Bull**it Jobs

[kiko]

9 hours ago, The Mother of The Others said:

It sounds like you're shaping an improved world and delivering something to someone, so stop selling yourself short!   If one is in the private sector there's much better chance of meaningfulness built in to the job.  Businesses in danger of going out of business tend to stay lean and remain in touch with the joys of survivalism, like having jobs that deserve to exist.   It's beauracracy that's more guaranteed to be unjustifiable once you zoom in on a department to see what they're contributing.  But if the private sector is growing jam packed with do-nothing posts too, that's troublesome in the sense we may have no useful direction to go in with a modern economy, no choice but to spin our tires in the mud of uselessness.

 

I don't think you have every worked for a company. There is usually a huge group of people who are overpaid and not really doing any tangible work. And I'm not talking about admins or management but those who in theory have a specific task to do but can't or won't do for various reasons. Their job security is actually only made possible by modern technology because they get away with merely *reporting* activities. Whether they actually happen or not is not visible higher up the food chain and it is often not desired to investigate what really happens. I believe that's part of the feudal structures mentioned earlier in this thread. You can often see some middle management type entering a position and creating a whole bunch of positions for people with surprisingly similar CVS.

The advantages of having this type of employees is that you can always easily cut them back in a pinch without actually losing any productivity. It's win win for everyone. Sure a few shareholders might not see the same returns they could have without their company spending it on bullshit jobs. But who cares? They can always sell their shares and invest into those mystical lean mean businesses. If they don't, they are apparently happy with the current state of affairs.

[maarsen]

A good example of a bullshit job is the Royal family. All of them. 

[Rippounet]

15 hours ago, The Mother of The Others said:

If one is in the private sector there's much better chance of meaningfulness built in to the job.  Businesses in danger of going out of business tend to stay lean and remain in touch with the joys of survivalism, like having jobs that deserve to exist.  It's beauracracy that's more guaranteed to be unjustifiable once you zoom in on a department to see what they're contributing.  But if the private sector is growing jam packed with do-nothing posts too, that's troublesome in the sense we may have no useful direction to go in with a modern economy, no choice but to spin our tires in the mud of uselessness.

It's funny how much of a right-wing American vision this is. Because in euro-commie/socialist-ic countries it's quite reversed. Public sectors tend to deal with health, education, and justice. Quite often the government is also involved in energy, transportation, and agriculture. So obviously the bullshit jobs will overwhelmingly be in the private sector since the public sector deals with essential services.

However, even in a US setting I doubt the mere fact of being in the private sector really increases your chances of having a meaningful job... Graeber's entire work is about debunking the myth of "lean" businesses when in actuality corporations can be even more bureaucratic than government.

[Alarich II]

6 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

It's funny how much of a right-wing American vision this is. Because in euro-commie/socialist-ic countries it's quite reversed. Public sectors tend to deal with health, education, and justice. Quite often the government is also involved in energy, transportation, and agriculture. So obviously the bullshit jobs will overwhelmingly be in the private sector since the public sector deals with essential services.

I think that's a very optimistic vision. In fact, many of the social security bureaucracy-jobs (to name just one example), just exist to make other peoples lives miserable or to report statistics or to demur erroneous application forms that by their very complexity cannot be filled out correctly. Believe me, there are a lot of unproductive bullshit-jobs in public administrations and the bigger they become, the more they tend to create self-serving rule-works that justify even more bull-shit jobs.

Not to mention the plethora of jobs in public administration or semi-public institutions that merely exist to organise and supervise the bull-shit jobs of the private sector, which in turn begs the question wether jobs that exist to keep bullshit-jobs in check are bull-shit jobs by themselves and wether for example cleaner is a bullshit-job if said person only cleans the business-shirts of people with bullshit-jobs.

Or, if we turn this around, if bullshit-jobs create the demand for non-bullshit jobs like nannies, cleaners, gardeners, drivers, hair stylists, personal trainers etc. are they really bullshit-jobs?

