The Rise of BULLSH*T Jobs 

My job pays $dirt/hour but it is a good job. 70 weekly hours are barely enough. I'm a gym cleaner and I've basically taken over the storage room and turned it into an organized functional place with an employee lobby in it with a floor clean enough to walk barefoot on. The studio rooms are always cleaned and organized to the level of perfection whenever I'm working there. All equipment fits nice and organized. If a member wants a certain weight, they will know exactly where it will be and can grab it as soon as they see it. The instructors and students often thank me for my high quality cleaning. Whenever I do something here, I'm proud of the results I see. Meaningful work is too good to give up

I think for much of history, one knew the fruit of one's labour; you worked on a farm or in the army, a carpenter/blacksmith/potter, a dockworker, hunter/fisherman etc. You knew the community and co-workers. Now, many just type info into computers all day collaborating with people they never meet. We go home and sit in front of box, again. Nothing grows, nothing made, nothing to be proud of.

I quit my "corporate" job coz I realized after long that you're just another seat and easily replaceable. I once told my ex-boss that I am learning a foreign language to add to my skills and she made a mocking statement and thereafter she would make some lame jokes on me for that. Typical Indian "leader". After 5 long years, I called it quits. A risk it was but I am happy with that decision. No more negative energy from any "corporate" douchebag anymore.

A++ Video, to be fair I haven't watched a single video from you that was a waste of time.

Jobs these days have become so high level and so abstract that it's difficult to feel the value of what you do

Dude spot on. I'm a consultant in IT, and going into my 6th year soon, making more money than I ever have and it's strange, because the tasks I do are stupid and have little impact or outcome on society... and then that turns into a vicious cycle of you feeling like an imposter or guilty for earning that much money, while having so much flexibility or free time... In about the 4th year in I started noticing after being to enough organisations that it was ALL the same. Read Graeber's BS jobs book earlier this year and yep, nailed it. So now I am using my free time, during work (since I can get all my tasks done in a fraction of the work week) to skill myself up, build a business and hopefully leave this prison one day :)

I have so much screen time on this video 😍😍😍

The irony is as you get older and gain experience from "remedial" jobs means that settling in a cosy office, getting closer to management and doing less physical work for a bigger pay cheque is like the natural order of things. Who wants to be a binman or tradesman in their 40's and 50's?! Much of the aging workforce will prefer a BS job, however also i don't see a problem in not working, i would happily retire as early as possible and get into your hobbies not what someone wants from you to benefit them..

i was thinking this just the other day. i work in finance and... to be honest... im not really sure what i do. I open trust funds for banks.. or something. all i know is im working with a bunch of numbers and foreign banks. yet i get paid fairly well... for the little amount of work i do. but one day i went to five guys and it was packed. dozens of people ordering food and these poor teenage and college students were scrambling, cooking burgers, taking orders from angry customers... they work so much harder than i do yet they get paid much less... its all so strange

Full-time Cap is really going to town on that RU-vid algorithm with his regular uploads. This guy will one day be the King of RU-vid.

You put down in words something I've been trying to articulate for years. I mostly do blue collar work (Truck Driving) but I've done white collar work that was maddening because I kept asking, "What is this accomplishing? We're literally throwing away money with these programs!" UGI Corp has a program called the, "Purple Star Program" specifically for employee recognition. The program costs millions of dollars every year to implement. It does nothing for the company, and ( this part is anecdotal ) is not wanted by the employees it recognizes. Teams of people work on it, and it does nothing. It blows my mind.

This really voices the concerns I have with most coprorate jobs. The world is so convoluted now that it's hard to actually deliver value to people in these roles

I was just listening to Cal’s audio book you referenced this morning and then watched your video. I’ve come to terms with the “passion hypothesis” and jumping from job to job trying to find your ideal/dream job isn’t the best thing to do. It’s hard to break out of the hustle culture mindset for us gen Y’s. Bohanes’ hierarchy of career fulfilment 1. Be mentally and physically healthy 2. Get an income 3. Have a plan 4. Follow your passion (if you must)

I started a house cleaning business a few months ago. I love detailing showers and deep dusting houses. It feels like art and is incredibly fufilling.

