In the book Bullshit Jobs, David Graeber suggested 5 categories of bullshit jobs. However, I found it more useful to look at the jobs discussed in that book through a different lens and came up with 7 categories of bullshit jobs.
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Why these 7 categories of bullshit jobs?
Graeber’s 5 categories of bullshit jobs were not very useful. After he introduces them, the rest of his book just talks about “bullshit jobs” as a whole and treats them all as being the same.
In contrast, my categories of bullshit jobs focus on what value the job is providing and to whom. I think my suggested categorisation better explains:
- why these (supposedly bullshit) jobs exist. Different reasons apply to the different types. For example, it’s easy to understand why Category 2 jobs exist, but harder to explain the Category 7 ones.
- which bullshit jobs shouldn’t exist. We would probably still want to keep Category 4 and 5 jobs, but maybe not Category 6 and 7 jobs.
Category 1: Jobs that provide value but not enough to be “meaningful” in the employee’s view.
For example, a performer at kid birthday parties or a fast food worker might well consider their job “bullshit”, or be part of the 37% of people who answered “no” when asked whether their job makes a meaningful contribution to the world.
Graeber is pretty clear throughout his book that these types of jobs are not what he means by a “bullshit job”. The definition he gives of a “bullshit job” is one that is “completely pointless, unnecessary or pernicious”. Graeber also says that very few of the people he talked to were judgmental of their customers’ tastes and preferences.
However, Graeber relies on the 37% figure several times throughout the book. He also cites a Dutch survey with a 40% figure, but that survey also asks if people think their job is “meaningful” rather than if it is “bullshit”. It seems likely that many of the 37% are not in “bullshit jobs” (as per Graeber’s definition) but just in jobs they don’t consider meaningful. It’s easy to imagine a McDonalds’ employee saying that their doesn’t “a meaningful contribution to the world”. In other words, the actual percentage of bullshit jobs meeting Graeber’s definition is likely far, far lower than 37%.
Category 2: Jobs that provide value to someone, but not to society as a whole
For example, hitmen, corporate lawyers and flunkies provide value to their employer or manager, but arguably not to society as a whole. Graeber argues that the latter two are bullshit jobs, because they have to pretend that their job has meaning. For some reason he insists that being a hitman is not a bullshit job, because they tend to be quite upfront about what they do. (I do wonder how many hitmen Graeber knows…)
In any case, I don’t see the value of such a distinction. I would put hitmen and corporate lawyers in the same category. Unlike Graeber, I don’t see the falseness or pretence to be a necessary part of having a bullshit job.
Basically these jobs exist because of the zero-sum nature of certain transactions. It’s like the prisoner’s dilemma. If you’re in a court dispute and the other side has lawyers, you’re going to want to lawyer up too. If the other side doesn’t have lawyers, you might still want to lawyer up to give yourself an advantage. So, provided the stakes are large enough, your incentive is always to lawyer up to get an edge, no matter what your opponent does. But if neither side lawyers up, the court will still resolve your dispute and you’ll both avoid costly lawyer fees.
As a former lawyer, I do think it’s arguable that the world would be better if corporate lawyers didn’t exist. Or at least played a much smaller role than they do. I agree with Andrew Yang’s suggestion that Smart People Should Build Things, rather than become corporate lawyers or consultants. But I understand why these roles exist, and it’s not for all the reasons that Graeber suggests.
Category 3: Jobs that provide value, but could be automated
In these jobs, the employees still provide value so they may not always be “bullshit”. There could be some good reason why automation is not used. Automation could be costlier than human labour (though this is more likely to be true in a developing country than in America).
Graeber gave some examples of automatable jobs that were not automated simply because the manager liked having a bunch of underlings or because the company didn’t want to lay people off. So I can accept that some of these jobs are bullshit.
I would suggest that a large part of the reason for these jobs continuing to exist is the principal-agent problem. The manager or executive wanting to keep the jobs is the agent. They get the benefit of having a bunch of underlings to order around but doesn’t bear the cost of having to pay their salaries. The shareholders are the principals, who bear the cost of of the salaries. But they aren’t involved in the day-to-day running of the business and they don’t know of the cost savings that could be gained from eliminating the jobs. The principal-agent problem is a recognised problem of market inefficiency that explains why capitalism won’t work exactly as models suggest.
