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So a chap called David Graeber wrote a book on “bullshit” or useless jobs. He identifies five categories of bullshit jobs. Going to do a short thread on my thorts on these... https://twitter.com/johnb78/status/1326836121083420672
Here’s the list of #bullshitjobs off of Wikipedia
Probably the most egregious inclusion is “duct tapers”.
How is “temporarily fixing” a problem that “could” be “fixed permanently” a “bullshit” or “useless” job?
Yeah. It would be cool if any given system or process were better. This is always true and will remain true until we have a technology so advanced it’s indistinguishable from magic.
Improving business processes is, in itself, something worth investing time and energy in. But it costs and is usually a distraction from everyone’s day jobs.
So that’s 3. Moving on to 2: the “goons”. I think DG is on stronger ground with this one. Being of a liberal universalist persuasion myself, I think zero-sum games should be resolved as efficiently as possible.
Number 4: box tickers. From the book:
“Box tickers” here seems like the “duct tapers” once again. It’s either a symptom of poor management or underinvestment.
Again. Stuff like this undoubtedly happens. But what’s the alternative? Mob rule? Arbitrary dismissal? (This is when I remember that DG was an anarchist...)
Number 1, “flunkies”, is a kind of blegh. Maybe it’s bad that people hire other people to do stuff other people (Graeber) see as pointless. Idk.
Number 5 is the one I have most personal interest in, for obvious reasons. I think it’s a bit of a calumny against middle managers tbh.
Some doubtless create pointless work for their subordinates out of sadism, but in my (privileged, fortunate) experience the cause is incompetence rather than malice.
That’s my general take on the book. It would be better if it’d been written by a management consultant rather than an anarchist anthropologist.
