5 Types of Bullsh*t Jobs with David Graeber
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- Опубліковано 8 тра 2017
- David Graeber talks bullshit jobs and the concept of work under capitalism with Real Media and the Real News Network.
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I was a carpenter for 41 years. I enjoyed the solitude of my daily tasks. My interactions with my supervisors were frequently less than ten minutes a day. At the end of my day and my tasks were completed I felt the pride of accomplishment and the knowledge I had accomplished something tangible. Many of my friends worked in corporate offices and were incapable of articulating what they did for a living. I know also some were envious of my skills. At the end of my day there was a tangible outcome. And I would be taking a new task the following day. My office friends however had only strings of emails and a pile of reports at the end of the day. Thank you David for articulating why I could never take an office job, and you verified the gut feeling I have had all these years about bullshit jobs.
Tons of jobs, have people start out doing menial labor. Not everyone is so lucky to grow up under a parent's eye being taught a trade. And then just step away from the family home with the knowledge to do a job and pay rent. We start in lucky, clunky, bs jobs and build from there. Because lots of folks get the basics in classes in high school but are always told, that's not the real world. So bitch you do about unskilled starts. It is a start.
"They cultivate a resentment against people with real work" RIP David
Is he dead?
I’ve known all this all along, yet I needed this guy to ensure that I’m not crazy. That’s how fucked up we are as a society. You work your ass off just to get through the day, so that you barely recognize the difference between right and wrong. And people wonder why there’s so much narcissism.
Just had a huge argument with my parents tonight about this. Felt like they were insane and I wasn't able to convince them that many jobs are total horse shit. Literally fucking crazy
Yep, we are living in a mad world, created by humans long gone before us. We are living based on an economy that is bullshit itself. Market capitalism is unsustainable. We are seeing how unsustainable it is now in so many ways with rampant poverty, hunger, homelessness, disease and environmental disasters. This is a SYSTEM problem. Not a tweak that can be done here or there and make it all better.
Bullshit jobs are just a sad crutch incentivized by capitalism to try and keep it going.
We should realize this, and build a better system that makes the current one obsolete. A resource based economy, if you will. Where bullshit jobs are eliminated. Labor-for-income is no longer the slave attachment we have to obtaining our basic needs. We have this for a potential future, but we are going to need a revolution to get there.
@@warteyeguy Its worse when you know people who you literally know sit at their asses all day and do nothing and get payed for it and you have to nod with your head when they say "Im working my ass off everyday". Because if you call them on their BS- they get very sensitive...
Well actually I dont speak with that person anymore.
I once went to a bar with friends that was absolutely filthy. The floor was sticky and the bar was sticky. But they employed a market research firm to send an interviewer to all the customers there to ask what they wanted. We all replied that the place was filthy and that the money they spent on market research they could have spent on extra bar staff to keep the place clean. It was obvious to the management the place was filthy.
They need to hire a cleaning company or a contractor, it's much more cost effective and easier then fitting it with bar staff especially if it's a big venue.
@@jeygee3736 And it was so obvious to see so they money could have been spent on that instead of a market research company. That's what you do when you've spotted all the problems, dealt with them and still can't make sales. I never went in that bar again.
A contractor can deep clean an establishment but chefs, kitchen porters, wait staff and bar staff need to wipe as they go.
RIP David. A unique mind was lost when you passed away.
Yes, sad, tho he looked quite sick from his face, what did he die of?
He's been reincarnated as an ant, performing endless repetitive tasks.
@@nightuniverse8314 ants are good at that 🤣
You should add, now you’re dead: just to make sure everyone gets it…lol
I work in car production and I can tell you that all of of us who make the actual products despise all of those office leaches. They spend all their days on gossip, inventing stupid regulations, meetings about solving problems their ideas caused and neglecting what miniscule contributions we actualy need from them like ordering the needed amount of parts, materials and supplies. And after all of that they gave the gall to call a meeting every 3 months, show us bullshit powerpoint presentation and tell us that WE need to work harder so THEY can slack in good conscience
"Make a cup once, wash it a thousand times." Awesome! Products vs. Service. Something new to digest!
I love you man, I do security patrol, I drive around the entire damn city to give parking permits for people who wouldn't have needed them if it weren't for pointless rules developed by the home owners association, 90 percent of the time the job is pointless, the rest of the time it's scary.
Deep down, most people have just accepted, that "working" really just means renting out your soul/ selling your time, hence you get compensated for it. The more soulcrushingly pointless the work, or even the more damage it does to the greater society, the greater the compensation. Why would you be selling your soul anyways, if not for a good price?Thus also the resentment for people who actually do something meaningful on their job, it just highlights to people the fact, that they are selling their soul.
I'm gonna miss him so bad. When I've read that he was dead I've cryed so much, I didn't want to believe it
More from this person please.
Michael Dziengel David Greaber the first 5000 years of debt
That was actually a very good book. sounds like the reading version of watching the paint dry, but it's actually very engaging. It was called "Debt: The First 5000 Years", though.
Lorenz Hansen
Yup that isa always happening in every big corporation, people are not perfect and decisions have to be made even if they are wrong. Employees like you who have some conscience find that demotivating and maybe the whole cause of that situation was that the man or contractor who created your faulty system was not motivated to do it right. Corporate managers are not spending their own money and sometimes cannot be fired because who knows if the next guy will be better?
My answer to this game i have a corporate job which i don't give a f*ck about, i only need it because i have to pay the bills. It is almost impossible to get fired from my position, and i do my side business in and after my working hours. Once i will have steady income out of that i say goodbye to the corporate world for ever.