Category 4: Jobs that provide some value, but not all — or even most of — the time
Graeber suggests that many pointless jobs exist simply because employers can’t accept that they’re paying someone to be on call. That may be true, but it suggests that the job isn’t ultimately bullshit. The job might involve a lot of unnecessary bullshit tasks, but the underlying job itself is needed.
Category 5: Jobs that might or might not provide value
For example, someone doing a pitch for a TV show that doesn’t end up going ahead, or applying for a grant that is unsuccessful. Graeber writes, “If a grant agency funds only 10 percent of all applications, that means that 90 percent of the work that went into preparing applications was [pointless]”.
I strongly disagree with that. If your job only has a 10% chance of providing any value, it could still be worth doing even if it does not end up providing any value. That would be resulting. Think about researchers or people involved in pandemic preparedness. Do we only want people to pursue research that is very likely to work out? Or do we only want to prepare for events that are very likely to happen? Of course not.
Jobs that have a chance of providing great value ex ante are certainly not bullshit. In fact, in effective altruism, some people think that the best opportunities to have a high positive impact on the world exist in speculative, high-risk areas where success is unlikely. For example, working on ways to reduce global catastrophic risks will usually amount to nothing. But if it has even a 1% chance of working, wouldn’t we – as a society – want some people working on it?
Personally, I have worked on cases that ended up getting settled and projects that ended up getting canned. It is certainly demoralising when it happens but I don’t think that made my job “bullshit”. It’s easy to understand why capitalism produces this category of jobs. We don’t know what the future holds.
Category 6: Jobs that do provide value, but would not be needed in a version of the world the employee wants to live in (or possibly that Graeber wants to live in)
This category probably overlaps with Category 1. There were quite a few “bullshit jobs” in Graeber’s book that seemed to fall into this category. For example, a homeowners association manager was cited as a bullshit job:
Managing homeowners associations is one hundred percent bullshit. Wealthy people buy a condo building with a bunch of other wealthy strangers, then hire someone else to manage and maintain it. The only reason this job exists is that the owners don’t like or trust each other. I did this job for three years and never saw one hint of social value.
First of all, helping to mitigate or manage conflict between people is valuable. It would be great if we lived in a world where everyone was honest, trusted each other, and conflict did not exist. Unfortunately that is not the world we live in. You probably wouldn’t say an FBI hostage negotiator is a bullshit job. Yet the only reason that job exists is because some people do kidnap others and hold them hostage. If only people stopped doing that, we wouldn’t need any FBI hostage negotiators!
Secondly, a homeowners association manager presumably does some tasks that would need to be done by owners if the position didn’t exist, such as arranging repairs and maintenance. Those tasks clearly provide value.
Lastly, why does it matter if the condo owners are wealthy? Surely that is irrelevant to the question of whether homeowners association manager is a bullshit job.
Another job that seems to fall into this category is the UK benefits advisor, who helps people jump through the hoops that the government has set up in order to claim benefits. The benefits advisor herself admits that her jobs is necessary:
My job shouldn’t be necessary, but it is, because of the whole long train of bullshit jobs invented to keep people who need money from having it.
Category 7: Jobs that provide absolutely no value to anyone
This last category of bullshit jobs are the ones I would truly consider bullshit. However, I think very few of these jobs actually exist — certainly far less than 37% of all jobs. I would guess less than 5% of all jobs fall into this category. Although I suspect a much higher percentage of jobs have some parts that provide no value to anyone.
It also seems likely that most of these jobs are historic. For example, a restructure or merger might make some jobs that were previously useful redundant. Rather than actually laying off the person, the company – or at least the manager involved – may find it easier to just keep the person until they leave or retire. This could be due to employment laws or internal politics and information asymmetry. I suspect very few jobs that fall into this category are being actively advertised.
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What do you think of my 7 categories of bullshit jobs? Share your thoughts in the comments below!