E142 – Bullsh*t Jobs (w/ Dr. Raphael Chiuzi)

Hello and welcome to this episode of a world work podcast. We've got a subject lined up today and a guest lined up today that I'm really excited about. So we're going to be speaking to Rafael giuse from the University of Toronto, where he works in organizational behavior and HR Management at the University of Toronto. And we're going to be speaking about bad word warning here. We're going to be speaking about bullshit jobs, right? So this phrase bullshit jobs, Bs jobs, you might have heard of it. What we're going to do today is dive into a little bit more detail of what that is, where it comes from, maybe what it means for us and things like that. But before we do that, Rafael, can I hand over to you and ask you to say a bit about yourself and what you're doing to the audience,

please? Well, nice to be here. Uh, yes, I'm I'm a professor, assistant professor at University of Toronto, Mississauga campus. I'm an organizational psychologist, so that's why I'm in organizational behavior. I am really bad at golf, but I keep trying every year, and that's a little bit about

me. You know what? I'm really bad at running. I do it all the time, and I never get any faster. But something about competing with myself, it is great fun and rewarding. So if we just start out with a conversation, this phrase bullshit jobs has been around for a little while, could you just maybe give us a little bit of an introduction as to, you know, where the idea came from, and maybe a little bit about what a bullshit job is, and then we can pick up and talk about them a bit more. Okay,

good, yeah, that's it's a complex discussion, because we have to talk about the concept. And the author, yes, and the origin is from David Gray bird in anthropology. And he kind of coined this, this, this term of bullshit jobs. And it was kind of a he, I think he kind of stumbled upon this, this idea. And he, he got a lot of validation from from readers all over the place. So the the whole thing just blew up. And the way he phrases is a bullshit job, and it's a kind of a very harsh way he puts us. It's a kind of a form of employment, a paid employment, that, in his words, it's completely pointless or unnecessary. And when, when you read his work, is going to say it is tricky, because the the employee have, they usually have a hard time justifying what is it that they do due to the, you know, as part of his employment, his or her employment, and they feel like they're kind of obligated to say, they, you know, they like their jobs and all that. So he calls those things bullshit jobs, just because it's, I think his criticism is more about the job design itself, rather than, you know, the person doing the job. And this is one caveat that I want to start with right away, because his, his his wording is pretty harsh, and that's, you know, gotten a lot of people triggered because he quotes specific professions. And of course, if you're in that profession, you're not going to like that HR being one of them as as a matter of fact. So this is what he called bullshit jobs. And he comes from a very Marxist perspective on this, this he his criticism is more about the sociological perspective. This kind of job should not exist because either it could be replaced by or some form, other form of employment, or a machine, or because those human beings, they should be employed somewhere else, doing something more important. And that's in a nutshell. This is his idea of bullshit jobs.

Yeah, brilliant. Thanks. And, and I think obviously there's a book, but even before he wrote his book on on the subject, he published an article that I think anyone can find online, if you just Google bullshit jobs. David Graber, I think strike magazine and online publication, I think you can find it there so you can, you can look into this and and I think it's, it's really good that you called out that point around some of maybe the triggering nature of a language if you read that first article. I think he's trying to be a little bit humorous. Some of us as well. And he's slightly hyperbolic in the language, and it's a bit of fun, so we shouldn't take it too seriously. And that it just snowballed into this, this momentous, momentous thing. And he does, you know, he does start off some of his thinking there, saying that if we go back to Keynes, I think in the 30s, you know, he sort of postulated that by now we should be working 15 hours a week, right, and enjoying all the leisure time that the world can provide us with all our needs met fundamentally in other ways, and that hasn't happened. So instead, we've ended up with so many of these jobs that, as you say, are sort of bullshit jobs, and that they they don't feel like they add value, they don't feel like they have a real purpose to them, like, what would happen if these things disappeared? When, when you think about these jobs, and it's great that you've differentiated between, you know, the worthiness of a people doing the jobs and, you know, the sort of structural setup of a world that leads them to exist. When, when you think through these types of jobs, and you read some of his work, what types of jobs does he call out as bullshit jobs? Are they just like, menial jobs? Are they fully academic, or are they like, where do they sit in that, that structure of the world? And yeah, so he,

