The “Programmer Problem”: an Interpretation via Structuration Theory

This research provides a detailed account of the Dotcom Bubble’s impact on employer employee relationships for IT employees during the late 1990s and early 2000s. The unprecedented demand for IT personnel during the Dotcom Bubble resulted in dramatic changes of this particular employment market that led to a redefinition of traditional employee and employer roles. With qualified programmers being difficult to recruit and retain, companies had to accept programmer arrogance, disregard for social and corporate decorum, plus demands for high salary and company growth participation. This “programmer problem” influenced a number of significant changes in the high-tech business environment, and society-at-large. Comparing it also to the eighty year prior “chauffeur problem”, the study interprets the programmer problem via Giddens’ structuration theory, illustrates the recurrent nature of high tech skill shortages, assesses the impact on industry and society, and reflects on future disruptive events with potentially similar structure-changing trajectories.The end of the last millennium witnessed significant changes to widely accepted social practices in the work environment for IT professionals. Dotcom companies were rushing to deploy their applications, forcing traditional firms to also to turn to e-business, so as to remain competitive and protect their market valuations. Programming for e-business, though, was vastly different from traditional programming. Applications had to be web-based, where they had to be easy enough for end-users to handle, and robust enough to not be broken or hacked by users. This transition created a dramatic increase in the demand for programmers skilled in C++, Java, EJB, and the like. The resulting disparity between supply and demand led to unique shifts in the employee-employer relationship. When asked, “how he or she could contribute to the company”, an applicant’s answer could be “what can you do for me?” Discussions would less focus around the applicant’s value proposition to the company and more about compensation, (salary or stock options), as well as quality-of-life factors, such as telecommuting privileges or flexible work hours. Once hired, these “professionals” would exhibit an extremely casual dress code. Frequently they would ignore set office hours. Their professional ethics could overwrite loyalty to their employer. Thus, by many measures, programmers (and related IT staff) had become unmanageable via traditional means. The programmer problem can be meaningfully framed using Giddens’ structuration theory. By the end of the 1990s, programmers as agents of change had gained additional resources through their knowledge of web programming, and the criticality of that knowledge. Due to the speed of developments in e-business, there was no counteracting resource gain on the side of employers to counteract this and lead to an evolutionary system change. Programmers instead were able to shift the structural balance in their favor, thus redefining the traditional employer-employee relationship. The analysis suggests that technology disruption and the response to it, will likely be a repetitive scenario, that occurs with any significant technology disruption that empowers a new group of agents quickly and strongly.