I’m pretty sure none of these are actually “bullshit jobs” as defined by Graeber, they just do things that Hexbear culture doesn’t like.
Also, plenty of very real R&D & manufacturing jobs couldn’t be described in 3 words without being needlessly vague or reductive. There is in fact complexity in a modern industrial economy.
Yeah this is a little bit “if you don’t have a hard hat and a big hammer you aren’t proletarian,” which is the exact opposite of what we should be saying
It’s been a while since I read it, but there are two broad categories of bullshit jobs, right? In the first, the job itself is bullshit; you might barely have any day-to-day responsibilities and no one notices if you do any work or not, or perhaps the work itself doesn’t accomplish anything of value (I think an example of the latter was someone who prepared exhaustive compliance reports that no one actually read). The second category is a real job that contributes to a bullshit industry. So a network administrator is a real job, but doing IT work for an insurance company is in service of a bullshit industry that just shuffles money around. On the other hand, an engineer for Lockheed Martin, while undeniably doing harm, is not doing a bullshit job.
Totally with you on complexity not implying bullshit, though.
I’m pretty sure none of these are actually “bullshit jobs” as defined by Graeber, they just do things that Hexbear culture doesn’t like.
Also, plenty of very real R&D & manufacturing jobs couldn’t be described in 3 words without being needlessly vague or reductive. There is in fact complexity in a modern industrial economy.
Yeah this is a little bit “if you don’t have a hard hat and a big hammer you aren’t proletarian,” which is the exact opposite of what we should be saying
I didn’t feel like busting out the jargon but yeah it smacks a bit of vulgar producerism.
It’s been a while since I read it, but there are two broad categories of bullshit jobs, right? In the first, the job itself is bullshit; you might barely have any day-to-day responsibilities and no one notices if you do any work or not, or perhaps the work itself doesn’t accomplish anything of value (I think an example of the latter was someone who prepared exhaustive compliance reports that no one actually read). The second category is a real job that contributes to a bullshit industry. So a network administrator is a real job, but doing IT work for an insurance company is in service of a bullshit industry that just shuffles money around. On the other hand, an engineer for Lockheed Martin, while undeniably doing harm, is not doing a bullshit job.
Totally with you on complexity not implying bullshit, though.
OTOH this meme would piss off techbros which makes it good.
I can see the appeal, but I suppose I don’t think about techbros that much so that’s not a metric I’m evaluating things on
Cool add 1 word and now it is still valid. I am so sick of corporate bs speak.