Graeber put a theory out there, but I can see no systematic attempt to actually back this up with research that goes beyond the anecdotal evidence. I mean, it certainly rings true, but what Isk has already mentioned bears repeating: many of these apparent bullshit jobs are actually jobs that exist to facilitate human collaboraton and communication in a way that machines can't.

[Inigima]

18 hours ago, Erik of Hazelfield said:

So far I see but one actual example of bullshit jobs: stock broker. Are there any more? I'm not entirely convinced that there are so many bullshit jobs. You have the feeling that there are lots of them, but very few people would admit to having one. 

Technically I suppose it could be said that I have one myself. I count costs, handle quality issues, manage projects... But all I ever accomplish is moving bits of data around, call meetings and send emails. Yet people depend on me. Does that make it a non-bullshit job? 

Do they, though? The number of useful project managers I've ever known approaches an asymptote at zero.

I too would like to hear some more examples from Graeber of what he considers a bullshit job. Not someone trying to make a smarmy point, but what jobs the actual author argues are bullshit.

[Rippounet]

16 minutes ago, Alarich II said:

I think that's a very optimistic vision.

It's one backed by numbers though. Socialistic countries have large public sectors because -for instance- doctors and nurses may count as civil servants. Which means that the widespread image of public jobs being of bureaucrats that "just exist to make other peoples lives miserable" is the one that can be far removed from reality.

Quote

Believe me, there are a lot of unproductive bullshit-jobs in public administrations

As a matter of fact, I'd say the very opposite. Decades of austerity and the internet have generally eliminated much of the "unproductive" jobs in public administrations. And this is an ongoing trend, which can have terrible consequences for the quality of public service (which in turn, is used as an excuse for even more austerity programs).

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

21 hours ago, Liffguard said:

I’m gonna have to censor my use of bullsh*t for the time being, for the rather appropriate reason that I’m posting from work and the internet filter scans for profanity.

Interestingly enough, Graeber actually discusses Adams in the book. Partially to acknowledge Adams’s point, but also to disagree with his inclusion of hairdressers as a job useless to society. In fact, one of the central theses of the book is that “caring work,” – i.e. any job that involves looking after other humans, even in small trivial ways – is very much the opposite of a BS job. Hairdressers make your hair look nice, and that’s useful on its own. But they also provide friendly conversation, and a local social hub, and maybe a little bit of primping and pampering.

Hence, I would also disagree with Coupland’s inclusion of “ticket collectors, shop assistants, bank clerks” as BS jobs (though I will absolutely agree about stock-brokers). Their job is not just to “transfer items from one ledger to another.” They provide a human interface and, in a well-run organisation at least, the ability to apply human social skills and human discretion.

Similarly, "mcjobs" - if we're talking about actual mcdonald's workers and their equivalents at other companies, are far from BS. They're preparing and serving food to people, that's a useful social function. They might be sh*t jobs, in the sense of unpleasant and underpaid, but they're not bullsh*t.

One of the examples used by Graeber was a recent strike by London underground station attendants/ticket sellers. Many people suggested that their jobs were useless because technology had rendered them obsolete. You can just buy from a machine or swipe your card at the barriers. The workers responded with a statement (paraphrasing because I can’t find the exact quote right now).

“How to use the new automated underground stations. Please don’t get lost. Please don’t suffer a medical emergency. Please don’t be a lost child. Please do not be harassed or intimidated by another passenger. Please don’t misplace luggage. Please don’t travel during any unexpected train disruptions. Please don’t require any help or assistance in any way.”

Jobs are not BS because they don’t provide an economic return on investment. They’re bullsh*t if they serve no social value, and yet the holders are required to pretend otherwise.

Out of personal interest, were do Attorneys fall in his framework?

[DanteGabriel]

1 hour ago, Inigima said:

Do they, though? The number of useful project managers I've ever known approaches an asymptote at zero.

