Managers as lazy, stupid careerists? Contestation and stereotypes among software engineers

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present the results of a qualitative study of software engineers’ perception of dress code, career, organizations, and of managers. Design/methodology/approach – The software engineers interviewed work in three European and two US companies. The research is based on ethnographic data, gathered in two longitudinal studies during the period 2001-2006. The methods used in the study include open-ended unstructured interviews, participant observation, collection of stories, and shadowing. Findings – It was found that the majority of software engineers denounce formal dress-codes. The notion of career was defined by them mostly in terms of occupational development. They perceived their own managers as very incompetent. Their view on corporations was also univocally negative. The findings confirm that software engineers form a very distinctive occupation, defining itself in opposition to the organization. However, their distinctiveness may be perceived not only as a manifestation of independence but also contrarily, as simply fulfilling the organizational role they are assigned by management. Originality/value – The study contributes to the organizational literature by responding to the call for more research on high-tech workplace practices, and on non-managerial occupational roles.

[1]  M. Pratt,et al.  Tailored Meanings: On the Meaning and Impact of Organizational Dress , 1993 .

[2]  J. Van Maanen,et al.  Changing Scripts at Work: Managers and Professionals , 1999 .

[3]  Leslie A. Perlow,et al.  Finding Time: How Corporations, Individuals, and Families Can Benefit from New Work Practices , 1997 .

[4]  Magali Sarfatti Larson,et al.  Behind the Postmodern Facade: Architectural Change in Late Twentieth-Century America , 1995 .

[5]  J. Clifford,et al.  Writing culture : the poetics and politics of ethnography : a School of American Research advanced seminar , 1986 .

[6]  Michael Burawoy,et al.  Ethnography Unbound: Power and Resistance in the Modern Metropolis , 1991 .

[7]  D. Mitrany.  The New Society : the Anatomy of the Industrial Order , 1952 .

[8]  Harvey Molotch,et al.  Gurus, Hired Guns, and Warm Bodies: Itinerant Experts in a Knowledge Economy , 2005 .

[9]  D. Schoen,et al.  The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action , 1985 .

[10]  Guy Kawasaki,et al.  The Macintosh Way , 1990 .

[11]  M. Foucault.  The Subject and Power , 1982, Critical Inquiry.

[12]  Donald A. Schön,et al.  The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. , 1987 .

[13]  K. Weick.  The social psychology of organizing , 1969 .

[14]  Susan J. Winter,et al.  The Role of Information Technology in the Transformation of Work: A Comparison of Post-Industrial, Industrial, and Proto-Industrial Organization , 2001 .

[15]  D. Bell.  The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, a venture in Social Forecasting , 1974 .

[16]  Peter F. Drucker.  The New Society: The Anatomy of the Industrial Order , 1982 .

[17]  Allen C. Bluedorn,et al.  Men and Women of the Corporation , 1978 .

[18]  B. Campbell.  Men and Women of the Corporation , 1978 .

[19]  T. Johnson.  Professions and Power , 1972 .

[20]  P. Kidwell,et al.  The mythical man-month: Essays on software engineering , 1996, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing.

[21]  Morten Hertzum,et al.  The importance of trust in software engineers' assessment and choice of information sources , 2002, Inf. Organ..

[22]  Paul S. Licker,et al.  The Japanese approach , 1983, Commun. ACM.

[23]  Sten Jönsson,et al.  Ideological control in non-ideological organizations : by Barbara Czarniawska-Joerges (New York: Praeger, 1988), 143 pp., ISBN 0-275-92794-6 , 1990 .

[24]  G. Hofstede,et al.  Culture′s Consequences: International Differences in Work-Related Values , 1980 .

[25]  Van Jaarsveld,et al.  Collective Representation Among High-Tech Workers at Microsoft and Beyond: Lessons from WashTech/CWA , 2004 .

[26]  M. Gill.  Biased Against “Them” More Than “Him”: Stereotype Use In Group-Directed And Individual-Directed Judgments , 2003 .

[27]  T. Brante.  Sociological Approaches to the Professions , 1988 .

[28]  Robert P. Gephart,et al.  Introduction to the brave new workplace: organizational behavior in the electronic age , 2002 .

[29]  R. Rottenburg.  From Socialist Realism To Postmodern Ambiguity: East German Companies In Transition , 1994 .

[30]  Lewis A. Coser,et al.  Greedy Institutions: Patterns of Undivided Commitment , 1974 .

[31]  D. Crane.  Postmodernism and the Avant-Garde: Stylistic Change in Fashion Design , 1997 .

[32]  Steven P. Vallas,et al.  The Adventures of Managerial Hegemony: Teamwork, Ideology, and Worker Resistance , 2003 .

[33]  Stephen R. Barley,et al.  1. Technical Work in the Division of Labor: Stalking the Wily Anomaly , 2018, Between Craft and Science.

[34]  P. Prasad,et al.  The Ideology of Professionalism and Work Computerization: An Institutionalist Study of Technological Change , 1994 .

[35]  J. Dutton,et al.  The Cultures of Work Organizations. , 1992 .

[36]  B. Latour,et al.  Power, Action and Belief. A New Sociology of Knowledge? , 1986 .