Read Utopia of Rules also. It really helps to show how organizations get so calcified, even with good intentions. And why we don't have flying cars.
finally a professor who can tell the truth
As a former customer service rep, I can totally say that I had a bullshit job. You basically have to tell the customer everything an AUTOMATED system does, so you basically have no power of choice or solution for a problem that is caused by the amount of customers of a coporation and a poor organizational structure. Therefore, your job is to give the illusion that somebody actually cares about the customer, but the reality is that you are giving scripted responses and making mindless clics.
"They cultivate a resentment against people with real work" This is the goddamn truth. I remember the soul-crushing feeling of wating a better job, knowing that you went to university for 5 years may of your college friends were teachers or were working at a museum. Freaking sad.
May I ask what are you doing today? What do you do for living?
I'm still customer service rep and I'm looking to change my shit job..
@@bitter_truth8646 me too broo literally
Screw all of this bullshit. Why tf do I need to go to uni to work at a fucking museum
Is being a teacher or working at a museum bad?
This type of analisys is long overdue. These realities need to become mainstream in both politics and business. Although I'm not too optimistic about politicians. These days there is a serious brain deficit among those folks and I doubt the concepts would be easily understood. But it is wonderful to see an academic articulate what most of us live with in the workplace day in and day out.
The problem is deeper than that. Politicians and corporate CEOs are just playing the flawed game of capitalism and we are seeing the sad result. Bullshit jobs and an environmental crisis.
The system is the sickness. Capitalism is the cancerous system that needs to be cut out or it will destroy our lives and future generations.
The alternative is to build a better system that makes the current one obsolete, such as a Natural Law Resource Based Economy. No politics, corporations, poverty or wage-slavery. Science-guided, localized, decentralized, networked sustainable design. Life, simplified but not less quality. More quality and higher health and happiness potentials than we have seen in our recent history.
I work in an Amazon warehouse and we have a job where all you do is make boxes for 10 hours a day. This basically involves folding a piece of cardboard several times until you have a box.
Well you work for a "technology company", you should be proud for the high tech pieces of carboard you fold.
If people actually went to shops to buy things instead of turning to Amazon all the time you wouldn't have to make all these boxes. There would be fewer but larger boxes for the bulk consignments from the warehouse to the shop as it used to be. When I do shop online I look for the supplier not Amazon and go to their website.
And?
Not a Bullshit Jon, but it does sound pretty shitty
A robot will replace you in the coming years.
Graeber hits on some of the key questions for humanity of the past three hundred years in 6 minutes 37 seconds. That's good work. That's amazing work.
its so true, I once asked my manager what is he usually doing, he told me its about 50% reading some emails and 50% sitting on some meetings with other managers, but he also said that like 90% of email and meetings he does are not even for his department. He is paid twice more than people under him and gets a fat bonus each year, and look Iam not angry at the guy you should certainly "milk" the life if it gives you the opportunity, but what absolutely pisses me off is that if I accidentally damage a product once a year I`ll gonna get disciplinary meeting and get fucked 10 times over because its precious company $, but then there is an army of managers who does nothing and gets a ton of $ paid to them and nobody even lifts an eye.
Modern aristocraty.
I had a bullshit job once. It was with a bullshit company. I won't give the name of the company; I'll only say that its initials were the same as a very large North American country. Specifically it was a job doing software design. I was continually given assignments to design software while management tried hard to keep me from doing the job I was given. I defeated them at every turn but in the end they won because the entire project was cancelled, thus taking all the sense of accomplishment out of everything I did. Every time I came up with a solution to a problem they thought was unsolvable they responded with "Oh, we can't do that!" I think that was the company motto.
Would you be willing to talk more about this?
when i was 14 i got a job at the place my dad works being a nighttime receptionist
noone ever called and i had about 1/2 hour of work every night
at first i thought this was great being payed to do nothing
after about 2 weeks i get frustrated and i angerly go to my father thinking they arnt giving me work due to his seniority
he explained to me that the job didnt used to exist but there was a short list of calls that needed to be made each night after hours and the dayshift person wouldn't stay late and do it
so they made a whole part
time job for one 20-30 minute task and would get mad if i wasnt at the desk or on my phone in the empty building
i quit soon after
Do you know what grammar is?
@Will Roberts that is the natural reaction of someone who finds no fulfilling motive in their work. Apparently you think it's the duty of workers to be proactive, creative powerhouses so they can get the boss's recognition and climb the ladder of your company. But who says the employee wants to impress you? Maybe they're just there to pay their rent and their actual life passion is persued after working hours and every minute spent doing your boring busy work is destroying their will to live. You're expecting them to be deferential towards you because you were kind enough to give them a job they would become destitute without. Such altruism.
@Will Roberts So you didn't try and now your a manager what are we supposed to glean from that will? That your not trying is somehow superior to theirs? Get a grip.
@@hugolindum7728 He got a JOB at the age of FOURTEEN.
He's probably from some extremely poor and Undeveloped Country.
The fact that we could have a UBI and a 4 day work week and we just absolutely refuse to get out of our own way in order to do so is insane.
Most BS Jobs are in the Private sector, not the Goverment.
@@cakeisyummy5755 where did I argue this point?
UBI should be a vital pillar of a Just Transition.
and where does the money for UBI come from?
@@cakeisyummy5755 Most government jobs are bullshit. Are you kidding?