I'm a project manager (though that job has been different at all the companies I've known) and I'm pretty sure I could be replaced by a reasonably clever piece of software. Though you might need project managers to get the software built... 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

2 minutes ago, DanteGabriel said:

I'm a project manager (though that job has been different at all the companies I've known) and I'm pretty sure I could be replaced by a reasonably clever piece of software. Though you might need project managers to get the software built... 

The project managers at my office are extremely helpful in organizing and guiding development of projects.  They help keep people focused and on task.  I don’t think a computer program would be nearly as effective in sheparding (literally) group efforts.

[Liffguard]

59 minutes ago, Inigima said:

Do they, though? The number of useful project managers I've ever known approaches an asymptote at zero.

I too would like to hear some more examples from Graeber of what he considers a bullshit job. Not someone trying to make a smarmy point, but what jobs the actual author argues are bullshit.

 

16 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Out of personal interest, were do Attorneys fall in his framework?

Again, it’s not really up to me (or Graeber, or anyone) to decide for someone else if their job is bullshit or not. That’s explicitly why he bases it on self-reporting. Is manufacturing selfie sticks bullshit? Many people would say yes, selfie sticks are pointless, making them is pointless, this is a bullshit job. Others might say that people want selfie sticks, they serve a demand, therefore not bullshit. Is being an avant-garde performance artist bullshit? Does it meet a need? Does it provide value? That’s gonna heavily depend on subjective value judgements. Hence, self-reporting. If someone thinks their own job is bullshit, then it probably is.

Secondly, it’s not quite a binary of a job either being bullshit or non-bullshit. A job could involve five hours of genuinely productive work a week (for example, definitely not talking about myself right now, no-sir), and the rest is bullshit, but you’re still required to be arse-in-seat for the full 40 (or 50, or 60).

So, allowing for my somewhat tongue-in-cheek inclusion of stock-brokers above, I’m not going to sit and make a list of what I (or Graeber) think are bullshit jobs.

That said, I’m willing to throw out a few general thoughts.

Firstly, the obvious, if your job predominantly involves doing nothing, then it’s almost certainly bullshit. If you’re an office worker who spends 95% of his time browsing reddit, or a security guard who guards an empty room all day, then yeah I’m willing to say that’s a bullshit job.

If you actually do work, but it’s just a more complex equivalent of digging holes then filling them in again, then it’s probably bullshit. Attending meetings to discuss the next meeting. Staffing committees about solving the problem of too many committees. Writing reports and compiling spreadsheets that nobody reads.

If your job title is “regional coordinator of strategic partner engagement,” or equivalent, very possibly bullshit. Can you explain the gist of a simplified version of what you do to a complete layman in a couple of sentences, and be understood?

If your job disappeared overnight, would society as a whole notice? Would it care? Would you?

I really don’t want to get too hung up on the details here. I’m not particularly invested in any of these categories, and I’m not really interested in defending them. Like I said, it’s not for me to tell anyone else if their job is bullshit. I’m more interested about whether or not people think their own jobs are bullshit, and why.

 

[Alarich II]

42 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

It's one backed by numbers though. Socialistic countries have large public sectors because -for instance- doctors and nurses may count as civil servants. Which means that the widespread image of public jobs being of bureaucrats that "just exist to make other peoples lives miserable" is the one that can be far removed from reality. 

As a matter of fact, I'd say the very opposite. Decades of austerity and the internet have generally eliminated much of the "unproductive" jobs in public administrations. And this is an ongoing trend, which can have terrible consequences for the quality of public service (which in turn, is used as an excuse for even more austerity programs).

Do you have any of those numbers at hand? I would be very interested to see how that works out. And I don't think that the "decades of austerity" have eliminated the bull-shit jobs. Most of the jobs for example in public health administration were reorganised in a way, that although we have less nurses and doctors, we suddenly have an extra layer of Hospital Managers and Controllers which prompts the Universities to promote new degrees in "Health Controlling" and "Public Health Administration" etc. so we need an extra layer study council jobs, adjunct professors, university controllers and administrators and so on and so forth... with every round of slashing social benefit programs we need new jobs to control, report and reject the application forms, we need specialized lawyers to combat the ever increasing flood of incorrect administrative decisions and of course the administrative courts need more judges and in turn the administration itself needs an extra layer of people whose only job it is to organize and reply to the objections of said lawyers and because most people who want to appeal these administrative decisions don't have enough money, they now need and extra department that decides on the legal aid applications for lawsuits against its own "sister departments" which means that there is now an extra department churning out new administrative decisions which in turn can now can be appealed against....