he has some terminologies in his book. He called them, you know, the goons, like divorce lawyers, the flunkies. And he gives, you know, different categories of of bullshit jobs. So if I remember correctly, he calls a flunkies like people that their jobs is they're more useful in making their superiors feel important. And it's funny, because I was having this discussion with some of my students the other day about bullshit jobs, and one of them so I asked them, give me an example of what you would consider to be a bullshit job. So one of them gave me a brilliant example. And again, I'm not talking about the person doing the job. Is just that, the whole design, the craftiness of the job, he said, Well, I It's a personal assistant of a social media influencer who has very little followers. So that would be an example of, yeah, it's less about the personal assistant, because some people do would need personal assistance. But he would say, you know, someone who hires someone just because they want to feel like they're more important, this would convey a very sense of, you know, this person is so busy that he needs, or she needs, a personal assistance. So that's, that's one example, the other one he gives. And I find that it's very interesting. And as a consultant outside academia, to call the task masters, I'm pretty sure my fellow colleagues, project managers, they wouldn't like that, because it's it's basically the ones who would manage, or, in his words, even create extra work for people who don't need it, and that's kind of a curse of project managers. But again, you got to remember where he's coming from, because it sounds very offensive when you hear the first time. It's like, oh no, but I don't, I don't consider them bullshit jobs. They have an important and saying, again, he's not talking about the job itself, but this, this theory. It's not that, he's not stating that people have useless jobs, but he's trying to propose a theory that seeks to explain why those jobs exist. And I think that's the key element. So it's, it's premised on this, this existence of this economic system, which he will call managerial feudalism, which would be, you know, you create that distinction between, you know you're above or you're below, and you're you know, there's the important people and the peasants. So that's those are some examples of what he called task masters box tickers, you know, he says those are people that create the appearance of doing something useful, but it's really not. But then I don't particularly like when he goes to some examples, but I do agree with him that some jobs, you know, they should, they could easily be replaced by something else, like, you know, a different design, and you wouldn't need that person doing that kind of job. Now, some might argue, well, but you know, the those people are creating jobs, and is it a bad thing that people are getting paid to do jobs? And the answer is, no, the problem is, the way I look at at us as an organizational psychologist, is, there is a human potential there that could be, right now, be, could be going to waste. So this person could use his or her brain power, creativity and. Doing something else, doing something that will be far more beneficial to us as a society. And I see work as this act of transforming the reality around you, right? So every This is work. So you know, a housewife, for example, her work is to transform the reality around her or his in case of, you know, the husbands that stay at home. So every kind of work, it doesn't matter if it's paid or unpaid, it's an act of transformation. So whenever you employ a person to do something that is either meaningless or, you know, a bullshit in the sense of how this is placed sociologically and economically, it's a waste of human potential. And I think that's the real criticism. Yeah,

I think that's that's a really good way to start to zero in on this. And, you know, I've got some some problems with the way that we measure impact on society and things like that, but, but this point about, are we in these roles doing something that feels like a good use of our capability and our potential, in serving, creating an outcome or taking action that supports us as human humanities a really interesting thing. There's an example that I've come across, not from I don't think David Graber himself, but from somebody else. Called it dare Turner, talking about jobs and talking about things like GDP and contribution to society and stuff. And the example that that he talks about, and I think it's him, is he talks about divorce lawyers, and he says, But fundamentally, what you have is, you've got two people who want to separate, and each one sort of escalates and pays more and more and more and more for a divorce lawyer, until you end up with, you know, a huge amount of GDP creation in the world of divorce lawyers, but the actual outcome in terms of benefits really minimal, and if everybody just stepped down 15 layers, you'd be at the same place that you were. So, so what's happening in that example is you're getting highly educated, often highly driven and motivated, very capable people working together and in such a way that the outcome that's produced almost doesn't exist. And it's like, they're, they're like negative synergies in those people working together. What do you think about that example? Yes, I like this.

let's, let's use this example specifically, because if you look at the metrics, let's say I'm a, you know, I'm a partner at a law firm. When you look at the metrics, okay, this lawyer, it's bringing X amount of revenues, great. I'm going to put the Karen in front of him or her, and that's going to, you know, get them to climb the ladder all the way to become a important person, which is, be a partner. So the metric, when you look at the metric, 01,

okay, that's perfect. Okay, this is what we need. But like you said, you know, we let, let alone the fact that we have two people suffering and spending all of their money into, you know, bullying each other to make to to have this outcome. Who gets what? When this, we were essentially talking about two people who had a relationship, and they could probably work it out. Now we know that some things are not that simple, but the fact that you have a metric that would incent create an incentive for you to escalate things and go there. And of course, if you go and ask many of them, they will say, Oh, we never do that. We advise you not to do that. But on the other hand, let's look at the economic system. If I do that, essentially, in the end of the day, it's good for me, because I get the metrics, I get the pay, I get the bonus, I get the promotion, I get the fast track and all that. So this is why I, you know, one of the grabers criticism is that this what we he would call a goon, in the essence of a Bucha job, which means you are producing very little. Like, what are you? And again, if we go back to the work as transforming the reality around you, what is it that you're producing? How is this making you know us better, or the people around you better. And I think that's the that's the problem.

