100 Bullshit Jobs...And How to Get Them [Hardcover]

Stanley Bing (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 2, 2006

What do being a Feng Shui advisor, executive headhunter, high-level marketing guru, senior sales/marketing director, vineyard wine pourer, wedding planner and Asda greeter have in common? They're all bullshit jobs. God must have loved them, because he made so many of them. The people lucky and skillful enough to have secured bullshit employment are everywhere, in virtually every field from ayurvedic healing to zoo management. The people who work in these coveted bullshit positions enjoy the best lives imaginable, they are paid well, they work very little and their professions are highly respected, because nobody really knows what they do. What, for instance, are the actual functions performed by a McKinsey consultant? Other than sitting around making people nervous? None. That's what he does. And by next Tuesday, he'll probably be your boss's boss! What does an aroma therapist actually do? Sniff things? Yes! For loads of money, that's what! What is a clinical psychologist actually doing when he or she is nodding at a suffering depressive? Nodding, that's all. For [pound]100 an hour! Now that is bullshit. And you can get into a big pile of it, too, thanks to Stanley Bing, who knows whereof he speaks and has based his entire career and several best-selling books on his own very special brand of bullshit.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

There's an element of bullshit in all jobs, including his own, but bestselling author Bing (Sun Tzu was a Sissy) has taken a wickedly satiric approach and ranked the BS quotient in jobs both common and obscure that require little effort but pay well. From aromatherapist to motivational speaker to velvet rope nazi to critic (touché), he dissects the skills necessary to excel in these jobs, as well as the upside, the downside and the "dark side." Using humor and insight, no job is off his radar, including high power corporate jobs like investment banker, rarified non-jobs like boulevardier (George Hamilton), and the crumber, who "removes detritus from dining in restaurants." Bing's central piece of advice is to hone your internal bullshit detector and find the right balance between fulfillment and fluff: "In the end, a life that is made up of nothing but bullshit is as untenable as one that is completely dedicated to content. It is your gift on this earth, your right as a living, sentient human being to fight for the right mix."
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author

Stanley Bing has been reporting on corporate life since his own first bullshit job back in 1982, which isn't that different than the bullshit job he has now, only back then it was smaller. He is now an ultra-senior executive in a gigantic corporation whose identity is one of the worst-kept secrets in business, which is a joke he's been using for the last 10 years because he has always believed that if a specific piece of bullshit is effective, it's often smart to stay with it. Beginning back at Esquire Magazine in 1984, Bing moved to FORTUNE in 1995, and how occupies the back page of that no-bullshit publication. He is the author of Sun Tzu Was A Sissy.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: HarperBusiness (May 2, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060734795
• ISBN-13: 978-0060734794
• Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 5.2 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,271,407 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Stanley Bing is a columnist for Fortune magazine and the bestselling author of Crazy Bosses, What Would Machiavelli Do?, Throwing the Elephant, Sun Tzu Was a Sissy, 100 Bullshit Jobs..And How to Get Them, and The Big Bing, as well as the novels Lloyd: What Happened and You Look Nice Today. By day he is an haute executive in a gigantic multinational corporation whose identity is one of the worst-kept secrets in business.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

36 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Borrow a friend's copy, July 2, 2006

By 

R. J. Marsella (California) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: 100 Bullshit Jobs...And How to Get Them (Hardcover)

Good for a couple of laughs but essentially one funny idea stretched into a hardcover. Something to page through on a plane, in the bathroom , or while waiting for the dentist but not much substance. Better yet - pick it up at your local bookstore read it over a latte and return it to the shelf 20 minutes later and you'll have the idea.

47 of 55 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Bing's a funny guy, but not as smart (or funny) as he'd like you to think..., May 20, 2006

By 

Lemon Magic (Omaha, NE USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: 100 Bullshit Jobs...And How to Get Them (Hardcover)

Since I work one of the so-called "BS" jobs listed in this book, let me make it clear that I can take a joke, and I don't mind being ribbed now and then about it. There is BS in my field just like in any other - including business journalism. But I've read Bing's columns in Esquire magazine over the years, and I can safely say that Bing is quite a BS artist himself, and many of his pieces haven't really deserved to see print in a national magazine. (Others have, of course). Bing's sneering dismissal of many 'alternative' career paths, while funny, tells the reader a lot more about the limits of Bing's worldview than it does about the jobs he derides.

This book is just another example of his habit of coming up with an extended magazine piece, wrapping a hardcover around it, and getting some publishing house to charge the reader $15.00-$20.00 for something no better (or funnier) than a typical mass-forwarded joke list on Usenet or a daily blog entry.

I wouldn't say "don't buy it", since Bing is still funnier and sharper than many writers who comment on commerce and business. I would say, buy it only if you have money to burn, and don't mind spending a large amount of money for a very small number of mild chuckles.

12 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Funny but a fluff book, January 16, 2007

By 

Farnoosh Brock (USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: 100 Bullshit Jobs...And How to Get Them (Hardcover)

I got this book to really learn something (no laughing :)) but it was just a funny read, and not much substance to it. I could not really follow the logic in a lot of places, and I had trouble explaining exactly what the book is about, although I liked the last very last 3 pages. Funny light-reading, if you have the time....