The goal at this stage of our evolution should be to get rid of jobs. Let automation do as much as possible. Get rid of the financial industry, the insurance industry, accounting, advertising, and on and on. These are all jobs that produce NOTHING! How stupid of us.
Essentially its just a clever way of printing money and/or stealing other people's money.
dvmovie It's interesting how you listed jobs that are in the minority(and are hard to automate), as opposed to the jobs in the majority(easy to automate) that will be killed by automation.
Automation has dramatically jacked up the earnings of those with leverage, drove those who didn't down, but increased everyone's buying power.
As you see automation rise, you'll see unemployment rise. And it's not the mortuary, or the accountant, or the head of advertising, who won't be able to find a job.
Don’t need to automate most financial services, including insurance, should just eliminate them as they provide no value or drain value from productive sectors and their employees; we should be able to work 20 hrs / wk and make 70k per year min no problem would be so easy we have a crisis of imposed UNDERPRODUCTION the supply curve for basically every product/service is manipulated to gauge prices
You don't really know what you're asking for.
Yea, and if someone starts producing actually something meaningful, he/she just struggle and cant make a living out of it..
271 managers disliked this video
Hahaha
*308
I'd add a 6th category, one most lawyers perform: aside from being Goons, we are also Wealth Praetorians. 95% of our job is protecting wealth and extracting it from others.
That sounds more like a Theif than anything.
Exactly
I am a low level manager at a small company, comanaging three employees with another guy (we swap them around depending on project demands). One of the issues the other manager and I often have is that when we have something that we need to get done, we could hand it off to one of the three guys, and have to fix it later, or we can just do it ourselves and it will be right the first time. Often enough, the amount of time we would spend explaining it first then fixing it later is close to or even less than the time we would take doing it right the first time, yet our bosses want us to use the workers anyway. Honestly if we had one more guy at our level, we could probably get rid of the other three.
Most of the work done under capitalism could be abolished and the rest radically reorganized under a sane system in which fulfillment of human need and desires is the moving force and not the extraction of surplus value and the veneration of capital owners and their flunkies.
The exact same comment can be made about socialism! In fact look at the Soviet communist system that collapsed at the end of the last century. Ever increasing Bureaucracy's like our civil service, The EU, and the UN. All act the same as uncontrolled capitalism. Swallow ever increasing amounts of power and resources. with ever decreasing competence and ever increasing corruption.
@@richardbonner6931
Actually "the exact same comment" CAN'T be made about the stalinist system.
Extraction of surplus value and veneration of capital owners were not the moving force under stalinism. Sorry, that's just plain wrong.
@@adriandeenedy6363 what the fuck are you saying?
@ Extraction of surplus value and veneration of capital owners has nothing to do with these bullshit jobs though.
Under Stalin the Sowjet Union underwent a rapid industialization and copied the factories, goods and processes from western europe and the US at an incredible speed. After that, there was no micro innovation. How could there be?
All those bullshit jobs in the video rely on human "failure", and a lack of pressure to optimize. Those bullshit jobs like in the video are there, because even with an extraction of surplus value there is enough for those bullshit jobs. They vanish if there is enough competition from firms without them, the pressure is high enough and or black swan events whack them on the head. This still takes time. The Banking sektor as an example is shrinking with every year and desk pushers are loosing to fintechs and banking service providers. In Africa and to an extend in Asia there are not many traditional banks and people often just use a virtual account and their phone. The german bank after 2008 is a shadow of its former self.
In socialist systems, you can have a rapid build up. But there is no internal competition because the economy is centralized. The Sowjet Union copied the personal computer, in its end years, but it was not the same scale. Nearly into the end stamp cards where the norm. Similar things in agriculture. Machines were not implemented as harvesting tools because there was no competition, and milking cows was done by hand. Changing such things would require to restructure the whole economy and search for jobs for the workers. Which the central comitees could not bother with and would face serious backlash. Like seen with Gorbatschow (who was an id.iot, and traitor, but thats beside the point). Besides the backlash, central planing was not able to adress all the necessary changes, because those had to be made continously. And, in this scenario are stil just copying the west, not selft innovation.
You can see more bullshit jobs and a lack in innovation in unionized industries and highly regulated production. Which both are essentially communism on a smaller scale. The mining industy in the UK used pickaxes into the 1960s! to employ all the miners until the very end, the social democrats in germany where against the reform and modernization of insurance companies because thousands of people would loose their jobs...
In capitalism Its often not capitalism that keeps bullshit jobs, its government regulations and unions, and to an extend middle management. That is the reason nearly all companies use a crise to overhaul their employe numbers and often fire 5-15 % of people.
@@iwankazlow2268 Well those insurance company and other bullshit jobs often still pay much better than heavy agriculture, amazon warehouse jobs + give status either with pay or job title itself. So ofc people flock to these jobs. Socialism (democratic way) is actually very hard, just as fair capitalism is very hard in democratic system, trying to prevent rich people influencing lawmaking.
But biggest problem is government itself, as it has no competition, no survival threat, only big scale war and that is low probability. And that gov should serve capitalism best way to keep dynamics going, if companies cannot. As capitalism is like flock of cattle who swings in different extremes, so gov should drive it to better path to avoid brutal crisis.
Don't get me wrong - as a quality auditor I've met a lot of box tickers (arguably I'm now a taskmaster for box tickers), but collecting and analyzing data is not the best example of a box ticking occupation.
To me, box tickers are people that management employs because they're required to be there, but management never actually listens to them and just does what management wanted to do.
