A Bullshit Job? Non Grazie

The idea of a “bullshit job” was coined by anthropologist David Graeber to describe jobs that people feel provide no true value or meaning. As he puts it, bullshit jobs are those where the workers themselves cannot justify the job’s existence, yet often find it in their own financial interest to pretend their work has purpose.

That’s not for me. 50 years in the software industry has left me with an ultra fine-tuned spidey sense for bullshit jobs. Which nowadays is ALL of them. Yes. ALL of them. There’s not an organisation out there that has the first clue about what they’re doing. And no enhusiasm, it seems, for doing anything about it.

Pointless

In my experience working in software, many organisations fall into this trap of creating jobs that are pointless, even to those doing the work. It’s not that the individual engineers, designers, or product managers lack talent or capability. Rather, it’s that the wider organisation has no clear strategy, vision, or alignment. So you end up with teams spinning their wheels on goals that get shifted every quarter to “align” with some new executive idea. No one working has a clear view of the “why” behind their day-to-day. And see: Man’s Search For Meaning (Frankl).

Suck It Up

Without a North Star guiding decisions, every new task feels like bullshit. Why are we building this feature? Who asked for this metric dashboard? What issue is this even solving for customers? No one knows. The jobs become more about optics or vanity metrics than actual impact. Just put something out to say you shipped. Take home you wage cheque at the end of the week. Suck it up.

And so in that environment, each job functions in a void – you’re just there to clock in and write some code, run some tests, create some slides. The connection between daily work and real-world value is tenuous at best.

Executives Are Clueless

In a field like software, this lack of organisational clarity is almost unavoidable. Most executives have no foundational theory of software economics, development process, or product design. So they copy the latest fads, and trust metrics over reasoning. But without leadership willing to study the domain deeply, every job beneath feels like a bullshit shaping of air.

Is There A Solution?

One solution lies in organisations taking the time to learn, form opinions, and craft strategy rooted in software fundamentals. Only then can you trace the “why” from engineering tasks back up to true customer value. This at least grounds jobs in purpose, even if outcomes still have uncertainty.

Until more software groups commit to that educational journey, the prevalence of bullshit jobs will only increase. Because no matter how advanced the space becomes, lolks’ core mental models for running companies and teams remains severely lacking.