David Graeber’s Bullsh*t Jobs
David Graeber suggests that there are too many administrative jobs which do not add any value to the world. His main economic argument for why they exist is one of kingdom building: managers want more staff, because more staff means they’re more important. He specifically mentions actuaries as a BS job, so I am compelled to respond.
My response is three-fold:
- Many of these jobs do add value
- Many of these jobs don’t add value when there isn’t enough economic pressure
- But still I support parts of his sentiments
Other reasons why such jobs might exist, which suggest they do add value:
- Governance: Filling forms out, providing reports, and other administrative tasks allow managers of companies to know what is happening in a company and to have checks and balances that things are happening properly. Bad governance means the managers have a incorrect understanding of their business. Self-service check-outs have resulted in more thefts, so although check out staff are an inefficient use of that labour (though I don’t think Graeber would call it a BS job), it is easier to fool a self-service check-out than a staff member, and hence is a more effective check (no pun intended). To paraphrase the meme: Do you want Royal Commissions? Cos that’s how you get Royal Commissions. Or more positively: We can’t have large international cooperation if we don’t have good systems in place.
- Computers need data: This is actually from Graeber: computers need data so that they can summarise and predict things, and a lot of data is qualitative. So people need to be there to turn them into computer-consumable things, even if those things are mundane. This does not sound like fun for the employee, but it is at least there is a computer which can add up the numbers for you at the end of it.
- Rules are easy, judgement is hard: Burja says bureaucracies are created because the creator doesn’t trust the bureaucrats are sufficiently competent or aligned to act in line with the creator’s wishes. But you need a large company to do things at scale. Enter the bureaucracy.
- Risk mitigation: Graeber talks about one man whose entire job was to fix the air conditioner if it broke. This may be an extreme case, but some people’s jobs are effectively there on retainer because the company desperately needs someone to respond urgently to matters.
- Deep Work Enablers: Cal Newport’s argument: You want to have support staff who do mundane things so that the experts can do Deep Work
- Customers need punching bags: Putanumonit‘s argument that people “below the API” are still there because some people (i) don’t know how to use technology to change flights and (ii) just want someone to deal with it
Around 34% of people believe that their jobs do not serve a purpose to the world. But I’m not sure if people are thinking of all these possible uses. I’m also not sure if people consider arguments of the form: “this product gives people value, and me doing X is part of the process of producing this product,” when evaluating their job. 10% think that their jobs do not serve a purpose for the company, suggesting that around 25% of people think their jobs contribute to the company but not to the world. Either their company is evil (which probably is a problem) or they fail to make the above Part of the Process argument (or they’re a government organisation which won’t collapse, or probably a number of other explanations).
The additional on-face-value-not-good-but-actually-probably-good-for-the-world reason that these “BS” jobs exist is this: A company cannot outright deny people Y, but they want to reduce people frivolously receiving Y. SSC suggests this is why he must fill out a nonsense form saying people can have special chairs at their office. To the BS employee, this looks like their job is to stop people getting Y. But to the company, it stops fraud or unnecessary claims or just ensures people go through the standardised, more efficient process, which means that the company can continue to offer its service at the price it does. (This is unfortunately not very fair to those who are time-constrained, though.)
Not enough economic pressure
I feel like these jobs are more common in government:
Governments have less financial pressures, and so people begin to care about more status, and so want to raise their own headcount. It can also be hard to fire people in government because of HR protocols, from what I hear. Without economic pressure, BS jobs are more likely to continue.
Supporting Graeber
But reading Graeber is still inspirational despite my disagreements. Specifically it makes me excited about:
- A world where people spend more time doing care jobs, and helping people directly, because most technical jobs are replace by robots
- A world where there is a lot innovation around helping people. Large-scale “investment in people”, in terms of labour-hours. Personalised learning customised to children which takes into account neurodiversity.
And more worried (in the shorter term) about a world where there is:
- An increasing number of “computer-minder” jobs, such as truck drivers who just monitor their trucks, or Mechanical Turk-esque jobs where people manually add labels to data.