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Based on 9 reviews on
Does your job make a meaningful contribution to the world? In the spring of 2013, David Graeber asked this question in a playful, provocative essay titled "On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs." It went viral. After one million online views in seventeen different languages, people all over the world are still debating the answer.
There are hordes of people--HR consultants, communication coordinators, telemarketing researchers, corporate lawyers--whose jobs are useless, and, tragically, they know it. These people are caught in bullshit jobs.
Graeber explores one of society's most vexing and deeply felt concerns, indicting among other villains a particular strain of finance capitalism that betrays ideals shared by thinkers ranging from Keynes to Lincoln. "Clever and charismatic" (The New Yorker), Bullshit Jobs gives individuals, corporations, and societies permission to undergo a shift in values, placing creative and caring work at the center of our culture. This book is for everyone who wants to turn their vocation back into an avocation and "a thought-provoking examination of our working lives" (Financial Times).
Marc Andreessen is a venture capitalist.
David Graeber came close with his theory of "bullshit jobs". His mistake was thinking that actual capitalists create bullshit jobs on purpose. In reality, the PMC elite that runs everything now creates them for its own end -- power. https://t.co/PieeEF0MKP https://t.co/zgmeIz8jr0
Author. Screenwriter. Lego - @legowith Insta EmmaK67 Mastodon https://t.co/aBb0GzK7hE Bluesky @emmakennedy.bsky.social Threads @emmak67
This is interesting. Especially when robots are set to put humans out of work. Few years back I chatted with David Graeber who wrote Bullshit Jobs. He was a big fan of BUI. The theory is that people, when they have to worry less about bills, seek more fulfilling jobs https://t.co/eNIoBfNbAq
"Fresh...fascinating... Graeber's book is not just thought provoking, but also exceedingly timely."--Gillian Tett, The Financial Times
"The book is more readable and entertaining than I can indicate... It is a meditation on debt, tribute, gifts, religion and the false history of money. Graeber is a scholarly researcher, an activist and a public intellectual."--Peter Carey, The Observer
"Thought-provoking."--Boston Globe
"[A] fizzing, fabulous firecracker of a book... Our contemporary bureaucrats are revealed, in fact, as none other than you and me, forever administering and marketing ourselves."--The Literary Review