Cap 2020: "Grateful for my SalesForce consultant Job" Cap 2021: Quit his job: "F*CK CORPORATE OFFICE JOBS"

My lowest paying jobs (retail in college) honestly felt more fulfilling than many of the bullshit corporate jobs I've had.

As a young person entering the job market in the 90's I quickly found out that it didn't matter WHAT you knew, It only mattered WHO you knew. Thanks.

I became a bicycle mechanic over the pandemic, and it was the most fulfilling job I ever had.

At work I once had to rewrite a Standard Operating Procedure document-- it took me months of back and forth, emails and meetings, different tracked change versions and resolving questions and comments from other departments on my rewrite of this SOP. Finally I got it finalized, but it didn't matter, because nobody enforces SOPs, so nobody follows it, and there are no consequences for not following it. The worst part was I had to act like rewriting this SOP was such an accomplishment for me and my department. I felt this video in my soul.

great video. My last job was utterly pointless but my boss kept harping on how important the work i was doing was. When I got redeployed to another group due to budget cuts, i saw just how valuable my job was. I just quit a few months ago

I’ve worked blue collar jobs my whole life but I’m currently working on getting qualified to move into a white collar field in order to help me advance in my RU-vid and investing goals. I think white collar/corporate jobs are best to be “used” as a stepping stone to achieve your bigger goals because, your right, They aren’t fulfilling and meaningful in the long run. This reminds me of an earlier video you made about getting a work from home job as a means of funding your artistic passion.

Carl Icahn told a story about a train/logistic company he once bought. There was a whole white collar department that he could not understand what they were doing. He hired a consultant firm to figure it out, they couldnt. He then sat with the operation exec, the exec that had the most contact with the actual day to day business of trains and moving goods. The exec told Carl that the whole department was nothing more then paper pushers. The day after, Carl fired the whole department, twelve floor of people in NYC... The business continued running like nothing happened..

This video explains why I left the finance world and banks cause its literally everything you explain as a "bullshit job". Engineering is more rewarding, and makes you actually think on a daily bases.

The way I motivate myself in my "bs" job is that I develop the skills to automate the grunt work/eliminate the useless tasks. I found comfort in knowing that my co workers and myself wont have to spent so much time on the dumb stuff.

The biggest problem with the corporate jobs is that you are forced to sit in a cubicle and fill time, and there is nothing in the cubicle or in the office that shows you HOW to fill all that time.

As someone who’s been in the “helping” profession for the past 7 years, it is even more numb-minding and devaluing. I’m dying to get out. It’s made me depressed, drained, and left me feeling used. Be careful what you find “meaningful” and what you sacrifice. Some people can do it. I got sick of 30k/year salaries and costant emotional burnout.

"Education" plays a role in this. The idea that these corporate jobs require degrees and the blue collar ones do not seems to contribute to the idea that one is worth more than another in theory, getting paid well with benefits, etc. While these seemingly "unskilled" job provide true direct and measurable value but "anyone" can do it. It's still bothersome, and I think there's probably some supply and demand here. Given the fact that there's a extreme shortage of people needing to be in the workforce may mean we see a shift in these unskilled jobs having higher pay and better benefits in order to appeal to people. We can only hope that is the outcome at least.

18:23 - "acquire fulfillment regardless of the job you're in" That's what I started doing after working for 2 years in my "BULLS***" job, where it pays very, very, VERY well, but it feels pointless at the end of the work day. So I decided to work on RU-vid, develop personal skills, and to make time for my hobbies, and then my life started to be a bit satisfying, at least for the part where I'm not at my day job. Don't get me wrong I don't "HATE" my day job, I actually enjoy it, but I don't feel any sense of accomplishment at the end of the day.

These insights came at the perfect time. Right now I've had almost nothing to do at my corporate job. Getting paid to do nothing is very dissatisfying in the long run.

