Bullshit Jobs: A Theory

Many service workers hate their jobs; but even those who do are aware that what they do does make some sort of meaningful difference in the world.

the more one’s work benefits others, the less one tends to be paid for it.

Being forced to pretend to work just for the sake of working is an indignity, since the demand is perceived—rightly—as the pure exercise of power for its own sake.

It is like taking the very worst aspect of most wage-labor jobs and substituting it for the occupation that was otherwise supposed to give meaning to your existence. It’s no wonder the soul cries out. It is a direct assault on everything that makes us human.

Duct tapers are employees whose jobs exist only because of a glitch or fault in the organization; who are there to solve a problem that ought not to exist.

what I am calling “bullshit jobs” are jobs that are primarily or entirely made up of tasks that the person doing that job considers to be pointless, unnecessary, or even pernicious.

What this meant in human terms was, first of all, that millions of young people found themselves trapped in permanent social adolescence. As the guild structures broke down, apprentices could become journeymen, but journeymen could no longer become masters, which meant that, in traditional terms, they would not be a position to marry and start fami

We have come to believe that men and women who do not work harder than they wish at jobs they do not particularly enjoy are bad people unworthy of love, care, or assistance from their communities.

bullshit job is a form of paid employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence even though, as part of the conditions of employment, the employee feels obliged to pretend that this is not the case.