Value creation, bullshit jobs and the future of work
The article discusses the concept of value creation in the context of jobs, particularly focusing on the phenomenon of 'bullshit jobs.' It highlights how advancements in technology, especially AI, are transforming the job market and the nature of work. The author emphasizes the importance of adaptability and resilience in navigating these changes to continue creating value.
- ▪Value creation occurs when the value produced by a job exceeds the wages paid to the employee.
- ▪David Graeber defined a 'bullshit job' as one that is so pointless that even the employee cannot justify its existence.
- ▪Advancements in AI are likely to replace many jobs, leading to significant changes in the workforce in a much shorter time frame than in the past.
2 outlets in our directory ran this story, first to last over 33 hours. All of the coverage we found sits in one bucket: centre. That one-sidedness is itself worth noticing.
- ▪ Jevons Paradox, BS Jobs, AI and The Future Of Work — RealClear Markets
Hacker News (Newest) files mainly under programming. We currently carry 5,306 of its stories.
Story provenance
Source · retrieval · rights · ranking — open for full record
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Story provenance
Attribution is not the same as permission. This drawer separates discovery metadata, excerpts, WeSearch-generated summaries, reuse status, and whether the publisher receives the visit. Nothing here claims a legal grant the publisher has not made.
Record
| Original publisher | Seth's Blog |
| Canonical URL | https://seths.blog/2026/05/value-creation-bullshit-jobs-and-the-future-of-work/ |
| Publication time | Thu, 21 May 2026 09:36:18 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-21T09:51:10.497Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-21T09:51:10.497Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | P309A42ivC7E · 2 stories |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Value creation, bullshit jobs and the future of work We create a job whenever someone with the authority to hire decides the value created is greater than the wages paid. In my lifetime, we’ve invented 7 billion or more jobs, which is great news. Great for the people who were able to earn a living, and productive for everyone who experienced some of the value created. “Value” doesn’t always mean profit. David Graeber defined a bullshit job as “A form of paid employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence, even though, as part of the conditions of employment, the employee feels obliged to pretend that this is not the case.” But over time, there are no pointless jobs.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Seth's Blog.
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