submitted 3 months ago by moonlake@hexbear.net to c/chapotraphouse@hexbear.net

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:Graeber-shining:

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[-] Abracadaniel@hexbear.net 38 points 3 months ago

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.

[-] 420blazeit69@hexbear.net 20 points 3 months ago

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

[-] Abracadaniel@hexbear.net 12 points 3 months ago

I didn't feel like busting out the jargon but yeah it smacks a bit of vulgar producerism.

[-] AernaLingus@hexbear.net 16 points 3 months ago

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.