Bullshit Jobs – Soul sucking jobs that add little value

Bullshit Jobs

David Graeber, who passed away in 2020, published an article titled “On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs” in Strike! Magazine in 2013. In it he explored his observation that many jobs seem to add little real value to the wider world, that they’re essentially meaningless, existing only to create an illusion of industry or to reward people for climbing through certain social hoops.

Not only do these jobs appear to be of little actual value in the world, per David’s theory, but many of the people actually undertaking these jobs also consider what they do to be pointless, unnecessary or even detrimental in some way. It’s worth noting that many of the jobs can even be very well paid.

He named these jobs “Bullshit Jobs” and shared some theories and language to help us think about them and grouped them into five categories:

Flunkies:

Flunkies are roles or jobs that exist to make others feel important, without really having much to do or value to add. The primary “value” flunkies do add is to massage someone’s ego or give a wider impression to society that that person is important.

Examples could include receptionists, doormen or secretaries who exist where other (potentially technological) solutions are already in place. Other examples could include executive assistants who create noise and chatter around senior leaders. We also wonder if some executive and personal coaches fall into this category, though we probably shouldn’t say that.

Goons:

Goons are jobs that involve sometimes unnecessary aggressive activities, competitions and conflicts. Often goons exist to help someone (or an intersted party) get a bigger piece of the pie, without making the pie any bigger. And there is often a negative cost to the activites required to help that intersted party get a bigger piece of the pie.

Examples of goons include lobbyists, PR specialists, telemarketers and hihgly paid corporate lawyers (particularly those involved in litigation intended to intimidate or financially drain competitors rather than seeking just outcomes). Individuals in these roles are not deemed to be creating net value for society. In the words of Rolling Stone Magazine, they’re more like Vampire Squids.

Duct Tapers:

Duct Tapers are people in positions that solve problems that shouldn’t exist, such as workers who fix mistakes caused by poor organization or poor planning in the first place.

Examples of duct tapers include many IT support staff who spend time responding to recurring issues that stem from poor or outdated systems, customer relations people who manage customer complaints in relation to products that are known to be crappy and middle managers who spend their time resolving conflicts that arrise due to poor leadership, direction setting and role clarity.

Box Tickers:

Box tickers are employees who create the appearance that something useful is happening, typically through paperwork or bureaucratic processes, though in reality the output is often the reporting and box ticking activity itself, nothing more.

Examples of box tickers can include compliance officers filing regulatory reports (particularly where over-reporting is corporate strategy), managers involved in performance assessements of junior colleagues (particularly where this leads to little improvement in performance) and people involved in writing and generating reports that are never acutlly opened or read.

Taskmasters:

Task masters are people in middle management positions that create unnecessary work for others or oversee employees without adding value. Think the pointy-haired boss in Dilbert, or even David Brent in the office.

Examples of taskmasters include middle managers who oversee employees who don’t really need any oversight, someproject managers who spend more time on prioject reporting and communication than work and anyone else involved in micro-managing teams that could easily function autonomously.

Why Should we Care?

David Graeber argues that the existence of bullshit jobs contributes to a widspread sense of dissatisfaction, purposelessness and malaise amongst workers, which we note is very much borne out in Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace Reports.

At the core of what he thinks is driving this is a disconnect between the value activity contributes to society and the way in which activities are compensated. In essence, he thought our current system prioritizes the appearance of productivity over meaningful contributions to society. Based on this he was basically calling for a reevaluation at a societal level as to how we construe what valuable activity is.

The best starting points to learn more are David Graebers original article and subsequent book, both of which are in the referenced below.

We also think that Hannah Arendt’s distinctions of how we split our activity bewteen Labour, Work and Action are pretty interesting in this context. A mini summary is available on the Wiki about her book, “The Human Condition“.

Of course, the idea of “busy work” has been around for ages too, which maybe isn’t too different to some of this as well. In fact, we’ve just noticed that Bullshit Jobs appears in the wiki on busy work.

We also have lots of fun podcasts, including this one on Bullshit Jobs:

It’s indisputable that there are low levels of engagement in the global employee population, as evidenced year after year if Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace Reports. And it’s also indisputable that some jobs are bullshit, so we’re pretty happy to accept that there is a correlation.

Some jobs really are pretty soul sucking. The one we always think of is divorce lawers who are often very well paid to fight aggressively to littleraly divide up a pie in a difficult time in peoples lives. It’s hard to argue there is real societal value being created here. And, in our understanding, many people who work in jobs like this, even if well paid, really do feel a bit empty about what they do.

That all being said, we also have some mixed views about Bullshit jobs. The bit we struggle with is the “what do we do about it” bit.

While it would be great to live in a world where activities are compensated based on their contribution to the world, but we’re not sure quite how to make this happen. [As a side observation, we actually think that the opposite is what’s happening in many instances now. People who are working are “compensated” for what they do in their roles. What we see this meaning is that people who care about, value and have purpose in what they do get some intrinsic value from their work, so need less compensation to actually do it, so they might get paid less. On the other hand – people who do really shitty jobs need a lot of compensation to actually do them.]

It feels to us that this reflection on bullshit jobs leads to perhaps a political, legislative and regulatory questions that we’re not really in a position to speculate on.

David Graeber’s original article is here: Graeber, D. (2013). On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs. Strike! Magazine. Retrieved from http://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/

And he also wrote a book: Graeber, D. (2018). Bullshit jobs: A theory. Simon & Schuster.

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