An anthropologist asked why people felt their own jobs were pointless

When a Job Feels Necessary Only Inside the Company

The uncomfortable idea behind “bullshit jobs” is not simply that some work is boring, or that an outsider cannot see its value. It is that some employees privately believe their roles would make little difference if they vanished—and may feel unable to say so openly. The term was popularized by anthropologist David Graeber, but it describes a claim about workers’ experience, not a measurement proving that particular jobs have no social value.

That distinction matters. A task can be hard to see from the outside and still be essential: maintaining a database, checking safety, or coordinating people may prevent problems rather than produce something visible. The theory concerns work that the people doing it themselves experience as empty or needless.

How Work Can Multiply Without a Clear Purpose

Organizations create roles for reasons beyond producing a direct public benefit. A department may need reports to show that it is active; managers may add layers to oversee other managers; employees may spend time navigating procedures that exist partly to manage internal risk. Each task can make sense within the system while the whole arrangement feels pointless to the person carrying it out.

There can also be a status incentive. Companies often reward visible busyness and expansion, while useful work such as maintenance or care can be harder to notice. As a result, a role may persist because it supports hierarchy, appearances, or internal routines—not because anyone has deliberately decided that society needs the work itself.

Why the Feeling Is Hard to Ignore

A paycheck does not settle the question of meaning. People may keep a role because they need income, benefits, or stability, even while doubting its purpose. That gap can be especially unsettling in a culture that treats employment as evidence of contribution: the worker is expected to defend a job that they privately think should not exist.

The consequence is not just wasted hours. If a role disappeared, the revealing question would be what actually stopped happening—and whether anyone outside the organization noticed.