What if I told you that your office job is not important? By the way, that links to a pretty funny video from the comedian Ali Woods.
I upset quite a few people on LinkedIn when I made a comment months ago that most companies and jobs don’t need to exist. I guess this really touched a nerve because I dusted off that comment recently, and someone immediately became angry with me again. Ironically, they work for a pretty reckless corporation that provides a service that is destroying our society and our planet’s resources.
But hey, what do I know?
Secretly, I think many of us know it’s true, though we shouldn’t say it out loud if we want to keep receiving our paychecks.
Many companies (especially in tech) don’t provide any real value, except to each other in some weird ecosystem of mutual support, corporate theater, and meaningless employment. Not only do many of them not generate meaningful value, but some are actually net negative.
They damage our society.
They put our children at risk.
The world would be better off without these corporations.
Case in point: Meta wasted $73B on its silly metaverse concept, which has also been exposed as putting children at risk. Now, thousands of employees are losing jobs that were dedicated to that nonsense. And Meta lawyers are ordering evidence of child exploitation destroyed and research findings buried.
Another example: watch Nvidia, OpenAI, and Microsoft playing in their infinite AI money loop (see illustration below). It’s so ridiculous.
So, we have companies that don’t really need to exist, creating products that shouldn’t exist, and hiring people for jobs that are mostly pointless. David Graeber called these “bullshit jobs” in his book “Bullshit Jobs: A Theory.”
What is a bullshit job? The defining feature is this: one so completely pointless that even the person who has to perform it every day cannot convince themselves there’s a good reason for them to be doing it. They may not be able to admit this to their co-workers – often, there are very good reasons not to do so – but they are convinced the job is pointless nonetheless.
Bullshit jobs are not just jobs that are useless; typically, there has to be some degree of pretence and fraud involved as well. The employee must feel obliged to pretend that there is, in fact, a good reason their job exists, even if, privately, they find such claims ridiculous. (source)
We've all encountered people working in such jobs. This famous scene in the movie “Office Space” shows “The Bobs” grilling an employee who obviously has a BS job. The Bobs are consultants the company hired to help make the daily operations run more efficiently while maximizing profits (i.e., deciding who should be fired).
Outline of what I discuss in this episode (scroll up and hit play to listen to the details)
The pandemic opened our eyes
Remote work opened up new possibilities
AI is disrupting corporate jobs
How to “play the game”
Or, redefine the game
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Larry Cornett is a business coach who works with ambitious professionals to help them reclaim their power, become more invincible, and create better opportunities for their work and lives. Do more of what you love and less of what you hate! Check out his new Invincible Solopreneurs Daily Journal!
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