I think it's interesting that it feels like, at least in this example, these are jobs that are sort of socially valued, which feels like a strange thing to me. You know, maybe not all the examples that are out there are, but it feels like a lot of these, these bullshit jobs that exist for a whole range of reasons they might sort of not contribute, but at the same time, we're competitively drawn to them, and they are held in high esteem. For me, that just seems like a funny, funny mismatch. You know, what? How does that come about? What is it? You

know, when you think about I remember back in the 2008 with our, you know, the big financial crisis, yeah, one of the questions that people were asking is, how many more engineers do we need? And like right young engineers that graduate from the top schools? But these, these people, are not out there anymore, building bridges or buildings, or, you know, doing road they're going to the financial services, for example, to to work on derivatives. Now this is a service. It serves the sole purpose of, you know, accumulating more. So you're not generating stuff. You're working basically with credit and credit and debt. And that's one concern that I think, that's when you take rivers criticism. I think it's a valid concern when, in a sense that, why are we not producing stuff anymore? How come we have the best and brightest now working to accumulation of capital with the sole purpose of accumulating in order, working with this is it needed that we have people thinking about abstraction and bond markets, absolutely. But when you get young, bright students, recent graduates, and they're interested in going there just because that's where they're going to get the massive amount of money, without any concern of what is it that I'm producing for the society? How am I going to work in the benefit of a society, instead of just, you know, a few shareholders that are going to get richer and richer and, you know, increase inequality? For me, that's very concerning. So I think I like this discussion about bullshit jobs because makes us think about, what is it work now, and what do we think that work will look like in the future? A lot of people are trying to talk about the future of work and everything. I think one point that I have as a major concern would be this, where are we attracting the best and brightest, the young workers, to do stuff in the future, to create the reality around us in the future. Because if everybody's going to stock trading and derivatives market and all that, because that's where they're going to make the you know, the big money, well, what's going to happen to the rest of us? Yeah, that's, that's where I think it's that's one source of major concern for me.

Yeah, so I used to work in financial services. I used to work for a bank, and I used to be a project manager, so I'm being slapped all over. And I remember I worked in sort of corporate banking. And I remember one of my friends completed his PhD as a physicist looking at laser technology, and he was approached by one of our corporate banking teams to come in and have an interview. And would he want to be involved in that side of the world? And he spoke to me, and at the time, I said, No, I really don't think you should do that. Why don't you go into, like, material science and follow the stuff that you care about? But at the same time, I felt, I felt sort of conflicted in saying this. I'm like, Well, maybe I'm trying to study a career that he aspires to. Maybe I'll take away some aspect of his future economic well being. I mean, like, you know, so it was a really conflicted thing. But I think that view about, are we somehow focusing on, you know, to use a overused metaphor, are we spending more time fighting over how we slice up a pie? Are we spending more time building a bigger pie? I think, fits within this whole sense of these bullshit jobs as well, and and,

you know, I like that that very much, because there is a lot of the well, the research is extensive, and they show that most people are now in a period of reassessing, what is it that they want for their lives, right? And the whole discussion, if you know, the great resignation discussion and all that, and that's mostly because people are thinking, what, what do I want for my life? And the discussion about purpose and meaningfulness, and one of gravers prediction, and going back to the bullshit job, is that he says that useless jobs, or bullshit jobs, they cause what he called the spiritual violence and poor mental health. That was one of his predictions. And I really like not to be too academic, but I would like to bring another fellow to this conversation with which is Christophe de jeu, which is, you know, this

