[johbjo]

A fair definition would be: a job is bullshit if when someone stops "doing it" there is minimal or positive effect on the economic output.

And here is an article arguing that jobs are legitimate as long as people "feel useful". Well, this is precisely the problem. They fill offices with workers because it feels good to have subordinates. Responsibility is part of the career reward system, and people derive their identities from jobs and careers.

(I see Graeber used a different definition ...)

[addicted]

That’s true of nearly every job. If every founder in Ycombinator shut down their company today and fired all their employees, thereby killing all those jobs, there will be minimal effect on the economic output. Largely because the vast majority of jobs here are early stage startups which haven’t had a chance to bloom, and the vast majority will fail anyways, but we don’t know which ones will ahead of time.

That does not mean they are bullshit jobs.

[anoncake]

That's different. The expected value of your work's utility can be positive even if it's likely zero.