[37]  D. Howard,et al.  Essays on the new working class , 1975 .

[38]  R. H. Waterman,et al.  In search of excellence : lessons from America's best-run companies , 1983 .

[39]  S. Mann.  Intellectual Capital: The New Wealth of Organizations , 1999 .

[40]  W. Ouchi,et al.  Theory Z: How American Business Can Meet the Japanese Challenge. , 1981 .

[41]  H. Toch,et al.  The Guard Subculture Myth , 1982 .

[42]  D. Boje.  The storytelling organization: A study of story performance in an office-supply firm. , 1991 .

[43]  Deborah Dougherty,et al.  Exploring Complex Organizations: A Cultural Perspective. , 1992 .

[44]  Philip Kraft,et al.  Programmers and Managers: The Routinization of Computer Programming in the United States , 1977 .

[45]  Paul Israel,et al.  The Sources of Innovation , 1990 .

[46]  Bruno Latour,et al.  The Powers of Association , 1984 .

[47]  L. Milton.  An identity perspective on the propensity of high-tech talent to unionize , 2003 .

[48]  S. Barley,et al.  Gurus, Hired Guns, and Warm Bodies: Itinerant Experts in a Knowledge Economy , 2004 .

[49]  Dimensions of Work , 1985 .

[50]  Geoffrey James.  The Tao of Programming , 1987 .

[51]  Arlie Russell Hochschild,et al.  The Time Bind: When Work Becomes Home and Home Becomes Work , 1997 .

[52]  Louis L. Bucciarelli,et al.  An ethnographic perspective on engineering design , 1988 .

[53]  Gustavo Stubrich.  The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization , 1993 .

[54]  Douglas Thomas.  Hacker Culture , 2002 .

[55]  Harold L. Wilensky,et al.  The Professionalization of Everyone? , 1964, American Journal of Sociology.

[56]  Shadows of Silence , 2003 .

[57]  Joanne D. Martin.  Cultures in Organizations: Three Perspectives , 1992 .

[58]  Tracy Kidder,et al.  Soul of a New Machine , 1981 .

[59]  Michael Rosen.  Breakfast at Spiro's: Dramaturgy and Dominance , 1985 .

[60]  H. Höpfl.  Organisational rhetoric and the threat of ambivalence , 1995 .

[61]  P. Adler,et al.  Engineering Culture: Control and Commitment in a High-Tech Corporation , 1993 .

[62]  Alexander Styhre,et al.  Understanding Knowledge Management: Critical and Postmodern Perspectives , 2003 .

[63]  Mats Alvesson,et al.  Organizations As Rhetoric: Knowledge‐Intensive Firms And The Struggle With Ambiguity , 1993 .

[64]  E. Piñeiro,et al.  The aesthetics of code : on excellence in instrumental action , 2003 .

[65]  Clifford L. Staples.  Finding time: How corporations, individuals, and families can benefit from New York practices , 1999 .

[66]  Fred P. Brooks,et al.  The Mythical Man-Month , 1975, Reliable Software.

[67]  Kenneth P. Prager.  Organizational Culture and the it Professional: Matching Individuals and Organizations , 1999, Inf. Syst. Manag..

[68]  Mats Alvesson,et al.  Cages in Tandem: Management Control, Social Identity, and Identification in a Knowledge-Intensive Firm , 2004 .

[69]  Peter J. Frost,et al.  Reframing organizational culture , 1991 .

[70]  William Foote Whyte,et al.  Learning From The Field: A Guide From Experience , 1984 .

[71]  John W. Meyer,et al.  Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony , 1977, American Journal of Sociology.

[72]  Michael Johnson.  Business Buzzwords: The Tough New Jargon of Modern Business , 1990 .

[73]  Joan Greenbaum,et al.  In the Name of Efficiency: Management Theory and Shopfloor Practice in Data Processing Work , 1979 .

[74]  Antony Bryant,et al.  Metaphor, myth and mimicry: The bases of software engineering , 2000, Ann. Softw. Eng..

[75]  A. Abbott.  The System of Professions: An Essay on the Division of Expert Labor , 1988 .

[76]  Maria Cooper.  Being the “Go-To Guy”: Fatherhood, Masculinity, and the Organization of Work in Silicon Valley , 2000 .

[77]  Harrison M. Trice,et al.  Occupational subcultures in the workplace , 1993 .

[78]  Christina Garsten,et al.  Apple World: Core and Periphery in a Transnational Organizational Culture: A Study of Apple Computer Inc. , 1994 .

[79]  Robert Jackall,et al.  Moral mazes: The world of corporate managers , 1989 .

[80]  Martha S. Feldman,et al.  Stories and the Rhetoric of Contrariety: Subtexts of Organizing (Change) , 2002 .

[81]  S. Barley.  Semiotics and the Study of Occupational and Organizational Cultures. , 1983 .

[82]  Mark S. Demarest.  Understanding knowledge management , 1997 .

[83]  Eliot Freidson,et al.  Professional Powers: A Study of the Institutionalization of Formal Knowledge , 1986 .

[84]  L. Perlow.  Boundary control: The social ordering of work and family time in a high-tech corporation. , 1998 .