Had the similar kinda discussion with my parents yesterday. The main reason people stay in corporate is money ,if you give anyone an out with 1 cr he/ she would be happy to do quit and start pursuing what they want. Another reason is everything we do in corporate is virtual, there's no physicality here like the furniture example you gave.❤️❤️. Love from India!!.. P.S-- Please try to collab with JONHY HARRIS once . You both are my favourite

As the official translator into Spanish (for Spain), I fully recommend the book in which this video is based: Bullshit Jobs, by David Graeber, is a fascinating eye-opener, and absolutely a must read.

"lower-order" work such as cooking, building a home, farming, hunting and gathering, is inherently meaningful.

Even though I’m not making money off my RU-vid channel, I find myself in the same spot you feel about feeling inadequate if I perceive a video as “not being good enough”. It’s a concept I’m learning to unlearn (ironic) that even if I find later on ways I could have made that video better, it doesn’t make the original video meaningless. Furthermore, not every video has to be super impactful. I fell there’s a lot of pressure for artists especially to create something revolutionary, that we forget to simply create even if the result is a simple product

I left my first corporate job recently, I worked there for 3 years. I have no more savings. No money to live off and pay the bills or we are homeless. Unfortunately I'm stuck looking desperately for another job. Nobody wants me, and the only jobs available are 12-14hr jobs in warehouse or call center, never touching those jobs. I just can't take it or I just wouldn't want to live anymore. I'm just stressed and anxious 24/7. I have a chronic illness which makes everything harder. Nobody cares. I've tried everything possible to make money, even stupid things. I run multiple online businesses, have multiple RU-vid Channels, I spent all my savings on trying to become a voice actor, which was my passion and the most i've made in a year is $30. I worked so freaking hard, even during my full time job all I did was grind outside of my job. I can't do this anymore, how do people live like this. My whole family thinks i'm a disgrace as I left a good paying job, but it was super toxic and stressful. Constant deadlines, daily meetings and managers making you stay unpaid overtime. I'm only 23. I can't do this for another 40+ years. I wish I knew what to do... I'm burned out from my passion, all I do is voice acting for free nowadays and I'm too busy nowadays to even take on small paid jobs. Just sick of this bullshit society.

Hitting the nail on the head, and it's not even "bullsh*t jobs" at this point but bullsh*t tasks even within a meaningful job.

The furniture building thing: construction work / house builders are often cited as one of the highest fulfillment jobs. Because you can see every house you built in the end. Every project has a visible, tangible, practical / useful result.

"What do you do for a living?" "Pretend to be busy"

I am so glad you made this video. Been doing a BS job for 5 years and will hopefully soon quit. These types of jobs are sucking out the soul out of people.

What I learned today is that there's a phrase "touch tactically" and I'm totally going to steal it 😂 Jokes aside this video hits right in the feels. Recently I've been struggling to find meaning in my work as a software engineer. I also agree that it has to do something with all our work being digital and seeing no tangible results in front of us. I've also been pondering with the idea to start making furniture in my free time as a hobby. There's just something special about working with wood and other materials, shaping them with your own hands to produce some final product.

I've got an Econ degree from a top-tier state university, and I had enough of the BS investment space. I got real about what I wanted out of a job, and became a trucker. And I love it. If feels so right to blindside back a trailer or can into a narrow spot. Skills baby, for the people!

I’m a forensic analyst! Everything I do matters mate.

This is actually why I became a programmer. I think this is THE blue collar job of the 21st century. I learn every day, I build meaningful websites/apps, and at the end of the day I have sth. to point towards.

