Are BS Jobs Real?
Redesigning Work in an Age of Productivity, AI, and BS Jobs
In 2018, David Graeber, an anthropologist, former professor at the London School of Economics wrote a book called Bullshit Jobs: A Theory.
In his book, Graeber argued that there were millions of people (mostly in middle management/knowledge worker environments) across the world who were working in unnecessary and meaningless jobs, and that they were fully aware of it.
In an interview with Vox Graeber describes his theory:
Bullshit 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. That’s the bullshit element. A lot of people confuse bullshit jobs and shit jobs, but they’re not the same thing.
And more:
A lot of bullshit jobs are just manufactured middle-management positions with no real utility in the world, but they exist anyway in order to justify the careers of the people performing them. But if they went away tomorrow, it would make no difference at all.
And that’s how you know a job is bullshit: If we suddenly eliminated teachers or garbage collectors or construction workers or law enforcement or whatever, it would really matter. We’d notice the absence. But if bullshit jobs go away, we’re no worse off.
In his book, Graeber estimated anywhere between 20-60% people were in a bullshit job. Graeber’s book lit up a storm. However, it didn’t win over everyone. The sleuths of the internet (Reddit) had their takes and perspectives, and so did the academics. Turns out, researchers found that Graber’s BS jobs argument was, well bullshit.
Unfortunately, Graeber passed away in 2020, and thus is not around to defend his theory, but the critics of his work argue his methodology for his theory (a survey asking people if they felt their job was meaningful) wasn’t the most empirically sound methodology, afterall, determining the social value of a job seems to be a pretty subjective measure.
But even if his theory was criticized, why did it strike such a chord, and why do so many people voluntarily share that they believe their actual job is Bullshit?
I’d like to take a shot at reframing Graeber’s theory - Instead of saying that there are bullshit jobs, I’d argue that most of us have parts of our jobs that feel like BS. To what degree that is, varies but if you ask most knowledge workers if there are parts of their job (Ex: tasks, deliverables, projects) they feel don’t actually contribute toward the business goals of their company, I am confident most people would say yes. If the CEO of your company gave you permission to identify 1-2 things you are doing right now that did not serve a business goal, could you find something?
As a thought exercise: Think about your schedule for the past 2 weeks, look at the tasks you did, projects you worked on, and things that occupied your calendar. Were all of those things serving your business goals? How were those things actually making an impact and delivering value?
I think the Bullshit job theory matters because of a bunch of divergent but in my mind connected themes:
1)The Pervasiveness of “Productivity”
There is a desire for organizations to improve productivity: In their latest research report, Atlassian found that low productivity was the number one priority amongst executives. When asked how they are measuring productivity, many respondents cite they use methods like tracking progress on goals, measuring office attendance, and ratings of managers.Not to mention, many companies that have gone through RIFs, which are often done as a reason to increase efficiency but have been proven to cause a drop in productivity
2)The Rise and Desire for AI
There are technologies (AI) that are rapidly advancing and will change the way we work and a key value proposition for these technologies in the minds of executives is around productivity. Many of the early gen AI use cases focus on improving productivity, either by speeding up the time to production of something, or removing work that doesn’t need to be done.
3)Employees Want Growth and Development
While it’s true that each individual wants different things, many of the things that motivate us are universal across employees. We all, to varying degrees want autonomy, mastery, purpose and connection. And when we don’t see those things, we disengage, or find another job.
4)Knowledge workers regularly report they don’t have enough time
According to the most recent Slack Workforce Index, 25% of people say they spend too much time in meetings, 25% say they spend too much time in email and 1 in five workers don’t have enough time to connect with their colleagues. Furthermore, they found about 50% of desk workers say they rarely or never take breaks during the work day, and of those workers 1.7x more likely to experience burnout. And finally, the most common reason that people report having to work after hours is “not having enough time in the day.” 50% of those people report having “too many priorities.”
But with so much emphasis on productivity, “doing more with less” and becoming “more efficient” the Bullshit jobs theory may actually be a starting point for a conversation around "what is the work that we as employees should actually be doing?”
What Entrepreneurship Has Taught Me About BS Jobs
I don’t think I appreciated this question until I left the corporate world and started working for myself. The first few weeks of my entrepreneur life as a service-based knowledge worker, I was both excited and overwhelmed to look at my calendar for the week and see empty boxes because there were no meetings. While I loved the idea of having agency and autonomy over the work I wanted to do and how I wanted to spend my time, when I actually had the chance to start exercising it I realized how difficult it actually was!
When you start with a blank slate, you can literally do anything. And for a while, I did. But over time, you start to realize, while you as a solo entrepreneur are on the hook for everything, you cannot literally do everything. In a simplistic view, you have to prioritize. In a more philosophical manner, you have to figure out how to take actions on things that help you achieve your desired goals, whatever they are.
Peter Drucker, the management professor and author, said a lot of things that shaped modern management thinking. Two of his quotes I always come back to:
The purpose of a business is to get a customer and keep it
There is nothing as useless as doing something efficiently that shouldn’t be done at all
Most of us know what our company does, and how it gets customers and keeps them - but do we then translate that we specifically do each day, does what we do ladder up toward that goal? How much of your work looks like that, and how much of your work looks like a TPS report?
If for some reason, you are not working on activities, projects, and actions that actually serve that overall purpose of a business (to get a customer and keep it) then doing the thing you are working on more efficiently or generating higher output of that thing is exactly why Drucker said the second quote and gives some credence to Graeber’s initial theory - There’s no point in doing something more efficiently that shouldn’t be done at all.
In my line of work, I get the chance to talk with hundreds of diverse leaders about their jobs and their work. In my experience, the one thing that everyone has in common is that we all want to be successful at what we do. Nobody gets up and goes to work and wants to do a bad job, but unfortunately, there is friction that gets in the way of us being able to do a good one. (see the Atlassian, Gallup and Slack research for examples)
Putting people in positions where they can use their talents and skills to perform to their potential means actively setting conditions and environments so they can actually use their talents and skills to be productive and engaged employees.
It means having managers who are consistently creating clarity around goals that align to the business, setting direction, and providing coaching and feedback. It means having employees who feel they can take on work that utilizes their talent and contributes to their team’s effectiveness, and it means having leaders who create the culture and employee experience that designs work in where people can actually do work that contributes to the overall goals of the business. And when you are in a job that feels like it’s BS, you have the ability, agency, and desire to stop it, and find work that isn’t BS.
Graeber’s initial theory had some flaws, but there are elements of our job that may feel like BS, which negatively impact’s an employee’s experience and productivity.
If you want to solve the productivity problem, focus first on creating work that is worth doing, for your business (and customer) but also for your people.