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    Bullshit Jobs: A Theory
    Bullshit Jobs: A Theory
    Bullshit Jobs: A Theory
    Audiobook12 hours

    Bullshit Jobs: A Theory

    Written by David Graeber

    Narrated by Christopher Ragland

    4.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    From David Graeber, the bestselling author of The Dawn of Everything and Debt—“a master of opening up thought and stimulating debate” (Slate)—a powerful argument against the rise of meaningless, unfulfilling jobs…and their consequences.

    Does your job make a meaningful contribution to the world? In the spring of 2013, David Graeber asked this question in a playful, provocative essay titled “On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs.” It went viral. After one million online views in seventeen different languages, people all over the world are still debating the answer.

    There are hordes of people—HR consultants, communication coordinators, telemarketing researchers, corporate lawyers—whose jobs are useless, and, tragically, they know it. These people are caught in bullshit jobs.

    Graeber explores one of society’s most vexing and deeply felt concerns, indicting among other villains a particular strain of finance capitalism that betrays ideals shared by thinkers ranging from Keynes to Lincoln. “Clever and charismatic” (The New Yorker), Bullshit Jobs gives individuals, corporations, and societies permission to undergo a shift in values, placing creative and caring work at the center of our culture. This book is for everyone who wants to turn their vocation back into an avocation and “a thought-provoking examination of our working lives” (Financial Times).
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateMay 15, 2018
    ISBN9781508257400
    Author

    David Graeber

    David Graeber (1961–2020) was a Professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics. His bestselling books include The Dawn of Everything, cowritten with David Wengrow, and DEBT: The First 5,000 Years. He was a contributor to Harper’s Magazine, The Guardian, and The Baffler. 

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    Reviews for Bullshit Jobs

    4.5/5

    578 ratings42 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Great book about sociology, the history of work and the reorganization of society.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Definitivamente creo que es un libro que Todes deberíamos leer por el simple hecho de que la premisa que toca es un problema que nos afecta a todes y que hemos normalizado. Es primordial empezarnos a cuestionar porque seguimos sistemas y estructuras que van en contra de toda nuestra naturaleza y sobre todo nos mantienen en una constante de insatisfacción y miseria. Para que? Para que gente en el poder pueda seguir teniendo el control, no hay más lógica que esa.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Definitely thought provoking book. Various perspectives of work both present and historical are remarkable.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      I felt this was a tad bit too long. The message didn't need to be for 300 pages! It felt like the same thing repeating on and on. I was already waiting for the book to get over from 50% mark.

      but the message is pretty good, and it did make me wonder a lot about my job and how the notion of a job is glamorized.
    • 3/5
      The book presents and develops an interesting theory. However, it has an interesting excessive amount of filler in the form of anecdotes. Better organized and without the filler, easily could be half the length.

