Doctoral Dissertation Research: Work and Life in the New Economy: An Ethnography of High Tech Startup Companies

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High-technology startup companies have been heralded as the future of work, but scholars have yet to examine the extent to which startups' organizational structures and corporate cultures differ from those of previous generations and other industries. This doctoral dissertation research by a cultural anthropologist in the American Studies program at Yale University tests the hypothesis that high-tech startups represent a new corporate form with unique implications for employees and the technologies they develop. This comparative ethnography of U.S. high-tech startups investigates employees' experiences and conceptions of work in a particular industry and organizational setting. Taking into account the unique demographics of the startup workforce, this study challenges received wisdom concerning the relationship between work and home life and elucidates the characteristics of a new generation of white-collar employees, salient topics considering recent economic and cultural shifts in the high-technology industry. In light of skyrocketing unemployment in the high-tech industry over the last half of 2001, interviews with unemployed high-tech workers supplement data collected on corporate employees. Methods include long-term participant observation, directed and open-ended interviews, video ethnography, surveys, analysis of labor force statistics, and historical study of management theory and the corporate form. This research advances our understanding of the place of work in contemporary life and the evolution of the corporate form, knowledge that will help employees, managers, and labor advocates modify the organization of corporate work and the quality of workers' experiences