Sadly, some of the best technical and engineering people I have met are little more than box tickets because even though they could be doing something valuable, their advice falls on deaf ears.
Just got a new job! Im hoping that I really can make a difference and creating a system that flows better, that makes people more happy and that ultimately creates more business for us. But back in my mind I fear becoming a box ticker. Though part of my work is active production too. So I'll never quite be that fully. Still I think that my new place seems to be that type of place where sound advice is heeded and less developed ideas are worked on if they have potential.
To a large degree you're describing flunkies. I think with box tickers his emphasis isn't merely work that's required but ignored, but also work that values process and analysis above the actual business purpose. For instance focusing on metrics above the actual goal, like teachers focused on students passing standardized tests rather than logical and creative thought and love of learning.
Most of HR is pointless, they get paid a lot of money to do nothing.
Donald Grab them by the pussy Trump
Most hr workers are female.
Coincidence? I Think Not.
They make sure everyone feels safe and that work is a great big family where no one is disrespected and no one is naughty so rich people can continue to make obscene amounts of cash
Not to mention they push their unethical far left views on corporate culture. Stuff like identity politics, diversity quotas and so on. These people aren't just working in pointless jobs - they're outright dangerous to our society.
@@nathandurant2825 Not at all - as a white male, I feel marginalized, disrespected and unsafe from the far left racist identity politics coming from these people.
@@nathandurant2825 The goal is HR isn't actually to push politics, make people feel safe, or prevent harassment.
It's to protect the brand. Corporations don't care how anyone feels, but the customer.
I come with a sad reminder that even meaningful jobs can make you so miserable that the value is lost to you. I’m a special education teacher that is stressed to the point of panic attacks and works at least 55 hours a week. I don’t get much joy out of the actual teaching either because behaviors are so rampant I have to run to my classroom like a Boot Camp.
I am in a social job as well. Eventhough I like my job and am quite pleased with it, I am more than unhappy about work conditions of many of my colleagues (for example yourself). We are understaffed, underpayed and imho under-appreciated. I can not imagine how nations are planning on installing more social jobs (and making those more attractive than they are now) to cope with all the future cases that are going to come over the course of the following decade.
At a local school one very good-looking lady turned her job into a bullshit job involuntarily. All the boys started to make up problems or got into fights with peers and teachers in order to be able to talk to her about it. She hated it so much especially because at the time she was highly motivated and already had degrees from two different universities, but that knowledge was acquired in vain. 😂
i will miss him so much. What an amazing and consistently informative voice he was. RIP David Graeber
great perspective, i havent worked in 7 years and just about to get into the world of ambitions and economic despair, thanks for this itimely post
the double down It's a way of life. I don't have time or energy for anything else. It's great.
hey buddy how's it going? any update or did you make a transition?
@@thersten I wanna know, too.
What has happened, is we have moved past capitalism, to a form of financial feudalism.
Ming Mongo no just businesses doing whatever they damn well please with their money even if its unproductive.
facsism
plutocracy
No, this is still capitalism. There was no mythical era when poor people had it good. It was always shit.
Luther Blissett Capitalism always sucked for the poor, but we are in a very different kind of suck now. Capitalism is where those with capital own the means of production. Today, ownership is so scattered, and management is so prominent, that it has really become a new form of production. And it is structured far more like feudalism than earlier capitalism.
As a person with disabilities who’s had intermittent opportunities to work over the years, until I found out about this guy, I thought BS jobs were only exclusive to people with disabilities, and they were a form of disability discrimination in the work place. Now I know better. The last job I worked was definitely BS. And OMG, there was so much drama, passive aggressiveness and cattiness. That alone was enough to leave. BTW, my only responsibility was keeping the lobby clean an welcoming to visitors. The rest of the time I just pushed paper and sent emails. So boring! Wasn’t even worth the physical effort it took me to get ready each day and continue to keep going there.
He completely forgot influencers and twitch streamers
Thank you for saying this. The reason for being employed is to "look busy".
School's have a lot of box tickers. Always members of the management team. They have job titles like learning leader or curriculum coordinator. I work in an international school and our primary box ticker has us meet once a week to do 2 hours of literally anything other than work that will help with our classes.
It occurred to me that if you ask a 5 year old, "What do you want to become when you grow up?" none of them will name a bullshit job.
resourcedragon too bad so many people think both teachers and nurses have bs jobs (and pay them accordingly), even though not only do many 5 year olds say they want to be one, but they both happen to be very fundamentally essential jobs to society.
David Graeber, you have left enough written and spoken wisdom for me to be busy digesting it for a long time. Also, having learned to make similar observations, to keep on thinking in the best kind of anarchist way, talking in the most convincing and least polarising way too --- like you did with a permanent smile at the edge of your eyes, while serving up truth that would make us cry! :D ~ 🙂
Get Graeber and Mark Blyth together and have em talk for ten hours and I will literally pay for it.
wtf is Mark Blyth
Best perspective of the nature of non essential work I've ever come across
My boss is task master, in fact I would probably do my job faster without him :)
I had a manager like that. He just swanned around doing sweet FA and making problems for me.
many of mid-managers above me were like that. I still wonder what they did in those 8 hours a day
But does that mean we don't need bosses? I think there is a need but maybe there are too many of them or not properly trained.
I don't think bosses are in any way necessary
I worked some years caring/ nursing old people for a division of the protestant church. The admin also had two “quality managers“ being paid full time to conceive and write guidelines etc. on ethical treatment and self determination of patients. This stuff then was filed and put into bookshelves and nobody ever looked for / read it
These quality managers though never left their office to check the quality of the work being done by the carers at the patients‘ private homes, where - I can assure you - it would have been needed most.
