Sean Illingīullshit jobs are jobs which even the person doing the job can’t really justify the existence of, but they have to pretend that there’s some reason for it to exist. I wanted to know how we got to this place, if there are any real alternatives, and what, if anything, people can do about it.Ī lightly edited transcript of our conversation follows.
I reached out to Graeber to talk about the book and the broader phenomenon of “bullshit jobs.” Much of it is persuasive, some of it overly simplistic, but nearly all of it is interesting. This, at least, is the story he tells in his book. But instead of freeing ourselves from the suffocating 40-hour workweek, we’ve invented a whole universe of futile occupations that are professionally unsatisfying and spiritually empty. Technology has advanced to the point where most of the difficult, labor-intensive jobs can be performed by machines.
It didn’t have to be this way, Graeber says. He argues that there are millions of people across the world - clerical workers, administrators, consultants, telemarketers, corporate lawyers, service personnel, and many others - who are toiling away in meaningless, unnecessary jobs, and they know it. If so, you have what anthropologist David Graeber calls a “bullshit job.” A professor at the London School of Economics and a leader of the early Occupy Wall Street movement, Graeber has written a new book called Bullshit Jobs: A Theory. Do you have a job that you secretly believe is pointless?
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