you (as opposed to what they tell you, which is always going to be "because you're amazing and talented and a valued team member")
  - notahacker 3y ago
    > At the beginning he states very clearly that the people providing the labor are best positioned to determine if the labor is bullshit, which seems like a reasonable starting point seems like a pretty questionable starting point tbh, especially when he starts conflating the idea of actual bullshit with would prefer to be doing something else, like his example of his corporate lawyer friend who thinks his job is bullshit mainly because he'd rather concentrate on being a 'poet-musician'. It's not 'managerial feudalism' causing people to get paid more to solve large organizations' legal problems than scratch their own musical itches. And at the other end of the scale, some of the most parasitical workers really love what they do, whether that's because they love the thrill of browbeating people into giving them money or because they have a genuinely bullshit "strategy" job for internal politics reasons which has been designed to make them feel much more important than they actually are. (and there's lots of pre-existing material on the efficiencies and inefficiencies of fields like law and adverse selection problems within firms, most of which works from better assumptions. Plus of course Marx's theory of alienation - one of his better theories - offering a theory for why people become more dissatisfied with the work they do as industrial processes become more efficient)

PeterStuer 3y ago

Having worked long time in both academia and industry, I can assure you the differences when it comes to bullshit jobs are minor. You might argue about the color of the turd, but it still tastes like shit.

censor_me 3y ago
[dead]
jdm2212 3y ago
In the US this is completely untrue. Research universities basically never have layoffs. In contrast, Google alone has in the last year laid off more people than the combined faculties Harvard, Princeton, Yale and Stanford. Private sector layoffs are harder in Europe and academia is less well funded, so it might be true-ish in Europe.
- goodpoint 3y ago
  That proves nothing.