Bullshit Jobs
Bullshit Jobs" is a book that I happened to see on the internet, and I thought it was very interesting, so I bought it to read. In fact, there is a Chinese version, the Chinese book is called "40% work is meaningless, why still rush to do? On the emergence of bullshit work and labor value of rethinking". We all work probably have found that often have to do some meaningless things, some people are meaningless things to make very busy, some people are idle panic, in fact, this phenomenon in all walks of life.
Author David Graeber, a professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science, posted an article about "bullshit jobs" on the internet in 2013, exploring how the world's bullshit jobs are making people desperate, and as a result of the article's popularity, more and more people from all over the world have shared similar experiences with him, and he decided to expand the article into this book.
In a nutshell, this book discusses the question of why the world has become so redundant in the age of technological advancement. What types of redundancies are there in the world? Why are there so many redundancies? Why are redundant people unhappy? This book is not just a satire on bullshit jobs, but is actually written by David Graeber, an American anthropologist and professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science, who has long been an advocate of anarchism, and has demonstrated a sharp stance against bureaucracy and capitalism. The whole book is very insightful, pointing to the systemic problems of modern society. At the beginning, I found it interesting to read, but at the end, it is actually very serious, and pessimistic people may not be interested in it, but it is worth reading in any case.
I read the English version, so some of the tips will be presented in the original language. If you are interested, please buy the book and read it!
What's a shit job?
There are many kinds of bullshit jobs, roughly speaking, those jobs that are meaningless. This refers to jobs with meaningless content or jobs that are inherently meaningless. Broadly speaking, as long as we feel that what we do or don't do has no real impact, it can be considered a bullshit job. Of course, there are many different aspects to a job, so some jobs may be partially bullshit, some may be mostly bullshit, and some may be completely bullshit.
Types of bullshit jobs
Bullshit jobs are categorized into five categories in the book:
- Flunkies. This type of job exists to make superiors feel important, but it may not serve any real purpose. For example, certain assistants whose job descriptions are very boring and unwanted can be considered in this category.
- Goons, the thugs. This type of work is done because their employers need to deceive people, but in fact the world would be better off without them. For example, they work in telemarketing or as a lobbyist.
- Duct tapers, those jobs that hire people who specialize in temporarily fixing problems that could actually be fixed permanently, like engineers who specialize in modifying badly designed programs.
- Box tickers, those jobs that exist to look like they are doing something even though they are not, and many jobs can fall into this category, such as a survey center director who looks like he is doing market research, or a job that specializes in checking quality even though he may not be checking it.
- Taskmasters, people who specialize in generating unnecessary work for others to do, may be the supervisors of those above.
Isn't this a dream job? Bullshit jobs make you unhappy.
Often, the so-called bullshit jobs are those that are considered by the others to be a good job. People may think, "Wouldn't it be nice to have this kind of job and receive money as a paycheck thief? It is simply a dream job. But the truth is that many people who work in bullshit jobs are not happy.
Of course, some people still have to spend their time on unnecessary work after receiving a paycheck, and if they really have to spend their time and hate the content and environment of their work, they will easily become unhappy. But why would those who are not happy be unhappy? There are many such examples in private enterprises and public organizations. In order to maintain their image, they have to pretend that what they do is very important or pretend to work very hard to do it, and even feel uneasy about their conscience because they think what they do is wrong, which makes people have split personalities. Regardless of the content of the work, have you ever heard of cases in which you have to stay later than your boss, work overtime while pretending to be busy, and even proudly think that this is the only way to work hard?
It's not surprising that there are some jobs in the world that are really enjoyable, and even if you are always working late and no one cares about it, there are still cases where you are very unhappy with your job. If you think about it, the main reason for unhappiness may be that you feel that your work and life have no goal and no meaning, and you cannot get a sense of achievement, but you cannot find another job or your family and friends do not think it is necessary to give up your job, so in the end, you start to hate yourself, but you have to do it for the sake of your financial needs. However, for the lucky ones, if they have the flexibility of time, they may still be able to look on the bright side. Most people who can stay in this state for a long time can find meaning elsewhere, such as cultivating other hobbies, or creating something to satisfy their psychological needs.
Why are bullshit jobs allowed to exist?
Capitalism started to become mainstream in the industrial era. In fact, it was only in the industrial era that people started to have the concept of time and measuring productivity in terms of time because of the needs of the factory environment. This concept is actually outdated nowadays, but people always intuitively think that they will be more productive if they invest more time. From this point of view, it's not surprising that some people pretend to be busy, because they are used to investing time in exchange for money. But are bosses so stupid that they want to keep a bunch of redundant employees?
This is actually related to wider political and social issues. We know that the Government often needs to lower the unemployment rate, but there is seldom any discussion on whether there are really so many jobs available. In theory, technological advancement will lead to an increase in productivity, so many jobs will indeed require less and less manpower. On the premise that the population of the earth is constantly increasing, how much demand for manpower is there?
We should also consider that most of the demand for labor may be for jobs that are considered low class by society, but most people, if they had a choice, would want to be white-collar workers with low pay and low workloads. As the government seeks to lower the unemployment rate, even private companies must release more jobs, and the actual workload decreases with the number of people, so the so-called "redundancy" increases. In order to secure more jobs and promotions, even more jobs have to be "invented". Layoffs are not a necessity in the financial industry, which continues to drive up the stock price of companies as a whole.
In addition, we are now in a knowledge-based economy, and it is no longer easy to apply the "time = measurable productivity" formula that has been used in the industrial era. The real value of knowledge production is not easy to measure, and the social value of doing something is equally difficult to measure. Many jobs that are actually necessary are paid less than those that are not. For example, is a delivery person who earns $20 per order only worth $20 to someone who can't get out of the house? Or, for example, if there is one less mid-level executive earning hundreds of thousands of dollars a month, who is more important than the cleaning staff responsible for an entire building?
後記 – 有沒有解方？
Author David Graeber does not offer a complete answer to the question of how to reduce bullshit jobs. The author believes that the root of the problem is capitalism, so he thinks that perhaps one possible solution is to provide a basic national income. But that doesn't seem to solve all the problems, because even if people had a basic income and didn't have to deal with bosses, the quest for fulfillment and meaning would remain unresolved. David Graeber says that this book is about problems, not solutions, so I'll leave that part to you to think about. David Graeber says that this book is about problems, not solutions, so I'll leave that part to you to think about.
My personal view is that the real problem is that people are tied to unhappy situations for a variety of reasons, and while economics may be only one of them, perhaps a basic income can reduce the impact of economics, there are other factors. But that doesn't detract from the reason the book is worth reading. The section on the causes and effects of bullshit jobs is very thought-provoking and I suggest you buy the book and read the whole thing.
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