I once said to these folks that quality management without quality control is nothing but a farce. -But they, as well as the rest of the whole administration, collectively ignored it.
99% of the negative commenters on this video are just pisses off because they've been confronted with the fact that they have a bullshit job!
This subject's fascinating- I have jumped in and out of BS jobs as I have gone from technical facilities positions to the management of those who I worked with.
In three distinctly different settings (one private and two public sector, labs,/hospitals, casinos, and universities) the same things happened when I went to middle management. I became a box-ticker, constantly working on energy saving solutions that were never implemented due to some taskmaster's flunkies or goons.
We had endless meetings, living documents, reports to the top brass, etc. and for the most part no real long-term plan was implemented. I am glad to be back in the world of technicians now.
Thanks for this post. Would you be willing to talk more about this? Doing a bit of research into jobs like you're describing and would like to chat more.
I had a box ticking job for many years and I hated it. I worked for an insurance company and made sure people got to their doctors appointments (I didn’t drive them or anything useful like that) and writing reports. Before that I was a case manager and spend my days filling in care plans, risk assessments and more forms and paperwork rather than helping people
I love Graeber’s ability to see and articulate the sort of cement between the stones of our civilization, which we all seem to know about but have such difficulty seeing clearly and talking about. Graeber has made it possible to talk about it, and that makes it possible to discuss how to dismantle the whole edifice.
I wish I could ask him about how he would see the societal dissonance around aristocracy and class that was going on in the 19th century, contributing to this phenomenon of bullshit jobs. Also, the way that so-called higher education came to replace notions of blood-line aristocracy in many ways (in the US at least) and how that has contributed to the elevation of bullshit jobs over other kinds of work. It’s probably in his book, which is the next of his on my list to order and read.
I am linking my new first year students to watch this video but do so with great sadness at the sudden loss of this brilliant academic & in a time when we dearly need such intellect - Rest In Power.
He forgot dead weight. people who are working the same job for far too long, know it inside out, hate it and don't do it but they can't be fired for one reason or another.
or DON'T know it inside and out and still can't be fired for "politically correct" reasons
all the negative comments seem to have been cribbed from the same place.
Awesome video. I would add a 6th category of B.S. jobs. These are the brand-managers. People who actively manage and attempt to influence other people's (customer's) perceptions of the organization they work for.
I've seen the whole white-collar blue-collar resentment thing. This is very true. Many office workers view laborers basically as domesticated animals. Putting others down makes them feel better about themselves apparently. The ideas of "dignity of work" and "meaningful work" have been almost completely extinguished by our mainstream corporate culture. Job title and status, not value, are all important. We are fucked.
Jess Stuart so, marketing?
It's a microeconomic vs macroeconomic thing. Companies can increase their profits and market share by hiring effective marketing and public relations people, but the only economic value these jobs generate is facilitating communication between goods/service producers and consumers. Once a consumer has become aware of a product/service, bombarding them with advertising in an attempt to convince them to buy a product they most likely do not need, and will not significantly increase their standard of living, is not an efficient use of resources.
If the people would only bought what they need the capitalism would never work. Apple would not even exist, but they are no1 at branding and marketing and they are one of the greatest firms ever built. Needs of the consumers constantly change, and marketing people are the ones who lead that change. One can have a view if that is good or bad but other systems without capitalism were less sustainable, that is a fact.
@@zsoltpapp3363 No facts here, just bullshit. Needs of consumers have not changed significally for probably 50 or more years.
@@SpirosPagiatakis 50 years ago no-one would have imagined that a computer, a telephone, a map and an arcade machine would fit in the size of your palm.
"managers are judged on how many manpower are working under them" - - david Graeber
To those below who commented about anthropology being a useless job, read Graeber's "Debt the first 5k yrs". As others have been alluding to for years, Graeber shows "economics" i.e., resource allocation is anthropology. The mainstream economists who are trotted out are priests. Heterodox economists end up doing anthropology.
Barry Allard Only if you believe in currency creation out of thin air.
But production. Real physical production. Accumulates human capital and gives people on-the-job skills which they can benefit from in their next job interview.
I am an economist and find your remark offensive. Not all of us think the same way the Federal Reserve does.
Omar Baassiri are currencies created out of thin air though?
Tanveer Hasan All currency is an allocation of faith to something tangible AND useful.
However, if the usefulness of such an allocation goes no farther than to justify its tangibility, it is asset solely bound by expectation.
And expectations always come from belief.
No they don't come out of thin air. If They Do which they shouldn't, it means someone is stealing from someone else, somewhere somehow.
+Jaeger203 You might like Paul Romer's writings on mathiness in economics.
It seems these days that comedy is mostly relegated to people whom tell the truth.
contrast principle who
Uintentional comedians, such as zizek, even Dave Graeber. I am somewhat cynical in my orientation to the world though. Sargon of Akkad has some funny videos out there. Nassim Taleb is another one, although you have to follow him on twitter, very eloquent speaker. Kinda miss some of fakesagan/christopher anderson videos. Drinking with bob was pretty good for a while, and how could I forget the rageaholic.
NDK0
Lol, that went right over his head, didn't it?
contrast principle Good list of social commentary channels with a sense of humour. I think the rageaholic/razorfist is great, the amount of obscure references and jokes he crams in to each minute must be close to some kind of record!
