But the industry regulation may be what is bullshit.

The job can be still bullshit, even though it serves a purpose for a specific company in a specific environment.

Corporate lawyer is the archetypal graeberian bullshit job.

Corporate lawyer is bullshit? I'd say legal representation is a really important.

His definition of bullshit seems to have no resemblance to what people would think of bullshit jobs.

The argument is that corporate lawyers exist (mainly) to satisfy a demand generated by their own profession.

Any such profession is a category of bullshit job in the book, whether or not you personally think corporate lawyers produce value to the world.

> The argument is that corporate lawyers exist (mainly) to satisfy a demand generated by their own profession.

That would apply to any profession which involves competing in a zero sum game.

Zero-sum games exist, therefore these professions exist to enable players to win them

Yes, that is probably true indeed. That's why there are so many bullshit jobs.

I could never work in a zero-sum environment.

That's kind of a circular argument. The demand generated by their own profession is due to the laws on the books. One corporate lawyer can't sue another unless the system lets them.

So the job isn't bullshit as long as those laws exist.

The whole idea of "bullshit jobs" seems to focus on the job, not the environment that produces them.

The thing is if you look at the results and assume at least 20% of people do this then theyre still bad.

Moreover, I think most people have a better idea of how bullshit their job is than an outside observer. Theyre doing it.

If the system is set up to employ an army of people solely for the purpose of complying with some meaningless regulation, then that army of people (and those who support them) are all examples of bullshit jobs.

HN loves constantly adding more and more regulations. Of course this is the end result.

> Are people the best judge of whether or not their job is bullshit? Doubtful.

Who is it then?

I'd say companies have zero incentive to spend money on a job that is doesn't need to be done.

So I'd say if there is company X will to spend $Y on a job, then by definition it's not a bullshit job.

Companies, sure. But companies don't spend money - people working at them do. And people working there can have incentives that don't align with the companies incentives.

Not sure what company you worked for, but I can't spend money unless it's approved by the company.

There's a kind of Prisoner's Dilemma here. Sure, set up your company that doesn't have corporate lawyers. It'll work for a while until it very suddenly doesn't. The only way to break out of this is better regulation across industries, but governments also don't always have the right incentives either.