I worked a job at a huge pharmaceutical. Their #1 division was diagnostics, not pharma, although they do make billions from pharma because that division is so huge, too. It was just one huge moneymaker. The place was just soaked in huge amounts of money because of successful lobbying on the part of their lobbyists controling our government. They rigged the system so that this pharmaceutical would always see massive profit margins no matter what. My job was crucial to the corporation, yet completely pointless to me. It had no worth whatsoever once I punched my timecard and left the facility. People asked me what I did and I couldn't even tell them because it meant nothing to the outside world. However, when I told them who I worked for, they would always say, "That's a great big corporation! Cool!" But it wasn't cool. It was mind numbing. Basically, I was just a cog in the wheel. My job was to be a technician who repaired equipment for the manufacturing line. Every minute that line was down meant that thousands of dollars were being lost. But none of that meant a thing to me because I would never see those millions. I would see a meaningless hourly wage that would give me just enough money to buy food and pay the rent so I could come back to work the next day and make even more money for the billionaires who controlled the whole operation. And how did they ensure that they would make billions more per year? Dirty lobbying in our nation's capitol. You get the point of what I am saying here- you're really just a cog in that wheel. The corporation itself doesn't want you to know how they fix the game. They want to keep you in the dark. They don't want any of that type of information flowing down to the workers. The game is fixed. They just want you to know enough so that you can come back to work for that hourly wage and make sure their billions of dollars will be guaranteed. Once you realize that you are at the bottom of the structure and you do not share in their rotten and fixed billionaire profit scheme, you lose motivation. You feel like you are being screwed. YOU want a piece of that pie, too! YOU are doing all of their work. You realize that the guys on top don't really have ANY special skills other than lobbying. You have more skills than they have. The CEO's and division vice presidents are merely high paid lobbyists. And that's it. They lobby and they have many people who work for them who lobby and the lobbying is what guarantees their extreme wealth year after year. They have no real worth in society. They make no sacrifices to make society better. Their only goal is to profit for themselves. Their whole day consists of meetings and very expensive lunches with division vice presidents and our government to ensure their price fixing scheme will always be in place.

You said it, having a BS job that pays well and isn't hard is GREAT!! You can focus on your family and invest time in hobbies and whatever else you REALLY want to do. I've thought and even attempted trying to make one of my hobbies that I love into a way to earn a living or even a 'side hustle' but in my experience that takes a lot of the joy out of the hobby. If I need to worry about feeding myself and my family from a hobby that I love, it's becomes less a lot fun and my creativity is stifled from the pressure. Just my 2¢

You make a fair argument that blue collar jobs are (for the most part) important, and how we would all instantly recognise if those jobs went missing. Can we not make the argument that the white collar jobs despite seemingly begin "useless" are actually important in the larger picture? The point I'm trying to make is, when you have a complex system like a company, people who may do relatively useless jobs in effect are a crucial part even though each individual job may not seem to be performing meaningful work.

I was happier as a janitor than as the office worker I am now.

As someone working in public education on a team constantly solving more critical problems on shrinking budgets, this video is infuriating. Part of me is wondering why neighbors and friends don’t ever discuss how simple their meaningless high paying jobs are. But if you are someone with a BS jobs making over $85,000, you wouldn’t tell anyone how good you have it. My question is do people with high paying BS jobs laugh at those of us struggling in a difficult low-paying career? Am I a sucker?

This perfectly describes my previous career. I’ve been so inspired by RU-vidrs that I managed to escape it and now run my own business. Thanks for talking about this! I hope it helps people to look for more meaning in their work 💗

I work in a bank, in prudential reporting. You could argue that the more complex the reporting becomes, the safer people's savings are and the shareholders' capital is less exposed to risks. So that gets me going purpose wise. Plus it's like playing a game where you have to solve problems, nevermind how important that solution is in the grand scheme of things. But yes, maybe in the larger picture we should be making stuff instead of these fine tuning jobs (at best, BS at worst). This means that the centre of the world has moved to places like China, India, Bangladesh, Vietnam or Indonesia and we in the west live in a sort of Matrix where thankfully at least we (very few of us for the rest) produce our own food and , for now, some do very important research. But it fucking scares me when I see how the stuff that was made locally in my city 100 (hell 30) years ago is imported from China or other places. It is very scary.

I work a corporate job as an “analyst,” but I’m lucky enough where leadership basically lets me make up my own job. They give me ad hoc requests and in return they give me freedom. As a result I’m able to investigate inefficiencies that most people aren’t even considering. I also almost never set meetings and work through the ones I am in. I also never ask for someone to align with me or give me data. I ask for they keys and get the data myself, or automate it if I can. I like the end of the video. I learn everything that I can. I’m a communications major, but I taught myself database management and coding in order to accomplish something that I would have otherwise needed someone else for.

