Bullshit Jobs

Review of Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber

Have you ever worked a job that was utterly meaningless? Maybe it was a call center with no calls, or you oversaw a project that would never see the light of day, or worse… data entry. As bizarre as it seems, it’s a phenomenon that has become more and more common. In fact, recently laid off tech workers spoke out on how they were paid exorbitant sums of money to do very little. Now, while few of us are getting paid millions to sit around, many are earning modest salaries for work whose purpose has become hazy. It has contributed to the general malaise that haunts the collective consciousness and leads us to the question, has work and perhaps life become more meaningless? Are we becoming more pessimistic? Maybe a bit of both.

I struggled with this question of meaning and work early on in my career and it led me to the book Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber. I believe this book, more than any other, captures the spirit of modern capitalism. In it, Gra…