The Impact Of Bullshit Jobs
A deep psychological insight reveals why we hate pointless work
Hello learners,
Hope you enjoyed last week’s article on the coming population collapse. It got people damn excited and some even committed to producing multiple kids this decade. If you’re looking for this kind of inspiration or simply want to understand why fertility rates are nosediving, go read it right now.
Today, we’re going to talk about a topic that almost every reader will be able to relate to, because, unfortunately, we’ve all suffered it or seen someone going through its pains.
We’re going to talk about the phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs and why they are so destructive.
Have you ever worked a job that is so utterly pointless that even you had no way of justifying its existence and that there would be absolutely no impact on the world even if it suddenly disappeared? That is what a bullshit job is like.
The corporate world is chock full of bullshit jobs. People pushing around papers and filling forms that could easily be automated. People simply making checklists or creating reports that nobody reads. People deep-cleaning their ears at their desks while playing minesweeper 8 hours a day. You get the picture.
There is no dearth of job roles that simply aren’t needed but continue to exist. (And this doesn’t mean that the people stuck in such jobs are useless). It is the jobs that are totally useless and exist for no reason- and yet they multiply like my health problems when I eat out 8 days a week.
But if you have a job that pays to do nothing, it’s a major win, right? Just sit all day, do what you want, and get money for that? Many would say that it sounds exactly like their wet dream.
Unfortunately, that’s not how it plays out. People in such jobs report deep levels of dissatisfaction, frustration, and depression. So why is this “dream job” scenario causing people so much pain?
There’s a deep insight here that absolutely blew my mind, and to understand it, we need to look at the discovery made by German psychologist Karl Groos.
In 1901, Groos noticed something fascinating in his experiments with children. He observed that when they were able to have a predictable effect on the world, it produced extraordinary happiness. Let’s say they pushed a toy on the table by moving their arms. If they could reproduce that effect by using the same action, it gave them immense delight.
Groos coined the phrase ‘pleasure at being the cause’ to describe this effect. The idea is that the delight was produced because it gave the kids a sense of agency- a sense that they could have an effect on the world and that THEY were the cause behind it. This was exercising power purely for the sake of it, and at a deeper level, was essential in confirming that they exist- their very sense of self!
Our existence is grounded in our ability to take action.
And this effect, my friends, is at the root of why we enjoy working, playing, and achieving things.
We enjoy doing a wheelie or scoring a hat trick or completing a full marathon (even though it totally leads to knee replacement surgeries and 7-week sick leaves) purely because we love having an effect on the world, and knowing that *we* did it, that we had an effect on the world.
In fact, this is the very essence of freedom- doing something purely because you can! That is what the kids were experiencing, and that’s what we experience every day when we are able to do something good at work or come up with an interesting solution to a business problem.
What’s even more interesting is the effect that Groos observed when the kids were first allowed to do this and later the ability to engage in these actions was withdrawn. The impact was severely detrimental. It produced rage, then a refusal to engage in the activity, followed by complete withdrawal- similar to what happens when you tell an engineering student that adult websites will be blocked on the campus.
So denying a kid the ‘pleasure of being the cause’ was deeply detrimental and produced sheer psychological distress.
Can you now see how this might be the very same thing that happens to people stuck in bullshit jobs?
When talented and skilled employees are basically made to do nothing (and even reprimanded when they do try to go out of the way to do even one tiny thing that’s meaningful), it’s a denial to engage in action, to exercise their powers, and have effects on the world! No wonder it produces the same rage and helplessness that the kids felt in those experiments.
If freedom is the ability to do things just because you can do them, then forcing people to pretend to do some crappy work is an indignity. It’s the purest way to deny someone freedom, and nothing but a raw power move by the boss who imposes this regime on an employee stuck in a bullshit job.
So that, friends, is why being paid to do nothing isn’t the stairway to heaven that many of us make it out to be.
We can’t completely blame ourselves for having such notions, because these are systematically fed to us by economists who consider humans to be rational, calculating agents whose sole aim in life is to maximize profits and reduce all efforts/costs. But these are overly simplified and faulty models (which reminds me of my own assignments in Statistics 101 that got a D-), which fail to consider how complex humans are and how their minds function.
We are weird animals who have a fundamental need to exercise power purely for the sake of it. It’s what gives us our identity and it is also the reason we play and spend so much time on sports. All those centuries, hat-tricks, and record-breaking slam dunks are totally pointless beyond the purview of the game itself. Still, we love them purely because they are a reflection of our agency- the very ability to have an impact on the world that makes us human.
Based on this, you can see why a job is not just a way to earn money. It’s a chance to exercise your powers and bring about an effect- and being denied that ability turns out to be our worst nightmare.
No wonder people try to avoid bullshit jobs like the plague.
Thanks for reading today’s piece. It’s a highly simplified version of one of David Graeber’s key ideas and if you found something interesting here, I’d highly recommend reading his book Bullshit Jobs cover to cover. I’ll also be summarising some of those ideas very soon, but I decided to write about this deep insight first because it seems to be so fundamental to human action.
Do you feel you’re stuck in a bullshit job? Or do you know a friend who is stuck in one? What kind of effects have you noticed when people are made to do pointless work? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.
If you enjoyed this, share it with friends- the book itself was quite cathartic for people, and this article might be too. And don’t forget to join the learning community:
Adding to: "When talented and skilled employees are basically made to do nothing (and even reprimanded when they do try to go out of the way to do even one tiny thing that’s meaningful), it’s a denial to engage in action, to exercise their powers, and have effects on the world!"
- Or even made to do something with instructions given to the last detail - taking away the agency and the creativity - no wonder micromanagement leads to so much distress taking shapes and forms of depression, anxiety and burnouts.
Thanks for sharing the insight from the book. This convinces me to pick up the book as well!
I do agree with every detail written, still navigating ways to leave my bullshit job & I'm already close to it!