      Don’t need to read it if you get access to a resumed version.
    • 5/5
      David Graeber's insights are very helpful in articulating the experience of living under capitalism. The book is strongly recommended for good reason. I'm happy to say I enjoyed it and learned lots.
    • 5/5
      Outstanding! Provides much food for thought and is well presented.
    • 5/5
      Explaining our bullshit jobs in an sample word s
    • 4/5
      An interesting insight into work and the problem of modern work ethics.
    • 4/5
      The second half of the book was really informative. Recommended to everyone who are questioning the way of the modern world.
    • 5/5
      Very interesting and revealing. He started losing me at the end, the last two chapters can likely be skipped with the ideas sitting strongly in your mind still
    • 5/5
      Enjoyed the book. Did buy into the premise that some jobs might just be bs
    • 5/5
      Awesome exploration of both bullshit jobs and the history of work, time, values and much more. Listen to this book and realize what potential our lives have for less work and more meaningful lives.
    • 3/5
      The first half of the book was interesting, and is something everyone should read. The second half of the book was pointless and added nothing of value.
    • 2/5
      Too much talk, a little too little content. Not my kind of book
    • 4/5
      It gets almost visionary in the last chapter. Worth reading
    • 5/5
      Starts a bit slowly but is both entertaining and a compelling argument for universal basic income
    • 5/5
      A provocative view at the work least cherished and the values least compensated.
    • 4/5
      Generally well thought through and thought provoking book, however the recommendations for change should be more detailed.
    • 3/5
      Mildly Interesting. Skimmed.
    • 5/5
      This is a great book to understand the dilemma of jobs in our contemporary world.
    • 5/5
      Very good and well worth the reading/listening as it’s mind opening and make us to question the status quo of “there’s no alternative”
    • 2/5
      I'm sure that everyone will agree that there are some jobs that are completely unneccessary , however, this book relies almost entirely on anecdotal evidence, conjecture and bullshit to support its conclusion that these jobs are endemic. If you setup an email address and ask people to send you stories about why their jobs are bullshit, you are going to get a lot of stories about bullshit jobs, but that doesn't tell you anything about the general population. The term "bullshit job" is also entirely subjective, it just depends on how someone feels about their job on any given day.
    • 5/5
      These ideas are very new. But at the same time are connected with old ideas of worker alienation proposed by Marx almost 200 years ago. We need to discuss more about value and labor and this is a beginning.
      I sense a lack of the idea of liberty and freedom in this work. When I was reading it i could not stop thinking why those people dont just quit their bulls*it jobs.
    • 5/5
      Political and economic philosophy is a dangerous subject to write. Your words will have a natural target audience. Fail to properly shade your text to your audience and your book will end up in (large) piles in a discount book warehouse. Or, in the age of digital books, with a 7-digit rank in the overall store...Fortunately for the readers of this book, Graeber's commentary is equally caustic towards the movement conservative, the country club liberal, and even the well-meaning but slightly sanctimonious social democrat. The central thread of this work, which builds on an earlier essay that he published, is that regardless of whether you speak of the public sector, the academy, or private industry, the desire to build fiefdoms and heirarchies in the workplace give rise to the proliferation of meaningless jobs that are as damaging to the mental health of their incumbents as they are wasteful.I was pleasantly surprised to see a large portion of one chapter dealing with the phenomenon of people working in BS jobs in order to fund their passion. Graeber accurately, and with recourse to excerpts from several interviews, documents the difficulties with this lifestyle and the drain on creative energy it can cause.
    • 5/5
      "Bullshit Jobs" is a brilliant, thought-provoking book. David Graeber spent the first few chapters giving us examples of bullshit jobs and bullshit activities before moving on to a plausible definition of this kind of work. At one point, I was worried that he would fill the book with such definitions and examples. If so, the book would have been fluffy and superficial. In chapter three, he shifted gears, went into the theories of labor, and associated them with theology and the emerging field of economics. At this point, the book became deep and thought-provoking. We seem to be in a rut and a world where we cannot escape the vicious pull of bullshit jobs. We frown on leisure, as I experience. The world's population is increasing, and people must be employed. Could this be an additional reason for the proliferation of bullshit jobs? Whichever way you look at it, we have a world populated by unhappy people.
    • 4/5
      its fun and has some decent insights, but is too long, too fluffy, and poorly argued
    • 5/5
      Five years after buying this book, I finally sat down to read it. It is very good. Unfortunately, the author passed away in the meanwhile and we will hear no more of his incisive — and often very funny — observations. Graeber was one of the key figures in the Occupy movement, worked as an anthropologist and was a self-described “anarchist”. In his view, capitalist society can function perfectly well if everyone worked just a fraction of the time they now work. To keep everyone employed all the time, however, required the creation of “bullshit jobs” — jobs that contribute nothing to society and that are usually hated by those who do them. The jobs are just as likely to be found in the private sector as the public one. The book is an extended version of an essay Graeber wrote and the many responses he received from people who do bullshit jobs and hate them, mainly in the USA and UK. Recommended.
    • 4/5
      The analysis of different kinds of bullshit jobs should be required reading for everyone in a corporation.
    • 5/5
      Really interesting book and an easy read, specially taking into account the topic. Graeber starts the book by mentioning all the points its going to touch and delivers just that, there's no point underdeveloped or any that seems to be more important than the rest. Finally, I really liked how Graeber doesn't write a book about a problem and tries to sell his own solution, he does mention some ideas but breaks them down in such a way that's clear you're free to either agree or disagree with him.