Imagine this: When you are unemployed, you have to register somewhere, so that companys can see you are available and call you to work for them. Basically a recruitment firm belonging to the state. But the companys don't hire people by themselfes anymore, they use recruitment firms for that. So basically, you are on a list, to get on a list to maybe get a job, where you have to yeet 1/3 of your salary over to the recruitment company. And these recruitment companys are everywhere! With CEO's flexing in there Porsche's they payed with the money of actually hard working people. If someone told me that, when i was like 12 years old, i would instantly recognize it as a scam/stealing.

So true. My job requires logging into an account I don't use frequently every 28 days to keep it from being disabled requiring a series of emails and manager approvals to get the account re-enabled. I timed the process of just logging into the system to ping my account to activate it. It took 13 minutes on a SPEED RUN and responding to about 11 different authentication prompts with a combination of 8 pieces of information to authenticate.

The world is exploitative. And now I get the lab rat analogy.

wow, thanks for that. I just started a new job in IT with the aim of making enough money to do a phD. And I thought it was okay for me to do something that I am not genuinely intereted in if it pays well so that I can do something meaningful and creative the rest of the time. Now that I am 2-3 months in, I just realized that I can't do this shit. Coming from a working class family, I've worked all kinds of jobs to pay for my studies, including hard physical labor. But trust me, none of that gave such an intense feeling of doing something utterly meaningless and being completely redundant. Gonna quit that shit and become a teacher now. Thanks for this highly important video!

Well that was really something worth spending my 20 minutes to. Outstanding as usual

With regard to the points about management, as a former manager, i can honestly say being a manager is completely overrated. You not only give up control of your work, but you also have to deal with a lot of BS like hiring and retaining staff, coaching, team drama, employee screw ups, etc. etc. Not to mention office politics with other managers and senior management. I don't miss any of this, and I'm much happier as an individual contributor.

These BS jobs are SOUL SUCKING!! We are working from home and still sooooo many useless skype/zoom meetings. I had a breakdown this week after an 8 hour meeting & training. It really solidified my plan to quit. I am focused on ramping up my business income and plan to quit in less than 5 months once I get my bonus. I feel nothing but RELIEF now!

Great video. I can emphasize with this so much. I'm in this weird position where my work is, I think, meaningful for some people in the field (certainly our project manager feels so), but since I'm not really interested in the field and just slipped into the job, it doesn't feel like meaningful work *to me*. This led me to reduce my working hours further and further to make it bearable and have more time for my hobbies, at the expense of money. While I'm okay with my job at the moment, I think long-term I should look for something else that really does feel meaningful to me.

I am a data consultant working for a big IT company. I make 4-5 reports everyday which none reads. Setup meetings with other people talking about how to optimise data quality but no action happens and I am considered quite good at my job.

I define these jobs as grease jobs. The job is to make other people work better. No one thinks their car is running smoothly because of the grease in it but the absence of it will break down the system eventually. I disagree that these jobs are not important but they are definitely not as rewarding as you don't get the actual satisfaction of building something.

I just made the switch from white collar to blue collar. Spent most of my 20’s working as a software engineer/consultant. Got tired of it earlier this year and got my CDL to become a truck driver. Some observations: At every company I ever worked for in the white collar domain, a small number of people were responsible for all of the productive work. I can remember one engineer at the first company I worked at that solved all of the hard problems. I would spend a week trying to figure out something he would solve in 5 minutes. The talent distribution for cognitive labor is staggering. Magnus Carlsen can probably simultaneously beat at least 100 good chess players playing all of them at the same time. The best carpenter in the world is not more productive than 100 average carpenters. When the work gets closer to the physical world, the productivity differences start to flatten. Blue Collar work is more satisfying for me but it involves real danger. One thing I miss about my remote job is not having to worry about killing somebody by running into them with a 80,000lbs truck because I didn’t get enough sleep the night before. I’m sure this is also a concern for loggers, machinist, etc. On the flip side, the end of every work day is a celebration IMO. Did you get the stuff delivered on time without getting into an accident? If the answer is yes, then it was a good day.

Fellow programmer here and I got into woodworking and 3D printing for the exact reason of having some non-digital hobbies so that I felt that I was doing real things instead of everything being ephemeral

This problem is made even worse in a lot of wealthier countries like the U.S. because so many companies have outsourced their manufacturing to other, cheaper countries, so many of our corporate workers are basically just managing groups of foreign workers that actually build the product.