French researcher, and he, he talks about psycho, psycho dynamics of work. And he talks about how a job is is always a, you know, a balance between what I want to do versus what do I have to do. And it's as as a result of that the job is about suffering and pleasure. And we all know we cannot always have pleasure at work only, and it shouldn't be just about suffering. So when you're put in a position where you struggle to find meaning or purpose in what is it that you're doing, then this will cause, will have some impact on your mental health and. You see a lot of people nowadays, I think it's more permissible. People say, Why am I doing this? You know, why am I going to this? Nine to five job, nine to five job, one hour, commuting back and forth. And you know, what is it that this is bringing to my life, other than the money? So I think now it's we live in a very interesting period where people are allowed to question that, which would be something unthinkable, you know, 1020, years ago. So I think that's that's one good thing that it's happening after the or during slash, after the pandemic, with people questioning about this spiritual violence in grabers Word or mental health,

yeah. And just for context, it is late October. Let me get my year right. 2021 it's hard to remember of years now. I love that exploration of the pleasure and violence within work, and I think, I think that's, that's really of the moment, like you say. And I was listening to something earlier, and I'm going to chuck it out here. I don't like I'm in no way in authority about this at all, but it just came into my mind as you were speaking. So I've been listening. I've not actually read, but I've been listening to several people talking about Hannah Arden's work on various aspects and the Division of what we do with our time. She calls out three different things that we do when we are effectively, you know, contributing our time towards something. She talks about labor, which is not like Marxian labor, but in her words, this is doing things, you know, exerting effort to harness the necessities of survival for us. So this is about, how do we essentially get the calories in the shelter and those things to keep us alive? So that's labor. She talks about work, which is, how do we then create things that are sort of legacies of us from a physical perspective in society? When she talks about action, which is a sort of, from my understanding, moving towards identity, development, self expression, maybe some of that more sort of transcendental type of stuff, self expression that comes out at higher levels of motivation. Now, as we've been speaking, I've just been wondering if, when we have a bullshit job, if there's a chance that all we're doing is labor. So the only thing we're really getting out of these jobs is labor. We're not even getting the privilege of doing the work aspect from our dance perspective. So So while we might get paid well, we get paid with all this stuff that exceeds our need for labor creation. So like, what do we do with all that stuff? We just end up in this funny, funny place where we're not even giving work or in the position to create work, let alone create action. Does that kind of make sense as a it makes absolute sense. So I'm gonna

use so Richard Sennett, and he was Hannah Aaron's protege. So he published a lot of interesting stuff. One of them is, it's about craftsmanship. So when he talks about, you know, doing crafts that could, you know, could be a work. It could be a woodworker, steel worker, it doesn't matter what, what, what we're talking about is he has a theory that, as we do work, because he, he, he's debunking this myth that doing, for example, manual labor, it's meaningless, because you're just, you know, working with their hands. But it says, No, that's it's the opposite, because when this worker, when this labor, he's doing this work, we're not just doing work. We are thinking about the work that we're doing, and we're constantly thinking on how to do it better, either because we want to save time, or we want to produce more, but we are actively engaged cognitively in saying, Okay, this could be better. This process could be better. This you know, this material could be better. So as we do labor, we are thinking about that labor, and we're trying to make it better. Now that is because I'm creating something so I can see the results of my thinking, and they're going to be put into practice, into making something better. And that gives meaning, right? When you can see there's a there's a sense of accomplishment, and this is a very powerful thing. The problem with with a bullshit job is you tend not to do that as much, because either you don't appropriate, you're not fully appropriated with that work, or you're just doing because of the money. So why would I bother? And you know, that's, that's that creates a kind of a void in whoever is doing that kind of job. And that, in its sense, it's a psychological violence, you know, it will come to money is good, feel good. Ha, ha, ha, I can get nice clothing. It will come to a point where, and it's inevitable, I'm talking to friends and family. What do you do? And that's when people joke about it. Oh, I have this cousin who is a doctor. The other one is, is, you know, a very important person as a social worker doing work with the city. Okay, and here I am doing this, which I don't see the point so, and that's one of the anecdotal evidence that grabbers has in his books, is people say I feel embarrassed talking about my job. As a matter of fact, I try to actively avoid talking about my job. And that is one indication that this is a form of a violence, and that's why I like about de jure, because he puts work as a fundamentally anthropological definition. It's the mediation between the individual and the society, right? More often than not, people ask you when I'm going golfing, for example, first question is, what's your name? Second question is, what is it that you do? And some people have some criticism about that, but people do that because they want to have a sense of who you are and how do you contribute. Of course, they don't ask like that, but when you express that, it gives them a perception or an image. Okay, let me I think I know what you do. So when you have a bullshit job, if and that's when the people that contributed to grabbers said, I feel embarrassed talking about my job. So they they are very vague, and they're like, oh, you know, I'm kind of in between. I'm transitioning. I'm doing this now, so that's a sign that you're probably in a bullshit job.

