Publisher’s write-up:
‘In the early twentieth
century, people prophesied that technology would see us all working
fifteen-hour weeks and driving flying cars. Instead, something curious
happened. Not only have the flying cars not materialised, but average working
hours have increased rather than decreased. And now, across the developed
world, three-quarters of all jobs are in services, finance or admin: jobs that
don't seem to contribute anything to society. In Bullshit Jobs, David Graeber
explores how this phenomenon - one more associated with the Soviet Union, but
which capitalism was supposed to eliminate - has happened. In doing so, he
looks at how, rather than producing anything, work has become an end in itself;
the way such work maintains the current broken system of finance capital; and,
finally, how we can get out of it.
This book is for anyone whose
heart has sunk at the sight of a whiteboard, who believes 'workshops' should
only be for making things, or who just suspects that there might be a better
way to run our world.’
Bullshit Jobs was a book written
by the anthropologist David Graeber based on the testimonials he had received
for an essay he had written regarding the phenomenon of bullshit jobs. The
author estimates that around 40-50% of the jobs in the world are pointless and
builds a case for his position.
The author structured the book in the following manner – the author’s hypothesis (occasionally backed by data or a
famous real incidents), followed by a testimonial confirming his own hypothesis
from one of his readers and then, draws a conclusion based on this testimonial.
The author’s manner of expressing some of the terms, was rather indiscreet,
which some might even consider pejorative to certain jobs – but I guess that
was also the author’s intention, to draw attention to the phenomenon.
The positive thing about the book
is that it made me think – about the phenomenon of bullshit jobs. A lot of work
that is done could perhaps be pointless and we do not necessarily need a 40-hour
working week. The author tries to use Keynes’ prediction as his justification
where the latter had predicted that it in days to come, owing to technological
improvements, we might need to work only 15 hours a week. In that sense, the
author tries to draw attention to the fundamental flaw in the society where
self-worth has been tied to work and the effort put in, even if that effort is
not required (and the author describes this to be a form of sadomasochism). The
necessity to work long hours when it might not be required is an important
discussion to have.
With that said, relying entirely
on testimonials to substantiate his theory is flimsy and in a lot of instances,
the author seems to have profound hatred towards some of the professions which
he seemed to have want to manifest in this book (like corporate lawyers – and for
his information, I know of many corporate lawyers who are passionate and genuinely
believe they are creating a difference, running contrary to the author’s
hypothesis on them). In many cases, the people might hate the jobs that they
are doing, may feel that it is redundant and is also possible that these jobs add
no value to the society – but these facts are not enough to conclude that the job
is redundant. In his own example, there was an example where a supervisor felt that
their job was pointless as their team was perfectly capable of carrying out
their functions without being supervised, but the moment the process fails,
that is when a supervisor is required to monitor and correct the same (and till
there is such a failure, it is possible that the supervisor does not do any
actual work). Same is the case for those who fix bugs in a software and other
defects in other professions whom the author pejoratively names ‘duct-tapers’.
In most cases, what the author
took were extreme examples, and drew conclusions that were too strong for the
underlying facts that the author used to build the case (most of them were
based on a specific YouGov poll). While the premise was interesting, this could
have remained an essay instead of being a full-fledged book, I was disappointed
with the first half of the book, but the latter half salvaged it for me.
As I said earlier, this book is interesting
to the extent that it could be the basis to have a lot of conversations that we
ought to have, as to how work environment and society at large are to be structured
in the future. I was uncomfortable with the kind of language used by the
author, but that was perhaps expected from the very title of the book. This
book could be read as a long essay and we may use it to build our own thoughts
on the subject and ignore much of the author’s conclusions.
On that note, I would award the
book a rating of six on ten.
Rating – 6/10
Have a nice day,
Andy
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