[Rippounet]

5 minutes ago, Alarich II said:

Do you have any of those numbers at hand?

I checked them on the official websites before answering. On top of my head, about 30% of civil service jobs in France can be classified as "administrative" or purely office work. That's still a lot, but it means 70% occupy jobs that can hardly be classified as "bullshit": not just nurses and doctors, but teachers, police officers, judges, soldiers... etc. And of course, out of the 30% not all administrative jobs will be "bullshit."

5 minutes ago, Alarich II said:

Most of the jobs for example in public health administration were reorganised in a way, that although we have less nurses and doctors, we suddenly have an extra layer of Hospital Managers and Controllers which prompts the Universities to promote new degrees in "Health Controlling" and "Public Health Administration" etc. so we need an extra layer study council jobs, adjunct professors, university controllers and administrators and so on and so forth... with every round of slashing social benefit programs we need new jobs to control, report and reject the application forms, we need specialized lawyers to combat the ever increasing flood of incorrect administrative decisions and of course the administrative courts need more judges and in turn the administration itself needs an extra layer of people whose only job it is to organize and reply to the objections of said lawyers and because most people who want to appeal these administrative decisions don't have enough money, they now need and extra department that decides on the legal aid applications for lawsuits against its own "sister departments" which means that there is now an extra department churning out new administrative decisions which in turn can now can be appealed against....

I wouldn't be surprised if austerity led to such absurd results. What country are we talking about though? And are you certain that there are truly new administrative jobs? Because in my experience much of the "new" administrative load is just dumped on the internet.

 

[HexMachina]

41 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

The project managers at my office are extremely helpful in organizing and guiding development of projects.  They help keep people focused and on task.  I don’t think a computer program would be nearly as effective in sheparding (literally) group efforts.

I would say that project management and legal project management are almost two separate beasts. My current work is almost entirely (legal) project based, and with the sheer volume of projects coming into the office each day, the project managers are a pretty essential “cog” in our machine.

(it does help that they will pitch in on the work of the project where our capacity is stretched of course...)

[Alarich II]

8 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

I checked them on the official websites before answering. On top of my head, about 30% of civil service jobs in France can be classified as "administrative" or purely office work. That's still a lot, but it means 70% occupy jobs that can hardly be classified as "bullshit": not just nurses and doctors, but teachers, police officers, judges, soldiers... etc. And of course, out of the 30% not all administrative jobs will be "bullshit." 

I checked here: Portail de la Fonction publique and I couldn't find the 30% stat anywhere, the only thing that I found in the French version (Chiffres-clés 2018, p.14), was a division by socio-professional categories. None of those figures did really indicate who does purely administrative work and who does something else, at least from my understanding (My French did deteriorate quite a bit during the last 10 years).

Quite interesting though that in France the Administration is divided in State, Region and Health, whereas in Germany, hospitals and public health services aren't a separate administrative instance and usually belong to to regional or communal institutions (unless they are privatized).

[sologdin]

There is usually a huge group of people who are overpaid and not really doing any tangible work.

i love the conceptually instability of the position against which the statement, supra, was lodged--the philistine notion that it's "beauracracy [sic] that's more guaranteed to be unjustifiable once you zoom in on a department to see what they're contributing"--as though the owner's share, profit, were somehow justifiable, even though there is nothing in ownership itself that makes a 'contribution' to warrant recompense.  

[DireWolfSpirit]

3 hours ago, Alarich II said:

Or, if we turn this around, if bullshit-jobs create the demand for non-bullshit jobs like nannies, cleaners, gardeners, drivers, hair stylists, personal trainers etc. are they really bullshit-jobs?