I'm so happy that you are now doing RU-vid full-time, your content is so amazing. I wish you nothing but complete success everytime I watch your videos.

If there was a time when I have to thank the algorithm for leading me to this video, it's now. You captured the feelings that I've been contemplating about since entering the workforce around half a decade ago. I've always had the impression where white collar jobs are just there to give people work, but not to give them anything else. For those who watch anime, the Dr Stone show really drove this home for me, where the majority of the most important roles in building human civilization were blue collar jobs and jobs that hardly changed since the time of the Egyptians. I'm a white collar worker and I constantly feel like this at work, if the world crumbles and reverts to medieval times, I would just be an intellectual unskilled laborer. Now working for the government, I can at least say that my work has meaning even if it contributes minimally in the grander scheme of things. So Captain Sinbad, thank you for this video, these are the content that I enjoy watching, it's thought provoking, well-made and timely.

You are definitely right about this being a first world problem, but I would take it a step farther because even within the first world most people aren’t at the point on Maslow’s hierarchy where they need to feel self-actualized. I worked in the food service industry and in retail for years before I got my current desk job and I would never go back. No I don’t feel self-actualized by my job but I don’t make my job my whole identity, and this job actually enables me to explore other interests and invest my time elsewhere outside of work whereas before I was so tired just from working these long hours for low pay that I couldn’t find fulfillment elsewhere because I just didn’t have the energy. I do feel more fulfilled now than I was before but it’s because my white-collar job is just a means to an end rather than the end itself.

I am a coder and I switched from a b2b company to a company that develops Emergency Room software. Now that my software really does literally affect life and death, it has been amazing. Supporting nurses and doctors in their work for the betterment of patients is extremely fulfilling. I am not earning as much as I could at some larger company, but the value of feeling valuable, is simply better.

I tried over and over to stick with a computer-based career (development/security/UX design) and could not deal with the lack of tangible results. Instead I became a goldsmith apprentice, built my own shop and taught myself how to blacksmith. I don't regret it one bit.

It also depends on the fact that few people feel valued or respected when they can the meeting &/or convene a meeting and can sit together to ideate and talk for length about the things at hand. Also for few this presents a opportunity to talk to people. As you mentioned there are many jobs which are not required but at the end of the day it helps pay bills and satisfy financial dreams. And in spare time they might be involved in pursuing what they truly love. Double whammy

What’s interesting is Marx referred to the experience of being detached from your labor and its fruits as “alienation”, and he discussed it in the context of industrialization. Technology and capital accumulation was making many blue-collar workers redundant, so they ended up doing progressively menial tasks instead. With the rise of service and digital economies, we’ve seen this problem for white-collar workers for decades. While capitalism may be the greatest engine of wealth accumulation and mass production, it also creates a spiritual desert that comes with people’s deepest needs, both materially and psychologically, being unfulfilled. This is all a sign that we need to move to a new system with an entirely new set of relations and societal goals. Anyway, thanks for the video! Loved the integration of Graeber and the honesty with which you went over your experiences.

Great video my man! Just wanted to add my thoughts- I believe you are more fulfilled when you innovate something on your own, take on more accountability and see that your results provide value to others. It was nice to see that you had similar opinions and this is what I try to tell people who are looking out for the “perfect meaningful job”. It is harder to find elsewhere and you can take steps to achieve it yourself. Let me know your thoughts Captain

12:46 I felt the same way. I started playing Warhammer 40k, and instantly began seeing the result of how hard i worked. Your attention and efforts show through the little miniatures you create You also see a product and “ time stamp” of your progress through playing the game as well as painting your models. Just a thought.

Thanks for the genuine and insightful advice captain. I'm about to start majoring in Strategic management and finance and my future goal was to climb that "corporate ladder". U have now made me question my entire existence lol but I've always felt like learning a trade as I felt it was an actual practical useful skill. I don't know what I'm going to do now but I hope I make the right decision

My friend is a "UI Designer" he does the same thing everyday, creating email marketing templates, which replaces one set of products, with the products his employer is selling. He basically plugs in the template to a software which automatically selects the products and replaces them. The software creates all the HTML tags and links, which he just fills in. He does this mindless easy work everyday and gets paid over 100k.