As a side, I think the reason plain truth-telling has become like comedy is because society has become so strange and almost self-parodying (mainly the mainstream media opinions, as they rapidly contort around subjects contradicting themselves, making absurd arguments and conclusions while reliably ignoring whole parties of elephants in the room). This is inherently funny to a "normal" observer, it just takes a truth-teller to point it out and show it for what it is. There's a strange dark comedy to see groups of (especially highly recognised and supposedly-intelligent) people thinking or behaving so absurdly and stupidly. The joke is reality/society and what it has become - held against the simple plain background of common sense the warpedness of it all is very visible.
I hope I understood you correctly and made any sense, I'm tired and need to sleep.
Stanhope
My top five bull...t jobs in ascending order of distaste: 5) cutlery sales, 4) nutritional supplement sales, 3) financial plans sales, 2) telemarketing sales and 1) debt loan collection.
There's no extra points for suffering. Self-sacrifice for work is just a form of virtue signalling.
I dont understand? Define self-sacrifice. We agree to "sacrifice" things when we do work? When I am working, i am giving things up.
Good talk thankyou and very interesting what you have highlighted, I never thought about it before, so thanks for saying it.
I still actually work with my hands and sometimes sweat a lot, I work as a conservation builder, I'm also an artist but with my job as a conservation builder I do stone repairs and remove old damaged plaster and mortar and replace with new lime mortar, that I slake and make up myself from scratch because I want to replicate the original mortar as best as I can so that the old building can 'breath' as it should do.
In the 1960's & 70's it was decided that using cement mortars would be a good idea and lots of expensive and useless work was done by builders drilling holes in old historic buildings because nobody knew any better and there was a growing myth about rising damp and so countless useless companies sprang up to do such jobs raking out the old lime mortars to replace
it with cement because it would keep the water out or at bay. As a consequence the water vapour bypassed the cement pointing and slowly destroyed the stone, rotting the wooden lintols and sills instead and also causing massive problems with the inside plasters and skirting etc.
The troubleis that many people have jumped onto the lime conservation bandwagon and a lot of expensive work is still done
by builders using ready mixed, bagged up, just add water mortars that have the word 'lime' in the name of the title.
When you look at the ingredients it still has cement or something that isn't permiable so we are almost back to square one.
I also worked in films and commercials, drawing cartoons on paper until it all went digital and then I left that world.
There are many useless jobs apart from: Flunkies, Goons, Duct Tapers, Box Tickers & Task Masters. There are : Lobbyists, nothing wrong with some lobbyists, they are very important, but when you have multiple lobbyists this then makes something far more important than it actually is and this can be very dangerous especially with chemical companies and GM stuff.
Too many managers, Aid agencies, web designers and a whole plethora of people connected with the internet, but it's what goes on in politics and government that especially worries me. But it's what also happens at the managerial end in our UK health service that really worries me, and because of this people like my wife who was studying to be a midwife, actually gave
up her job because of the fact that there is no time to get to know the patients, to talk to them, to calm their fears, because of short staffing, there is no time for human interaction. Also because of the fear of litigation everything has to be signed for in triplicate when things are signed off and human interaction is down to a minimum due to the high wage costs in administration.
There are a zillion other reasons too but good nurses, midwives and doctors are leaving the health service in droves because of the shite money and long hours forces them to do this. I was sick of seeing my wife coming home in tears because of all this bullshit and now that she has left we have a better home-life, she is more content and she does gardening work instead.
Life is about, having a family, about good friends and helping one another and job satisfaction and many just don't get this, we all need a job, career, a home, a hobby and we need to care for people, for animals, especially the factory farmed ones, and the environment because we are all so unsustainable, we only take and few of us give anything back, we are far too stressed out and tired to complain and anyway, complaining now takes a lot of time and the stress of doing that just isn't worth it.
I work in the insurance industry, probably making far less than I could with my abilities, but I know that I am helping others every day that I come in. Caregiving and maintenance, just like was said here. It's satisfying, it's enough to pay the bills, and it lets me go home and do the things I want to do with peace of mind.
Insurance is the greatest of all bullshit industries. All you fuckers do is take money off of people and give them back some of it. All you are is fucking parasites with lipstick. You burn your clients money lobbying governments to give you more power to suck more money out of the economy. It's all built on a foundation of lies, deception and bullshit and it's all going to come crashing down some day soon.
john osullivan Fortunately, I am not in health insurance. Outside of that, I really like the notion of shopping for who will look out best for my needs. If you get sucked into thinking that low premiums or name recognition are what matter, that is your loss... I'm proud to represent my brand on the job, though.
Two phenomenal books on work and working: Studs Terkel's classic 'Working,' and also Dave Macaray's 'Night Shift.'
He just described my ex place of employment from top to bottom !
Thank goodness we have his tapes !
the biggest BS job is a consultant by FAR.
Greeters is a bs job. All they do is smile, and say "hello how are you?" When you enter the store. They don't really care about how you feel. They don't do anything else.
We don't have Greeters in my Country.
One type of BS job is "professional meeting goers". My boss is basically one of these. Like I could probably email or directly discuss with another manager how to handle something between our teams. We both know more about the work. But instead my boss is going to have a meeting with this other manager to make the decision. I guess I'm too low on the totem pole to have the conversation. Yet my boss will make decisions on what my team does despite not knowing the details of the work. I realized though she needs to feel she is doing something
So I gave her another question to ask this other manager for me. It makes my boss feel she is helping me. If it keeps her happy and out of my hair......lol.
