Bullshit jobs are bullshit.
to think their jobs are useless or unhelpful to others.
Find this an interesting way they describe it. Iirc, Graeber also included arms-race positions as useless. Might be thinking of another writer though. Despite being in the category least likely to feel their job is BS, I feel a lot of my job is because a lot of it is sat/act prep stuff that only serves to help the rich get into better colleges (and therefore I consider that aspect a BS job at best). But it’s not useless at the individual level - people regularly express their gratitude. I’m curious if that is related to why people like corporate lawyers didn’t report feeling like their jobs were BS. In the short-term, they do provide a benefit to the company, only because of the legal arms race that exists.
Alternatively, I wonder if they’re including people like defense lawyers, environmental lawyers, housing lawyers, etc in the same group as corporate lawyers. Some lawyers do great work for people as a whole. Probably easily answered by reading the study, but shower is over.
Despite being in the category least likely to feel their job is BS, I feel a lot of my job is because a lot of it is sat/act prep stuff that only serves to help the rich get into better colleges (and therefore I consider that aspect a BS job at best).
This is kind of what I was thinking when reading the article (I am in the bottom two categories as well). With education and many other useful jobs it would kind of depend where you are in those industries.
Once I started pursuing academia I was disappointed to find out just how much of it is bullshit. I was never expecting a perfect job, especially working in higher ed, but I guess I thought that researching and teaching the subject I love more than anything would cancel that out. Not quite. The amount of bureaucracy has to be greater than any private sector job. The constant focus on money, bringing in more of it, and cheating students out of it just makes me constantly angry and leaves me feeling like an asshole for wanting any part of it. Most of the safeguards for conducting research seem completely necessary, but fuck if the administration doesn’t make a shitshow out of it.
So for me it’s more multifaceted. Learning, teaching and research are some of the most socially meaningful things I can think of doing. But the reality of what that looks like is a clusterfuck.
This is pretty sad tbh. Maybe the introduction of more AI into the work environment can move some of the meaningless jobs into an automated work force. And keep the interesting bits to the people.
it’s not just about repetitiveness, but does the worker feel that their job makes a difference and should exist as in they are just not being there for the wage. There are different types of alienation.
On the contrary, the jobs aren’t tedious, they’re pointless, jobs that could be eliminated now, but arent. So the bullshit stays, and AI being trained to do art and poetry.
to think their jobs are useless or unhelpful to others. M h
Find this an interesting way they describe it. Iirc, Graeber also included arms-race positions as useless. Might be thinking of another writer though. Despite being in the category least likely to feel their job is BS, I feel a lot of my job is because a lot of it is sat/act prep stuff that only serves to help the rich get into better colleges (and therefore I consider that aspect a BS job at best). But it’s not useless at the individual level - people regularly express their gratitude. I’m curious if that is related to why people like corporate lawyers didn’t report feeling like their jobs were BS. In the short-term, they do provide a benefit to the company, only because of the legal arms race that exists.
Alternatively, I wonder if they’re including people like defense lawyers, environmental lawyers, housing lawyers, etc in the same group as corporate lawyers. Some lawyers do great work for people as a whole. Probably easily answered by reading the study, but shower is over and I have bs work to do