Yeah. Do you like it feels to me like a lot of these bullshit jobs have come about because the structures that we create that to find the way that we work and so on. And yet it feels, at the same time like, like people are embarrassed about these things now, and loads of people, from my sort of anecdotal insight, are looking at being braver with quitting and doing different things. Do you feel like our sense of what we need from work is changing? I mean, I guess it feels like, in my naive you maybe if you went back 30 years ago, or 50 years ago, some of these jobs would be celebrated, and, you know, people would be pleased with that. Do you think there's like, I'm sure that's a perpetual change in all these things. But do you think there's been a change over the last half century in how we relate to and what we look for when it comes to jobs like this,

I do think so, and especially when you look at, you know, there's this, this classic distinction that de jure does about job, and says there are two, two types of work. One is the prescribed work, which is, you know, when you're hired by an organization, for example, going to tell you, Okay, this is the role. This is what you do. And we all know right now when, especially when you have enough work experience, we all know this is just the tip of the iceberg, because there is so much that is not there that you have to do. And this is what this you call the real work. So the real work is actually what you do, and the prescribed work is how the job was designed, the job description, the job analysis and all that. But we know that for now, especially because change is so fast, job descriptions, they become obsolete overnight, right? And all of a sudden, oh, by the way, we have to have someone taking care of this. Is it written anywhere? No, is it out there? Do we have a problem solver that will would take that, and you have people that are going to raise their hands and go? So now, I think, especially organizations, they are, they're becoming more acceptable that it's really hard to prescribe all the work, which means they have to rely more on creativity, more on innovation, more on human potential. So and it's, it's less about your credentials and you know, and all that stuff. So I think this is causing a a very relevant shift in in the psychological contract between employees and organizations, because as things becomes more volatile, more ambiguous, you know that you're going to need more humans cooperating with you if you want to achieve that. And people know that too. They know that they're going to be hired for a job, and the job is not going to be fully what you expect, because it might change next week. Oh, guess what? We are starting a new business unit, and we need someone to so this whole gray area, it's going to create this new space for employees and employers to negotiate. What is the psychological contract? What I expect of you and what you can expect to me in return? Now, in the 80s, this psychological contract was, you come work for me. That's the employer. You come work for me. I ask of you loyalty. You're not going to jump ship. In return, I'm going to pay you a very fair salary. You're going to have you can, you know, build your house, buy your cars, raise your kids. But. Now employers can no longer do that, and employees know it. And that's the shift. You know, the career is like self managed career, and the pertinent career, because employees know that employers cannot offer that anymore, and employers know that the employees have some leverage now, because they are, they are the one, and that's the knowledge economy, right? It's they have to offer this, and I, I have to create a this, this fair environment to keep them afloat. With me.

Yeah, fascinating. So, so it does feel like there is more power choice, something like that, at the disposal of employees, and that means that we maybe don't need to just absorb these things. And maybe there's been a little bit of a tipping point along the line where people start to speak out, and then we probably have a bit of social pressure around, you know, people maybe frowning a bit on the golf course. If somebody tells you what they do and you're like, yeah, well done. You know what I mean, you can, you can see that stuff kind of, kind of appearing how, let's talk a little bit about the experience of people in in these bullshit jobs. So we've talked a little bit about, you know, maybe being embarrassed about your job, not talking about it on a golf course. Talk talked about things like that in terms of impacts on things like maybe subjective well being, which I know some that you care about or other impacts on individuals. What does it feel like? What does it mean to me if I end up in a job that feels like a bullshit job to me?

let's say I am in a bullshit job, and let's say I had to take this job because, just because I needed right at the time I needed the money, so I It doesn't mean I will not do the job. As a matter of fact, I will try my best to do a good job. The problem is with time and with my interactions with my colleagues, and I realize that I'm in a job that it's giving me nothing aside from from the money, what's going to happen? Is I have several strategies, and we we are We humans are very clever. We have great defense mechanisms to cope with those things. But the problem is, I can only do that for a period of time. So can I endure having a bullshit jobs. Yes, I can. I can come up with rationalizations that will help me, you know, get through it for some time. The problem is, after a while, it's almost like unsustainable like, you know, you can turn a blind eye for a little while, but you cannot do it forever. So either you're using this job as a platform to give you some financial stability while you look for something better, or I, if I have to remain in this job, I will get sick. I will with time, I will get sick. I will start and you know, the psychosomatic field that's presents us with a variety of symptoms from, you know, losing hair, skin rashes, all the way to have, you know, stomach problems and all that stuff. And that's why the I like the psychosomatic, because you have, when you have stomach problems, they will tell you you're having a difficult time to digest some things, and this could be your job. So I think people are clever enough to navigate the bullshit jobs. But they will, they will not stop, you know, looking behind the wall, what's in it for me, what's the next step? And if I have, if I absolutely have to stay in this job, because I'm, you know, I have some financial constraints, my body, my psyche, will suffer with time. So those are the people that will have a big hit in their mental health. Let me give you one example. Well, people that commit suicide at work, at work, I'm, I'm talking about committing suicide at the work site. So this is a, this is a sim, this is a symptom and a message. It it's like, you know, here's the message to you, I because I wanted to commit suicide at my work site. I want you to know that you caused this, you know, that's, that's, that was, that was on you, and I couldn't get away. So I'm taking to the extreme here. But this stuff happens when you see, in big corporations, sometimes people tend to, you know, especially the PR people, they tend to, you know, put a blanket on it, because they don't want people talking about but this stuff happens, and it's more often than we think. Yeah, that's interesting. That's that's kind of the consequences of enduring for too much, yeah, especially when your defense mechanism stop, when, when it stop, stops working? Yeah.

