Comment by tduberne
4 years ago
I did not read the book, but my understanding of "bullshit job" is a job that is useless to the entity paying for it: you could remove that person completely, and everything would continue to work. This seems very different from what is at play here: the game studio very carefully designed the game to attract those grinders, and this is how the studio makes money. The article clearly sees this as well, by labeling the game as a ponzi scheme.
The point is that bullshit jobs don't contribute anything to society (at least my take after reading the book).
If the game studio never existed not much in society would change, let's go even further and say all game developers never existed. Society wouldn't change. Now lets get rid of all the elementary school teachers. Would society drastically changed?
One of the core points in the book is that the "more prestigious" and "higher pay" a job is, the likelihood of it being bullshit is high. While important jobs like janitor, barber, or a retail worker are very important and pay terribly.
I'm a programmer that develops CRM software. If my company cease to existed the world wouldn't even shrug.