Was a caregiver, worked in a group home. Paid minimum wage to $14 an hour. This is still the wage today. People in these fields are not paid well enough.

The future of work will be increasingly decentralized and entrepreneurial as bs jobs are inevitable replaced by tech. Excited and optimistic about the possibilities!

"The psychological downside..." to all this bullshit 'work' is nothing less than the rending of our social fabric. We have come to understand the uselessness of most managerial high-salaried micromanaging powerful positions... staffed by those of little wisdom. Backslapping and rewarding such meaningless effort, while those who toil to create real value reap less than livable wages...this must end. It may end badly. Do not tell our productive workers - those who really carry the weight of this nation on their backs - that they need to rise up the ladder to greater success. No. That ladder leads to thin air, and will crumble without the real work of those standing firmly on their ground. This upside down dystopia can not be sustained. It will not be easily righted.

"My mom cooked for me, she made me ineffective". Gold.

Spent 3 years as part of a big project to create internal Facebook for a company. In the end, no one used it. Shocking. I quit. You can never find a job where you feel 100% of the time satisfied, but if you find in the end you had some impact on other people it may be worth it.

Every job in certain context are useful, even the ones you mentioned. Labeling certain jobs as bullshit and making them disappear is not the solution to all the inefficiencies that we see in the work force. What does help a lot in eliminating these inefficiencies is decentralization, leadership and much more. If you worked for a big a company you know that they fight like hell to extract every piece of value that they can squeeze and keeping these “bullshit jobs” simply doesn’t do that which at least to me shows that they have certain value. To summarize the bullshit jobs are not the problem, centralization, poor management, work politics and much more cause the problems we face

As a CEO of a startup i can tell you newsletter is important, It's an indirect PR stunt to impress investors that your company is action oriented. And the salary we pay you mostly comes from investors. Everything which looks useless in a company matters. Nothing is done without purpose. Love from India

I had one of those jobs to make a newsletter. Honestly, it was the best job I ever had. Total creative freedom to design it, source articles, write articles, and then handle all the distribution in print, email, and online. Best three months ever. The company was sold off to a competitor, and my job was over.

The largest creation produced by meaningless jobs is the influx of work they bring to the building trades. The constant remodeling and new buildings to house the ever growing number of useless jobbers, because they are chasing fads and cannot make a final decision keeps the trades in money. I’ve been in the building trades nearly my entire life (49 years old). I’ve never had a useless job. I create things. I build things that bring value and utility to people. I sleep like a dead man at night. The money is the reverse of what it should be. I have the skills to do corporate “work”, but choose something valuable. The upside to your soulless, corporate nightmare is: you’ll soon be replaced by a computerized robot. So there is hope on the horizon! When the Boomers die off, perhaps your meetings that should have been emails will vanish before your make work jobs? For HR, there will always be solicitation on the streets. 🤷🏼‍♂️

Yeah, I don't have a corporate job because I kinda realised it too. My interest is in understanding human psychology and the systems we create and the interdependency of systems. And if you really see, everything is interconnected. I love trying to get the big picture. And I've been into the stock markets since 2-3 years that make great use of my generalist mind. But what I don't understand is, how do companies hire all these bs job doers and pay them handsomely (as many are middle management)? Like, why would they take a hit on their profit margins? Private companies have no incentive to have each person stay employed. I can understand if the government did so.

Corporate (and academia) work life: when a 2 hour meeting was almost as productive as a single, well written email. 😜

To say that there's privilege in complaining about meaning in one's work is to totally miss the point. There's always some meaning to be found in bringing home the bacon however you do it, and I'd argue that that sense of meaning increases in non-first-world countries - regardless of the nature of the work - precisely because it's harder to do there. We complain about our work lacking meaning in the first world precisely because it's not that hard to get our bare material needs met here, and therefore our instinct for meaning aims higher on Maslow's hierarchy than just providing for family.