It feels like every time we face into one of these situations. And where we are in a bullshit job. It depletes us. If we carry on, we just get worn down and worn down and worn down. And I guess eventually something's got to got to go, yes. And I imagine there are some people who deplete at different rates, and there's some people who value the financial contribution of some of these things more, but they're still, I'm sure, going to be a cost to that. So that's interesting. So I guess we said at the very beginning that it's important to separate the job from the person. So how do we, like hold that, right? They're going to be people who may be listening to this are like, No, I'm an abortion job. It's dreadful. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. How do we separate that, you know, value of a person and their potential and ability from the job that they've ended up? How do we hold that as individuals? Yeah, that's

a good question, and that you got to remember that the job, usually, most jobs in corporations, they are design. It comes from somewhere, from the structure, from, you know what temporary business need. So the job is designed to fulfill a an organizational need. The person doing the job, even though they are the temporary placeholder for all those activities that will take place, it doesn't mean that they are the job. So especially when we're talking about the bullshit job, sometimes you're just just talking about someone who has to fill in to do some stuff, and that's it. But it doesn't mean that this person is fully on board or they, you know, they believe in that. So sometimes it's just a mere transactional relationship, right? I need to do this. I know it's going to be temporary, and then I'm going to move away as soon as I can. So the job is one thing, the occupant is a completely different thing. So I would say, if you think that you are in a bullshit job right now, don't beat yourself up, because this job was created by someone which was probably not you, because if you had the opportunity, you would never go for a job like that, and you know it. So don't beat yourself up. But I would say also, don't ever step stop questioning what is that you want for your future, because we do have so many opportunities, especially now, when people are reassessing what they want for their lives, what they want to do, and people are actively taking pay cuts to do jobs that they enjoy more, because they realize, you know, well, what if? What's going to happen if I take, you know, a 10k cut, is that really the end of the world? And they're realizing it's not. So it's a good time to re evaluate, to reassess, what is it that you want for your life? Yeah,

and what, what is the price of subjective Well, being right like, maybe to be 25% more well off in yourself is worth 1010, grand a year. Maybe that's the transaction that that people are thinking about, um, as you were speaking, I was also thinking about, you know this, this sort of the sort of emergence of bullshit jobs. And it feels to me like some jobs sort of morph by stealth into bullshit jobs. You might go into a job and it's like a good job, and then as things evolve over time, it just turns into maybe a bullshit job. So so you might go in with great intentions and into a great place, and then, you know, the people around you change, your organization changes, and you find yourself on this treadmill of churning out meaninglessness.

