[bydlocoder]

I wonder how anyone in IT could take Graeber seriously. One of his opinions about programming was that programmers work "bullshit jobs" for their employer and do cool open source stuff in their free time which is demonstrably false.

[brimble]

The presentation of that in the book, based off a message from someone in the industry, doesn't seem out of line with the overall tone and reliability-level that Graeber explicitly sets out in the beginning, which is both that the book is not rigorous science and that it's mainly concerned with considering why people's perceptions of their own jobs would be that they're bullshit.

[EDIT]

> One of his opinions about programming was that programmers work "bullshit jobs" for their employer and do cool open source stuff in their free time which is demonstrably false.

Further, I'm not even sure that's incorrect. It can both be true that most open source (that's actually used by anyone) is done by people who are paid to do it, and that most programmers have very little interesting or challenging to do at work unless they work on hobby projects—maybe open source—in their free time.

The overall letter as quoted in the book, and Graeber's commentary on it, actually makes some good points aside from all this. Things don't have to be perfect to be useful.

[bydlocoder]

The job being un-interesting and un-rewarding doesn't make it bullshit. The job of a truck or a taxi driver is boring as fuck, but it's not bullshit.