To some extent my husband is one of these. His company has him in so many meetings. The higher he goes in the company the less actual work he does. He wouldn't even have a full 40 hour week of non meeting work if the meetings were eliminated. To me its crazy. What value does that many meetings add.
where can I watch the full interview?
Watching this from work right now. BS job confirmed.
The volume of diversity officers/analysts in gov and private jobs is astounding.
They're box tickers to make the company look progressive whilst "employing" child slave labour overseas
4&5 especially, remind me of the late Mark Fisher's concept of Market Stalinism
After spending couple years of being an internal auditor at two major banks in the US, i realized my job is just a "duck tape" job - creating a problem that doesnt exist and trying to fix it to make my job seem legit.
Are you still in this job?
@@qcostello Not anymore. I completely switched my career path and now am very happy with my new role. My previous colleagues reached out to me and asked if I am interested in coming back to audit. I replied - I'd rather be unemployed than going back to audit. I hate this profession with passion.
@@melh7541 Would you be game for a short chat about what your previous job was like? Asking as I'm doing some research for a film project about just this subject.
@@qcostello Sure thing - glad to chat. I just googled your name and saw your background and linkedin. I sent over a linkedin invite so we chat connect via message there or phone call.
@@melh7541 Thanks for doing that. For some reason LinkedIn didn't register an invite and it seems to scrub my comment when I leave my email address. Would you mind going to my website and then contacting me by email or phone? Thanks and sorry for the convoluted process.
Rest in peace, David. Dead at 59.
Sounds like my workplace , where accountants can't value anything, No one quite knows what HR does, where one multi million dollar consultant after another has produced stagnating sales, and the top management is clueless about the business.
Reminds me of how investment managers end up losing their clients money in the long run whereas they're basically better off putting it in a standard investment fund
Awesome !
I really appreciate you
Every day I fill out paperwork, then I get an email or call from an engineer or csr "Hey I need that, can you send it to me?"..... "Umm, hello it's stored in a fucking shared folder get it yourself" (bang head on wall)
I saw an emoji "expert" being interviewed on bbc
Task Masters, classic example is where someone with a lot of clerical experience or who is liked as a clerk is promoted to middle or upper management. His/ her lack of leadership and managerial ability leads to tons of micromanagement of the worst kind because what he/she focuses on is the simple clerical stuff that forms a small part of the new role or tries to use clerical skills to solve a management or high level problem. Other consequence is that major parts of his/her tasks remains undone and he/ she will nit pick on others to deflect responsibility and failings.
I was working for NHS professionals as a TUPE consultant and reporting to a ' manager' who was a master at all the clerical stuff but sucks at TUPE and Employment Law, hence the need for a consultant to do her job.
NHS professionals tupe over clients staff as if they are NHS Professional's staff in order to manage payroll and other bank staff issues.
Nurses have to consistently upgrade their training and the NHS training program does not match clients training. Hence there must be synchronization of the two training regiems.
She was totally out of her depts in getting this done and I had to do it from scratch.
Lol
I educated myself to work in production I worked for NASA when we went to the Moon and the Atomic energy commission when we harnessed the atom. Then things changed and I spent the last 30 years of my life in the service economy competing with 200 other people for my job at a subsistence wage because that's what there was.
I have a "real" job, where I design systems to make life easier for everyone. Whenever I meet someone who knows their job is bullshit, instead of looking up to me (not in an arrogant way), you feel an insane amount of resentment. They double down to pretend what their doing is important and downplay what I do.
Things that "matter" today are things that nobody wants to pay for. And that is the sick joke. The only way to get people to do work that matters is through government action
I know you said “not in an arrogant way”, but come on. “I have a real job where I design systems that make life easier for everyone”, “Instead of looking up to me, you get resentment”, “things that matter are things that no one wants to pay for”. No wonder they resent you, you come off like a self-important ass. Making incredibly grand claims about your own accomplishments “making life easier for everyone” whilst completely shitting on someone with a “bullshit job” and then expecting them to “look up to you”. And that last comment is just asanine.
Anyone else watching this at work?
Adverts are the main creators of pointless jobs. Destroy adverts and the whole thing falls apart.
Insightful
There is a new move in Australia to hire nurses, whos only job is to find new ways to keep patients out of the hospitals. If you start admitting patients, it cuts into funding to hire more middle management.
Yeah - assessors are also similar. If we had UBI we wouldn't need people to determine if the disabled are faking it or not (they're not in the overwhelming majority, and tax fraud is a far greater issue, benefit fraud is so miniscule by contrast)
other than number 1. all the others sounds like management positions. mostly useless
As someone completing a Master's degree in healthcare admin, I agree completely...
useless assholes that other people have to pay for
zanzeh teh hero is that like MBA degree?
As someone who's seen every number episode of Star wars...
Useless assholes that need to eat, however. Don't forget that.
DAVID GRAEBER was a founding member of the Institute for Experimental Arts
He did a lecture with the title: How social and economic structure influences the Art World in the Financial Consequences - International MultiMedia Poetry Festival organized by the Institute for Experimental Arts supported by LSE Department of Anthropology.
