This article was going viral on Substack and elsewhere, and I think the context in which it’s going viral is important. The backdrop is the threat of AI and the potential of this “civilizational moment,” as the godmother of AI Fei-Fei Li once called it.

The core of the article is essentially an extended rehashing of David Graeber’s “bullshit jobs” theory—the idea that the vast majority of jobs are pointless and shouldn’t exist. The author, Alex, points out that whenever he speaks to people, he often hears the same thing: when asked to explain their jobs, most people not only struggle but sometimes even admit outright that their job is a “bullshit job.”

What’s surprising, though, is that these jobs aren’t disappearing. Instead, many people use them as a paycheck while, in parallel, building entrepreneurial projects outside of work. Their corporate job becomes a funding source. This suggests we’re in a transition period: the jobs haven’t ended yet, but belief in the corporate job as a meaningful institution seems to be diminishing—almost like the slow decline of organized religion.

I slightly disagree with the author here. I think this decline is happening faster than he suggests. It’s hard to get solid data yet, but there are early signs that AI isn’t eliminating all jobs, but it is disrupting entry-level ones. Many tasks once handled by graduates, interns, or junior employees are increasingly automated by large language models. This has effectively removed the lowest rungs of the corporate ladder.

We’re already seeing reports of Ivy League graduates, PhDs, and other highly educated people struggling to find jobs. Another possible angle, as Brian Merchant points out, is that companies are using AI as an excuse to downsize the workforce under the banner of “shareholder value.”

So overall, it’s an interesting read—one that connects Graeber’s old theory of bullshit jobs with the new pressures and disruptions brought by AI.