Yes, the one thing I like about again, I'm going to bring the juice to the conversation, because he talks about when we are in a in a corporation, we were in at work, there are, there are two forms of suffering at work, as he puts it, there is the creative suffering, and there's the negative, the destruction suffering. So whenever you find yourself in a place where, and what he calls suffering, it by, by no means is it means that a negative thing is more about, you know, anguish of you know, the butterflies in your stomach that you feel when you're the term, that's what he calls creative suffering, yeah. So you have this massive problem ahead of you, but you're at the same time, you're kind of excited to tackle that problem. You don't know where to go, because there's no man, it's a novelty, that autonomy, that sense of, I can do this and I can give it a stab at that's what he calls creative suffering, and that's beautiful when you have autonomy to do that. But there's also destructive suffering, which means I have to do a job, and even if I know how to do this job better, I cannot raise my hand and say, Hey, there's a better way of doing this, because I can get punished by that. So I have little autonomy, little ownership about what is it that I do? And that is a psychological violence. Yes, because imagine yourself day in and day out. You know, you're in a in a Sunday night, and you're ready to press because, you know, there's a full week of this, and you don't know how to, of course, this person is the first sign that I the first opportunity that I have to not go to work. Oh, I'm going to take it. I know, if I can, you know, try to work the law in my favor, to not go. I will not go. So people tend to fail. They fail to see this as a symptom of a job, that it's either a bullshit job or it's a job, that it's the the activity itself, because it cannot be changed. The only way to do this would increase the transactional element. So for example, if you have a job and you know there's there's little autonomy, how do you keep these people going? Well, you have to increase pay, you have to increase benefit, you have to give it more money, because that's a trade off. Whereas, if I'm in a complex job, the reward is not the money itself. Is not the compensation itself. It's more the autonomy and creativity that you can exert, and that is enjoyable if you are up to the task, and if you have, of course, the cognitive capacity to take care of that problem. Yeah, that's why, you know, I think this is very interesting when it comes to bullshit jobs, because you can, can you have a bullshit job? Yeah. Are you willing to pay for that bullshit job? And most employers are going to say, no, yeah. There's

a lot of stuff I'd like to explore. I've got two questions I'm going to sort of run with, and then I might sort of close it bring us to the end of a conversation, just in the interest of time. One question, I'm going to say both questions, so I try and remember them, and then we'll come back to them. One, I want to, want to speak about pay and purpose in bullshit jobs as an area. And then two, I want to ask about the sort of job design piece. And then how could you maybe create a job that didn't feel like a bullshit job over any key points, I'd like to finish with that. But if I go back to this first point around purpose, and I guess the opposite of a bullshit job, to some extent. So you know, there you were very much talking about how, if we have a bullshit job, we need to compensate people for going through that violence associated with it, whatever language we want to use, it's not a very nice thing to have. You need to be, in some instances, really smart to do it. Maybe not, but whatever, it's not a good thing. I'm gonna have to pay you. And this is a transaction. This is compensation. Now, on the other side, there are loads of jobs that are really purposeful, and so we've got some where they're outside of a labor market, so caring, at home, whatever. I don't want to talk about those, but we have some that are sort of gray labor in the volunteer sector, and we have some that are paid labor, but in very purpose driven world. So professional caring is very purpose driven. I believe, a lot of the third sector, the charity work, is very purpose LED. Now an observation that I, I think holds true, is that when people have jobs that are highly purpose oriented, that they are compensated through purpose, and potentially, as a result, are underpaid financially. Yes, what do you think about that balance? What does that mean for our relationship with purpose, and how do we fight that, that nastiness in there? Yeah. And

this is, this is the problem. This is why I personally have a problem with, Oh, you gotta do what you love, yeah. And if you do what you love, you know, everything is going to sort it out. Well, you know, ask the teachers in especially in some countries like the US, is notoriously, they're under underpaid, and they're, you know, they have two or three jobs. They do it out of love. There's a there is a purpose there, and they know it. The problem is, this could become a source of exploitation by the ones that were making the policies like, oh, you know, they're going to do it. They love it. And I kind of create a threshold to how much I can stretch to put these people under, you know, very bad conditions of work, and they will endure it. And I would say if, if this is the case, then that's a major career trap, right? You should not do what you love, or even if you do what you love, you have to be properly compensated for it. Does that happen all the time, absolutely not, and in some places, we know that primary caregivers are underpaid, teachers are underpaid, firefighters are, in some cases, underpaid, and that's the problem with again, to grabers criticism, who are the people that are getting paid the big, big, Big Bucks. So is it a person that, if your house is on fire, for example, that person working in the, you know, the top tier financial market is that the person is gonna No, but the guy, or the the girl that's gonna save you from the fire, they are getting underpaid. And that's gravers criticism, which. I find it interesting about when he talks about bullshit jobs. So these people at the top over there, they're getting paid, sometimes obscene amount of money. And you could argue, what are they actively producing? They are producing something for, you know, the top tier layer of the society that, you know, the 1% or half percent, whatever we want to call and that's the problem. And that's a big, big problem with our society, because you're you're driving people to think that either if they're doing this kind of job, they should be underpaid, because that's just the way it is, or if you want to get the big money, then forget about your degree. You have to go here. You have to go to the accumulation of capital. You have to work for, you know, big banks and wealth and all that stuff. What's, what's going to be the outcome in, you know, let's say, 50 to 100 years, what's going to happen? We're going to have this massive abstract amount of debt, you know, gravitating around our heads. And then what? And then we don't have good services. We don't all of a sudden, our cars are not going to be reliable anymore. You know, the plumbing to our house is going to suffer. And, you know, the world road work that we need, what's going to happen. And that's the problem is you're looking at, and I'm sorry if I seem catastrophic here, but it's, you know, kind of a mental exercise. You're almost like creating a NEO feudalism, where you know, again, you have the you know the holders, the you know the Lords, and you have all the the rest that have to work for the Lords. That's a big problem.