Influential anthropologist David Graeber, known for his 2011 volume Debt: The First 5000 Years speaks about the correlation between the cultural sphere and society. The intellectuals and the artists create an imaginary way to criticize the economic system in any era. Art can overcome hegemonic frameworks and acknowledge other possible worlds, offer us the opportunity to understand better the marginalized social entities. Social exclusion is the process in which individuals or people are systematically blocked from (or denied full access to) various rights, opportunities and resources that are normally available to members of a different group, and which are fundamental to social integration and observance of human rights within that particular group (e.g., housing, employment, healthcare, civic engagement, democratic participation, and due process). As the economic crises go deeper in time more people face the effects of exclusion. Art and social sciences can give voice to the voiceless. Especially young social aware poets can give us a clear view of the real social effect of the financial consequences. - David Graeber
You can watch the Lecture here:
ua-cam.com/video/WCF-8OQj0RE/v-deo.html
I'd pay good money for a full length feature film on this... I could probably write an hour by myself!
This does not include another bullshit job, the mistake maker, a position that makes mistake for the purpose of fixing that mistake.
This will involve meetings, emails, resending all previous information to more people who never read it first time round to bring the situation back to where it started. You can create and extend a career with this. Thanks
It is a huge paradox that excessive competition creates excessive/abundant jobs. One explanation is that excessive jobs seem to be excessive only from outside (whole society) perspective.
But it is true that most people experience their jobs as more or less meaningless. Basic income, however, is not very good solution as it would produce more problems than it'd solve. It could lead to an extremely unjust society - not only within one country, but especially worldwide - between rich and poor countries. It is absurd to imagine world where in Switzerland people get hundreds of USD daily rent for nothing, while in other parts of world people work hard and long for a few dollars. So BI would have to be asserted worldwide. Now it would only strengthen existing social and economic unjust instead of fight against it. Moreover, there is no reason to think that Basic Income itself would make the pointless jobs disappear.
Better way is to gradually reduce working hours. At least people would spend less time in their pointless jobs, and it could also lead to better allocation of workforce, thus reducing pointless jobs as well.
What you are saying is that there are too many corporate jobs, mostly at huge corporations/organizations. And one can feel them pointless because the tasks/positions are very specialized and workers do not see the big picture. But hey, people are doing these jobs in the offices for 30k-100k so it is really a first world problem, isn't it? If you want to get a job with more meaning simply join a small firm or start something alone for yourself. Yes, most of corporate jobs are f*cking boring there are only a few really creative and innovative businesses...but most of these jobs are warm and cozy so people stay in their boring jobs because they think at least these jobs are secure.
Smart. Subscribed.
The funniest one are the one who are really busy but deliver nothing but they are absolutely sure that they are essential and necessary . In this category you have a lot of the middle-low management (ie supervisor , team leader ). Usually they are getting busy because they are put on all the short terms dead end projects on top of their snitching core activity . They think it is a kind of an unofficial promotion but it is basically all the crap their manager do not want to deal with knowing that anyway it is either going to go nowhere or has no added value or is just boring. When I was a student and doing some summer stages I always loved to manipulate those goons !
You're playing music? That's play. No pay for you! :(
"It will give you exposure" 😂
I can't even imagine that world. I work my butt off every day. I mean really. Does anyone know what a screw machine is? That's what I do. These machines have saved wars. Thousands of parts a day. For your cars. For your tanks. For your guns. Remember the "Buy American" bumper stickers everywhere? The people ignored them. Bigwigs found they could get the product at killer prices from overseas. Our business had dwindled away. No work. Those talents have long gone elsewhere, with very few of us left...until this Trump guy comes in! He puts the kibosh on foreign trade and the next thing you know? We are hiring. But there's hardly no talent left. Like a bitter sweet symphony. The work is there. Just many want no part of it:(
isn't it just a more specialized lathe?
I work for a big box store that changed there way of ordering to auto order thing,the issue numbers are off on products,you let your boss know,they correct the number ,then it go's to the next,person to be confirmed,then to another person,Corp..to be approved...mean while we are out of said product for weeks......and I get made the dope...I have no say, no power but to mark some thing down....I'am a worker,but when people get mad at you,and you really have no control over what a company dose.it hurts....I love helping people...thats the most important part of my job...its become a battle .I'am not a robot or smart phone..I'am Human
Frederick Mowry bruh I feel you. I work in a warehouse and we stock lots of food. We changed to a new coffee that we carry, and instead of getting rid of the old stuff, the ordering system has stayed active. So for like 2 months now, every week I tell my boss that the coffee is still coming in even though it’s more expensive, and the new product isn’t moving. And every week he says he has to get with the purchaser, who has to get approval from finance, who has to call corporate...holy shit can someone just do their FUCKING JOBS?!
Brilliant, especially the last part. Could we be that sick of a species...?
This guy is great!!
lol, it's clear to see the comment section is filled with those working these BS jobs!
me notgot a job, i cant b phucked with job
If i was a CEO, i'd like to have a Useless Employee who i could Bully, Yell at, and Assign Pointless Busywork.
It amazes me how people engaged in pointless jobs, which seem to be the sizable majority justify themselves. They believe they are important.
i am so glad that in age of 15 i deside i whant to work with my hands
You missed the category of cops as a Legal Mafia/ licensed bullies. Parasite is another good term.
Corporate executives sitting on their asses in an office high rise doing nothing and still get paid $30 million a year
I had a Purchasing Manager obsessed with KPIs.
Sounds cringey almost. Like my boss coming into work talking about an excel formula he thought of in the middle of the night. Like I try at work. And work my ass off but chill out with the obsession
He forgot the Nobel Lie
You don't need corporate lawyers? Good luck on your dispute resolution when you go bankrupt.
Dragomir Mihai He probably should have been far more specific on that one. People often don’t get the differences between legal specialties.
Passionate and funny like Zizek, but focused as well. Wish I'd gotten into David Graeber's work earlier.
you know its bad when my career job fit all 5.