This is a great question and potentially deflates the authors premise doesn't it?

[Liffguard]

 

3 hours ago, Alarich II said:

Or, if we turn this around, if bullshit-jobs create the demand for non-bullshit jobs like nannies, cleaners, gardeners, drivers, hair stylists, personal trainers etc. are they really bullshit-jobs?

 

8 minutes ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

This is a great question and potentially deflates the authors premise doesn't it?

Depends on what you mean. If the demand would exist anyway, then no (e.g. people still want their hair cut regardless of what they do for a living). If we mean jobs that aren't inherently bullshit themselves but only exist to serve the needs of those who's jobs are bullshit (e.g. cleaners for a building entirely staffed by telemarketers) then these are what Graeber calls "second-order bullshit jobs."

It's an interesting question, but I think it strengthens the author's case rather than deflates it. It means that there are probably more jobs out there that don't need to exist rather than less.

[Rippounet]

1 hour ago, Alarich II said:

I checked here: Portail de la Fonction publique and I couldn't find the 30% stat anywhere,

As I said, "on top of my head." You won't find the 30% figure anywhere, I came up with it after consulting a number of reports and making some calculations and estimates.

For instance, in the ministry of education only 17,8% of civil servants are not teachers. I didn't find the figure, I calculated it using available data. It's an important figure though because it's by far the largest ministry of all. In this case 30% is an overestimation.
In a 2014 report analysing 3 major ministries (Le ministère des affaires sociales,de la santé et des droits des femmes, Le ministère du travail, de l’emploi, de la formation professionnelle et du dialogue social, Le ministère de la ville, de la jeunesse et des sports) central administration was said to be 15 or 16% of all personnel. Even doubling that for local administration you'd find 30%. In this cas too, 30% is an overestimation.
Figures can be a bit higher in some cases, it rises to 44% in the National Assembly for instance. In this case 30% is an underestimation. But the National Assembly seems to me to be a bit of a counter-example since it is mostly about bureaucracy, unlike other institutions.
I also did a few quick estimates based on my knowledge of French administration and how categories A, B, and C, are generally structured/employed. Those are probably off.
I wanted to calculate figures for the ministry of defense and the ministry of health but it was difficult to find the data and I got bored/annoyed with the whole thing so I decided 30% was a pretty honest estimate, and, if anything, pretty much on the safe side (I personally believe the actual figure would be slightly lower, likely between 20% and 25%).

Anyway, sorry for how approximative this is, obviously I'd do a better job if this was a work thing I was writing.

I used the following reports and a few other official pages:
https://www.fonction-publique.gouv.fr/files/files/statistiques/chiffres_cles/pdf/CC-2018-web.PDF
https://www.fonction-publique.gouv.fr/files/files/statistiques/rapports_annuels/2017/Rapport_annuel-FP_2017.pdf
http://www2.assemblee-nationale.fr/decouvrir-l-assemblee/role-et-pouvoirs-de-l-assemblee-nationale/l-administration-de-l-assemblee-nationale/statut-et-carriere-des-fonctionnaires-de-l-assemblee-nationale
https://solidarites-sante.gouv.fr/IMG/pdf/bilan_social_ministeriel_2014-2.pdf

 

[DanteGabriel]

2 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

The project managers at my office are extremely helpful in organizing and guiding development of projects.  They help keep people focused and on task.  I don’t think a computer program would be nearly as effective in sheparding (literally) group efforts.

Like I said, the role of "project manager" seems to be different in every company. I've had the same title at two companies and it's been pretty different.

The same was true of one of my other job titles, "producer." Though that one links to a previous comment in this topic that a lot of middle management is a bullshit job. That's probably true. But I found that the most useful function I fulfilled in that role was to shield the teams I managed from the stupid requests and unrealistic ideas of upper management.

[maarsen]

Another example of jobs that serve no useful purpose, aside from being a member of a royal family , is being in the beauracracy of any organized religion.