I usually have a modest backlog of audiobooks that I save for car trips and then finish up over the course of a couple of long runs or something, so I finally got around to starting this one yesterday when I was on the road. I'm only about halfway through but it's been a thought-provoking listen so far.
I like the fact that the author draws quite a few examples of BS jobs from academia -- he's definitely on to something there. Most people who work at my university actually have real jobs that just happen to be mostly invisible to students, faculty, and the public. But some of the author's anecdotes correspond exactly to things that I have first-hand experience with. For example, the office secretary who basically does her boss' job for him or her. Or, even better, the office secretary whose job exists entirely because it makes her boss feel like a big shot to have two secretaries instead of just one. I was listening to some of this and was like "Hey how does this guy know so much about our History department?" (I'm making up the part about the History department because I don't actually want to name real names on a message board, but I could cite multiple real-life examples of this stuff at my institution).
My current job is probably 80% BS and 20% real work. It doesn't have to be that way -- I had way more stuff to do when I was originally hired into this position, but that was with a boss who liked to delegate and didn't really care how I solved problems as long as they got solved in a way that was broadly acceptable. My current boss doesn't like to delegate and wants things done a very specific way, which means I don't have much latitude for decision-making. Also, my current boss does quite a bit of the job that I was originally hired to do, and those duties have been replaced by stuff that's almost entirely BS. I don't want to go into too much detail, but the gist of it is that a large chunk of my official duties now involve supervising people who absolutely positively do not need my supervision, which is a phenomenon the author discusses.
Where I differ with the author is that I think this is kind of awesome. The author would say that I'm an outlier in that regard, and I'm open to the argument that he's right. I'm highly introverted, highly self-motivated, and spend large amounts of time on meta-cognition relative to normal people. I have no problem finding intellectually engaging ways to spend my workdays, arguing with strangers on the internet for example. Retirement is a ways off yet, but I'm a lot closer to retirement than my colleagues think. Not close enough yet that I can truly just coast, but close enough that I can see the crest of the hill from here. Being paid to do like two hours of real work in a typical day suits me just fine. And besides, I like working in higher education, I like my colleagues, I like my boss despite the delegation issues (different people have different leadership styles), and I like most of the people I come into contact with. If I ever really get bored, there's a tenured faculty job waiting for me any time I want to go back, so there's also that.
Like I said, I'm not finished with the book yet, and I don't sign on to all the author's arguments. He devotes a chapter to how ancient civilizations wouldn't have understood the concept the people selling their labor by the hour or by the day, but that seems kind of pointless -- the development of modern labor markets is a good example of clear-cut moral progress compared to what it replaced (e.g. slavery). But overall I think the author makes some really astute observations about how bureaucracies are shaped by factors that are more sociology and less economics.
