Bullshit Jobs

What would happen to the world if your job disappeared tomorrow? According to one survey, 40% of people think their job makes no real contribution to the world. Even if it vanished, it wouldn't be much of a loss. That's a terrible job. Is your work a pile of crap? Why would your boss pay you to do work that means nothing? Today we're going to talk about this "bullshit job."

In 1930, the economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that technological progress would greatly increase productivity, and that by the twenty-first century people would only need to work about three hours a day on average. But we all know that prediction never came true. Today we work at least eight hours a day, and very few companies don't expect overtime. If technology has kept advancing, why hasn't the working time gone down?

In a 2013 essay, the anthropology professor David Graeber argued that the reason is that society is full of useless jobs. These jobs are not only extremely inefficient but also contribute little to society, yet people do them day after day to make a living. Graeber's essay sparked a wide response, and he received bullshit job stories from all over the world. Eventually he took the insider accounts from many different industries and wrote them into the book Bullshit Jobs.

A bullshit job is one that most people think wouldn't matter if it disappeared, but because you still have to feed your family, you have to act as if the job is important and necessary. Some people might argue that work doesn't need to be meaningful, that the point of a job is just to earn money. But after hearing from many people, the author noticed a pattern: many occupations such as journalists, nurses and firefighters don't necessarily pay much, yet they generally feel their work is meaningful. Another group says: even though I earn a lot and sit in an office with the air conditioning on, most of my job is pretending to work. "I live in pain every day. I need a reason to convince myself, so I have the motivation to get out of bed and go to work."

As I understand it, the author sorts these bullshit jobs into five categories. The first category is "flunkies." The purpose of these jobs is to make someone else look important. You could handle things yourself, but you still have to have someone pick up the phone and transfer calls, so the company looks bigger. The people doing these jobs feel more powerful because they have one more subordinate.

The second type is "goons." Their main job is to advance their employer's interests, but they don't really help society. For example, a company's legal counsel might complain that everything they do is about helping the company dodge taxes or attack rivals.

The third type is called "box-tickers." A box-ticker's work is to put on a show of effort, making the company look like it's doing something. For example, making a pile of PowerPoints, or all kinds of annual goals, plans and reports to win funding, or some companies that produce promotional publications that in fact no one reads.

The fourth is "taskmasters," the people whose job is to create bullshit tasks for their subordinates. For example, one company's management admitted that to make their staff look busy, they created all sorts of metrics and forms. Without all that paperwork, everyone's job could be completed smoothly.

The last one is "duct-tapers." These people's job is to clean up after the company, dealing with the flaws that the company knows are there but refuses to fix or solve. For example, many customer service staff have no real authority to resolve product problems. They can only reply in an official way and serve as the customer's punching bag.

Looking at these five categories of bullshit jobs, I wonder if you can find your own reflection in one of them. But beyond these jobs, the author also finds that there is one industry that is a heavy hitter of bullshit jobs: finance. From the 1950s to the 1980s, productivity and wages in Western countries grew together, meaning that the higher the productivity, the higher the average wage. But after 1980, productivity kept rising year after year, yet average wages stopped rising. The author argues that this is because after 1980, capitalism shifted toward financial capitalism, and a huge number of finance jobs began to appear, and finance is the coolest workplace of all.

Banks control enormous amounts of money through people's deposits, then distribute that money to subordinates, which allows them to control power. In order to control more and more subordinates, a manager gets more power, and that creates many unnecessary tasks. Those tasks have long since been shifted to money-laundering havens. But to keep all the approvals from looking too fake, banks have to hire another person to fabricate data, so it looks like the bank really caught illegal funds. A bank's risk manager once found that more than 80% of the bank's jobs could be automated, but the managers haven't done it, because without these employees, the managers would have no way to exercise their power.

That said, the author also finds that most occupations regarded as bullshit jobs didn't exist in the past. So what is the reason behind this surge in junk jobs in recent years? The author points out that a big reason for bullshit jobs is a change in mindset. In the past, wages were measured by "results of labor": how much you did, like how much land you dug or how many clay pots you made. But after the Industrial Revolution, the standard changed. Wages became "time," the working-hours system. In earlier times, that would have been unimaginable. When the boss buys your time, you naturally expect to keep working. Hardworking people not only can't leave early, they get even more work. And often there isn't that much to do, so many people have to pretend they're working, or add a pile of tasks that look like work but produce no real value, which makes everyone's efficiency very low. According to one statistic, American office workers spend less than 40% of their time on actual work, and the rest goes to meetings, answering emails or other administrative chores. Many people also admit they do other things during work hours, becoming "wage thieves."

The author also points out that even though many people have gotten used to spending all day in meetings or fooling around at work, both bullshit jobs and wage theft affect people's bodies and minds. In 1901, the German psychologist Karl Groos found that when babies first discover that their actions have a predictable effect on the world, they seem extremely happy, whatever that effect is.

This psychological phenomenon is called "effectance," and it is part of human psychological needs. Put simply, humans need to feel that they are doing something meaningful. If you spend every day doing meaningless things, you will feel pain. As the author points out, many people doing bullshit jobs feel psychological pain and stress, because they have no chance to experience the meaning and sense of accomplishment in their work.

So why don't people quit these bullshit jobs and do something more meaningful? First, many people need the job to support their families, and even if the work means nothing, they can't lose their income. Second, social and cultural pressure also makes it hard for people to escape bullshit jobs. Many people feel shame and stress when they lose their jobs, because society often ties success to career and income. People are afraid of being seen as unsuccessful, so they would rather endure painful work than risk losing their jobs.

In addition, companies' structures and management styles also contribute to bullshit jobs to some degree. Many companies use hierarchical management that emphasizes control and supervision, which leads to a huge amount of administrative and management work. To keep this structure running, companies create many positions with no real purpose just to fill these levels. Employees are forced to take part in these meaningless tasks, because that's what the company needs to run.

So how should we deal with bullshit jobs? First, you can try to find meaningful parts of your work and do your best to raise your sense of effectance. Even if most of your job is meaningless, you can still try to do something meaningful within the limited time, or look for projects that give you a sense of accomplishment.

Second, you can consider changing your career path and look for work that is more meaningful. If you feel your current job is making you miserable, you can try to upgrade your skills and look for other career opportunities. Of course, this takes courage and a spirit of adventure, but sometimes change is necessary.

Finally, at the level of society and culture, we need to rethink how we define work. Work shouldn't be only about making money. It should also bring meaning and a sense of accomplishment. Society and companies should value employees' psychological needs, reduce unnecessary hierarchy and management, and encourage more meaningful work.

In short, bullshit jobs are widespread, but we are not completely powerless to change them. Through individual effort and social reform, we can gradually reduce the number of bullshit jobs, so that more people can find meaning and a sense of accomplishment at work.

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