I remember reading his 2013 article. Clearly written by somebody who has no grasp on the complexity of modern society and has never undertaken an engineering project in his life...
For instance, consider the poor souls whose work entails implementing the ubiquitous feature of automatic phone systems: when you call about a bill or service issue, you have to speak your name into a computer system; once you've articulated "speak to an agent" some 16 times to said computer system, waited 20 additional minutes, and finally reached a human being, you immediately have to provide the same information you already gave the system.
Confusing the design of an clean optimal system from the ground up with the realities of what happens when you're dealing with 20 legacy systems...
Here's "Greg" describing his job as a designer of digital display advertising that, he came to believe - after reading that no one clicks on banner ads - were a scam: "High-paying clients generally want to reproduce their TV commercials within the banner ads and demand complex storyboards with multiple 'scenes' and mandatory elements. Automotive clients would come in and demand that we use Photoshop to switch the steering wheel position or fuel tank cap on an image the size of a thumbnail."
Sure plenty of effort is given to ineffective marketing campaigns, and salespeople love to sell snakeoil in advertising. How does anybody else expect this to play out though? If there is additional money to be made by advertising and tweaking your advertising, spending will increase until wasteful results like this start to happen and it no longer generates returns. Graeber should consider the incentives of a arms race and understand that just because the world would be better off if everyone agreed not to advertise, that is not a stable equilibrium.
Why else would they be paying a 21-year-old history graduate with no IT experience to do this?
There was little for Eric to do because he couldn't fix the system and no one wanted to deal with it, anyway. He grew desperate and depressed and, despite the evident failure of the system, had to convince his bosses to let him resign. "I was basically tasked with selling and managing a badly-functioning, unwanted turd," he wrote to Graeber.
The people in these jobs should count themselves very fortunate that they are getting overpaid for the lack of value that they contribute. If you realize you're not making a difference, improve yourself and find a way you can contribute value. There will always be hundreds of ways at a company that that is possible.
While derisive phrases such as "close enough for government work" have long been part of our vocabulary, these days corporate jobs, newfangled finance vehicles, and tech start-ups equally conjure associations of time-wasting in the form of bullshit managementese, hollow strategising, and annoying software.
For every useful invention and service, there will be hundreds of failures in the graveyard. Pointing out the waste of the 100 failures and excepting them to all be successes shows a complete lack of understand of the innovative process and how wealth is created.
When you're the one who owns or feels ownership over the endeavour, you think there's always something more that needs doing.
Proving my point above. Let's do a thought experiment: collect a society of those who think there is always something more that needs doing. Now collect another group like this article's author. Which society will be more innovative, productive, wealthy, and have a greater quality of life for all of its members? The first society will invent penecillin, the second will live in huts because that is good enough.
The only real conclusion from most of this nonsense is that most people have no ambition or skills, wander like sheep looking for a leader, and are probably overpaid. Typical nonsense and failing grasp of economics from the Occupy Wallstreet crowd. It really sounds like Graeber has never spent a day of his life outside of academia.
I remember reading his 2013 article. Clearly written by somebody who has no grasp on the complexity of modern society and has never undertaken an engineering project in his life...
> For instance, consider the poor souls whose work entails implementing the ubiquitous feature of automatic phone systems: when you call about a bill or service issue, you have to speak your name into a computer system; once you've articulated "speak to an agent" some 16 times to said computer system, waited 20 additional minutes, and finally reached a human being, you immediately have to provide the same information you already gave the system.
Confusing the design of an clean optimal system from the ground up with the realities of what happens when you're dealing with 20 legacy systems...
> Here's "Greg" describing his job as a designer of digital display advertising that, he came to believe - after reading that no one clicks on banner ads - were a scam: "High-paying clients generally want to reproduce their TV commercials within the banner ads and demand complex storyboards with multiple 'scenes' and mandatory elements. Automotive clients would come in and demand that we use Photoshop to switch the steering wheel position or fuel tank cap on an image the size of a thumbnail."
Sure plenty of effort is given to ineffective marketing campaigns, and salespeople love to sell snakeoil in advertising. How does anybody else expect this to play out though? If there is additional money to be made by advertising and tweaking your advertising, spending will increase until wasteful results like this start to happen and it no longer generates returns. Graeber should consider the incentives of a arms race and understand that just because the world would be better off if everyone agreed not to advertise, that is not a stable equilibrium.
> Why else would they be paying a 21-year-old history graduate with no IT experience to do this?
> There was little for Eric to do because he couldn't fix the system and no one wanted to deal with it, anyway. He grew desperate and depressed and, despite the evident failure of the system, had to convince his bosses to let him resign. "I was basically tasked with selling and managing a badly-functioning, unwanted turd," he wrote to Graeber.
The people in these jobs should count themselves very fortunate that they are getting overpaid for the lack of value that they contribute. If you realize you're not making a difference, improve yourself and find a way you can contribute value. There will always be hundreds of ways at a company that that is possible.
>While derisive phrases such as "close enough for government work" have long been part of our vocabulary, these days corporate jobs, newfangled finance vehicles, and tech start-ups equally conjure associations of time-wasting in the form of bullshit managementese, hollow strategising, and annoying software.
For every useful invention and service, there will be hundreds of failures in the graveyard. Pointing out the waste of the 100 failures and excepting them to all be successes shows a complete lack of understand of the innovative process and how wealth is created.
> When you're the one who owns or feels ownership over the endeavour, you think there's always something more that needs doing.
Proving my point above. Let's do a thought experiment: collect a society of those who think there is always something more that needs doing. Now collect another group like this article's author. Which society will be more innovative, productive, wealthy, and have a greater quality of life for _all_ of its members? The first society will invent penecillin, the second will live in huts because that is good enough.
The only real conclusion from most of this nonsense is that most people have no ambition or skills, wander like sheep looking for a leader, and are probably overpaid. Typical nonsense and failing grasp of economics from the Occupy Wallstreet crowd. It really sounds like Graeber has never spent a day of his life outside of academia.
I remember reading his 2013 article. Clearly written by somebody who has no grasp on the complexity of modern society and has never undertaken an engineering project in his life...
Confusing the design of an clean optimal system from the ground up with the realities of what happens when you're dealing with 20 legacy systems...
Sure plenty of effort is given to ineffective marketing campaigns, and salespeople love to sell snakeoil in advertising. How does anybody else expect this to play out though? If there is additional money to be made by advertising and tweaking your advertising, spending will increase until wasteful results like this start to happen and it no longer generates returns. Graeber should consider the incentives of a arms race and understand that just because the world would be better off if everyone agreed not to advertise, that is not a stable equilibrium.
The people in these jobs should count themselves very fortunate that they are getting overpaid for the lack of value that they contribute. If you realize you're not making a difference, improve yourself and find a way you can contribute value. There will always be hundreds of ways at a company that that is possible.
For every useful invention and service, there will be hundreds of failures in the graveyard. Pointing out the waste of the 100 failures and excepting them to all be successes shows a complete lack of understand of the innovative process and how wealth is created.
Proving my point above. Let's do a thought experiment: collect a society of those who think there is always something more that needs doing. Now collect another group like this article's author. Which society will be more innovative, productive, wealthy, and have a greater quality of life for all of its members? The first society will invent penecillin, the second will live in huts because that is good enough.
The only real conclusion from most of this nonsense is that most people have no ambition or skills, wander like sheep looking for a leader, and are probably overpaid. Typical nonsense and failing grasp of economics from the Occupy Wallstreet crowd. It really sounds like Graeber has never spent a day of his life outside of academia.