Yeah, yeah. And that's the sort of the language I hear around that is the rise of a precariat, and those types of roles where, yeah, you're in that really precarious space, which is, which is difficult. And I guess this conversation could go into things like, you know, universal basic income and larger structural reform. But I'm gonna, I'm gonna pull us back to jobs and hopefully chat a little bit about the job design piece so, so if we pull it back, if we think about, or, I guess we've talked a little bit about people who may be in these roles themselves, and what what it might feel like, and you know, to some extent, what you might do, or what you willing to sacrifice for these roles. If somebody out there is in a in a situation where they're maybe leading a team or an organization, and they're thinking about the teams that they have, and if they want to create a job that's not a bullshit job. What might they do to, I guess, bake a little bit of difference into their roles.

I think one, I like, one framework that is kind of the answer to this new way of organizing work, which is the competency framework. So if you're hiring people based on what is it that they can bring to the table? You know, what are your What are your skills? What, what kind of a problem solving abilities can you bring to the table? And instead of, you know, trying to box you into, this is what you're going to do, as in opposition of that we can do. Oh, by the way, we have Mary here, and she's awesome at this. So whenever we need a problem with this, Mary can help us out. And that's a way of you know, you know you're employing your your best self, your best skills, to help you know your peers and everything, as opposed to say, Okay, let's look at the the boxes in the organizational chart, and let's create how much budget, you know, what? What's the budget we have? Let's create some jobs here. Oh, by the way, you know, we're going to need a new secretary for this position. So the question is, is this absolutely essential? Is this something that, or is this something that this person could do? And by the redistribution, the division of this labor, we can manage this without this job. That's, that's the one thing I believe it's, it's fundamental. I remember about 10 years ago, I was consulting for a big bank, and one of the major crisis, believe it or not, was when they were having a restructuring work, and I remember each of the top executives, they had one secretary, right? So the bank was restructuring, and in order to downsize, cut costs, and all the language that you probably know, they said, Okay, here's what we're going to have. We're going to have one secretary is going to be shared with all, Oh, my goodness, that was a big commotion. So the the top executive, they were offended, because that meant I'm not important anymore in their, you know, their perception. I'm not a big, you know, I'm not the big kahuna anymore. What are people are going to think about it? So, you mean, I have to book my own flights. That's outrageous. So I have so they had one secretary to handle all essential problems for the business. But, you know, think of yourself as a topic. I had my own secretary, you know, and I can delegate even stuff like. You know, who's gonna pick up my kids at school? Oh, they gonna do take care of that, because I'm too fortunate to take care of that. So that was a big commotion. I remember the people on the bottom, they were looking at us like, Oh, boy. So it sends us such a strong signal, you know? And I think when people ask me, I think this is very beneficial. I know people are going to lose their jobs, and that's not the point here, but which is terrible for them. But look, that means this whole time one secretary could be doing this, and this executives could be taking care of this, you know, this stuff themselves. But there was a this is one classic example of how we can think about job designs in in ways that which we don't have to necessarily put, you know, one person just to handle all this stuff. And again, let's separate the secretary. I don't mean that secretaries are useless. They are very useful, but sometimes, in some positions, the way they are, the job is designed, that's not, it's not

the case at all. Yeah, I just just, I was smiling as you're saying all about I've interviewed exact same thing in terms of restructuring of senior support, right? I mean, the battles that exist, the Fife terms that are cut down as a result. So it's fascinating. Okay, well, I think that's really helpful. Hopefully that gives listeners a real sense of bullshit jobs, and we've managed to broaden that out a little bit more. We've covered loads of really great stuff in there. So I would just like to say thank you very much, and ask if you could let people know how they could learn a little bit more about you and the things that you're working

on. Well, I'm, yeah, I'm on Twitter, Raphael choosey. You can find me easily. I don't think you're gonna have a lot of Raphael chooses out there. One of the perks of having uncommon last name and all that. So I'm on Twitter, or if you go to University of Toronto web page, you're gonna find information about me there as well, and that said, I'm happy to connect at all times. Love good conversations. Brilliant.