From bullshit jobs to bullshit companies
When we started thinking about what this article was going to be, we first thought we should focus about CSR and how companies could actually benefit from going further than CSR. We were truly convinced that companies should not only consider social, environmental and governance matters because our world needs it, but especially because those organizations would benefit from such considerations. However, we had serious trouble finding a way to present this issue through the scope of management with an original view.
A few weeks ago, we heard about a concept that bothered us. It is from David Graeber and it is called “bullshit jobs”. This concept suggests that the more you get paid for a job, the more meaningless it tends to be. As students in management and consulting, we are in a way the perfect example of what Mr Graeber means when he talks about bullshit jobs.
After discussing a way to write this article, we started wondering why our jobs should be bullshit. Because, look, we can do exactly the same core job in completely different organizations, right? We came to a point where there was one interesting question: is the problem coming from our jobs or rather from the companies that hire us? After asking that question, we thought we could link it to our original subject. Indeed, what we found interesting was, why, we, young workers should prefer to do the same job in a company rather than another?
We both answered the same way: we want a company that gives us a bigger purpose than ourselves. We want our jobs to be meaningful and make some decent money on the way. That means that we were looking for a company that will not just try to implement a CSR policy, but a company with a specific social purpose. From this point, we wanted to search for companies that don’t have a purpose or even have a negative impact but still try to hire us. How do they intend to do that?
Our approach
So we decided to think about companies that are the exact opposite of how we want to impact the world. And just out of curiosity, we visited their “career centres” to check what they could possibly say to attract talents. What surprised us is that they are claiming something they are not actually doing. So we wondered: Is it “the more they say the less they do? Are they bullshit companies? Here is a piece of our findings in some career centres:
· Monsanto
First titles you’ll see are « Want to change the world”, “You’ll give farmers around the world the ability to grow more crops with less water”. You see our point? They are trying to hire us upon values that are appealing to us. However, when you look closely at the fact, the company’s behaviors are clearly the opposite of the values that are promoted. This company which is responsible for products like Roundup or the Orange agent, GMOs, is trying to lure graduates with a promise to “change the world”? Really?
- Total
Here you will find words like these:
→ “contribute to a sustainable energetic future”
→ Total promotes the idea of formation, training, competitive conditions
→ Communicate about it CSR policy
The very same company is implicated in “oil in exchange of food” in Iraq. Only 8,9% of the employees are dedicated to new energies. There’s no sense of “contributing to a better world” when the company you work for is 90% dedicated to extracting fossil energy. In Total’s annual report, they specifically say “new energies” are only a complement of their core business which is dirty energies.
Once again here, the picture Total is selling about itself is clearly not correlated with the reality of it activities.
What do we want?
Even if we do agree there can be some bullshit jobs, we mean to demonstrate that somehow what makes your job bullshit can clearly be linked to the company behavior. The simple fact that those companies outsell values they are not applying makes them “bullshit companies”. And in the end are they not bullshit from our point of view? Would the engineer who works on the development of a new sustainable energy at Total agree with us? Are our jobs really bullshit, if we are working as a consultant on a microcredit system? We don’t think so, even if Mr Graeber says it. So cut the crap. What we really want is consistency, you can be craftsman or consultant, a bio farm or A petroleum company, the only thing relevant is the outcome that you bring. Don’t lie about it. Being “bullshit” has more to do with what you claim than with what you actually do.
By Grégoire Colombet & Thibault Montalant