Thank you for this! My family wants me to become a doctor or lawyer or something (I may become a doctor though as I’m an EMT and love medicine) but my dream is really to become an aerobatic pilot

Try listening to any Robert Breedlove interview. His perspective on how time being exchanged for money is a form of slavery that is ingrained in our brains since ages. I've made more money than I've ever made... Majorly due to understanding exchanging time for money is idiotic. Especially if you;re smart - jobs should be a last resort if you have no option. So many amazing ways to make money these days if you know where to look and are realistic with demand and supply by being dispassionate towards how high the demand is in your desired field/industry.

The flip side of the coin to the BS corporate jobs are the get rich quick schemes/courses. Please be informed before making investment decisions whatever you decide to buy or leave your original, possibly, well paid job. Regardless, glad to see Captain Sinbad happy with this path since his NoFap videos.

My friends don't understand how a good paying job with benefits can drain you. They don't understand the frustration of sitting there thinking "this is all bullshit".

thanks for giving me more meaning to the physicality of my artwork with this. agree with the other commenters that your videos have always left me feeling capable of my will

I’m fairly new to web development/ coding. It brings me a lot of satisfaction spending hours or days building a website and problem solving. And then finally having a finished product that I can see and use and that anybody else can see and use. Almost like digital carpentry

What you stated is so true => Most people identify their self dignity with the work they do even though lot of people hate their jobs. That is even more true with Indians as they want to brag about their job positions during get togethers and family functions. That said, there are various factors that need considered when it comes to selecting a job. Commute time, work life balance, attending to family needs like picking up/dropping children, our career expertise areas vs learning involved in a job, congenial working environment, attitude of colleagues and manager, pay on par with your expertise etc. What I got maximum out of all these in a job was about 70-80%. I took one job which I knew was not favorable after six months and then left that job within an year. I then found a job where I stayed for next 8 years which met 80% of my expectations I listed above.

Good god, here I am begging for *A* job. And there are people out there complaining about a high-paying job with no “value.” I can’t pay my bills.

Most of this is due to the change in the American economy after WW II where they moved manufacturing overseas and in the process devaluing "manual labor" as the basis of the middle class lifestyle. As a result created a whole lot of extra positions for marketing, sales and other "service" kinds of positions for the US workforce along with positions to managing and tracking all these related activities which now require degrees or training for the same kind of middle class lifestyle. If all these things were done on site like they used to be, a lot of these extra positions wouldn't exist. And you can see this in all aspects of the economy. Take a microchip for example. The design work will be done from the US but then parts of that process are sent to other companies around the world and then once finished, these have to get sent to other companies in other places for manufacturing and then components get shipped to various places to complete the final packaging.

Whats interesting is that this effort clamping only exists in the external job market. Inside the household, the advancement of technology has greatly impacted how much effort daily life takes, leading to similar feelings of nonusefulness. This dramatic shift potentially leads to things like valium overuse, for example, lol Krazam sounds really funny, reminds me of that "the expert" sketch This is a great video in so many regards, it led me to many thoughts and writings, instant subscribe Also youre sooo cute

Every Plate legit looks good (and smart / productive). Jeff Olson (Slight Edge author) would be proud of how Sinbad's "mastering the mundane". 🤗

"I'm trying to get more succulent" had me wheezing

lmao the first minute made me think "you wanna make an omelet, you gotta break some eggs"

Great Video: In big companies, we are not more than small exchangeable cogs in the machine. Even if our work provides value, this value is abstract, because we never see the consequences of our work. When a musician plays her instrument, she will create emotions in her audience. When a street sweeper cleans the street, she will leave a clean street for the neighborhood. When a cook is mixing together ingredients, he is creating a meal some people will enjoy. But when an office worker is inputting data into an Excel row, there is nobody who will profit directly from this action. This is the problem of our modern division of labor: In big companies, our work is so abstract and so specialized, that there is no possible way for us to judge if our work is actually providing any value. However, I believe that most bullshit jobs do provide value. The problem is, that this value is caused very indirectly. Even persons who are profiting from your work, don't know that you are actually responsible for the produced value. This is because of complicated work processes that are diffusing the chain of action.