May 27, 2026 · 20 min · 12 segments
In 2013 the anthropologist David Graeber examined one of the strangest contradictions in modern capitalism: despite exponential gains in productivity, people were working even harder that ever. In his…
Scott CarneyHostWe have sort of a problem here.
Yeah.
You apparently didn't put one of the new cover sheets on your TPS reports.
But unlike the movie Office Space that poked fun at the problem back in 1999, I'm not being glib.
Bullshit jobs I define as a job where even the person doing the job secretly believes the job really shouldn't exist, but nonetheless, a part of the conditions of employment is that you have to pretend that it does.
He was a commie pinko who our corporate overlords are thankful died in the first days of the COVID-19 epidemic.
But before that, he spent years researching the unintuitive realities of modern economics, including famously that a huge segment of all jobs, by his estimate 37% of all employment, makes no meaningful difference into the world at all.
Flunkies
Who only exist to make other people feel important, like a receptionist at a business with no traffic
What I call goons
... is I call them duct tapers
The people who fix problems that shouldn't exist in the first place, compliance officers and pencil pushers just to name a few
Then there's box tickers
People who make it look like things are getting done when they aren't, and then finally-
... people who monitor work that is already being done that didn't need to be done in the first place.
Maybe you only spend a few hours or minutes a day actually working but nonetheless have to show up in an office and give the appearance of being productive.
We have sort of a problem here.
Yeah.
You apparently didn't put one of the new cover sheets on your TPS reports.
But unlike the movie Office Space that poked fun at the problem back in 1999, I'm not being glib.
Bullshit jobs I define as a job where even the person doing the job secretly believes the job really shouldn't exist, but nonetheless, a part of the conditions of employment is that you have to pretend that it does.
He was a commie pinko who our corporate overlords are thankful died in the first days of the COVID-19 epidemic.
But before that, he spent years researching the unintuitive realities of modern economics, including famously that a huge segment of all jobs, by his estimate 37% of all employment, makes no meaningful difference into the world at all.
Flunkies
Who only exist to make other people feel important, like a receptionist at a business with no traffic
What I call goons
... is I call them duct tapers
The people who fix problems that shouldn't exist in the first place, compliance officers and pencil pushers just to name a few
Then there's box tickers
People who make it look like things are getting done when they aren't, and then finally-
... people who monitor work that is already being done that didn't need to be done in the first place.
Maybe you only spend a few hours or minutes a day actually working but nonetheless have to show up in an office and give the appearance of being productive.
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