The Social Codes of Tech Workers

How the coders of our digital worlds think, work, and live.

Digital technologies shape nearly every aspect of our lives. Yet little attention has been paid to the tech workers who design and program these technologies. Instead, the spotlight often falls on two extremes: the elite class of tech entrepreneurs and the precarious digital proletariat of gig and crowd workers. This narrow focus has left a critical gap in understanding the middle-class professionals operating behind the scenes of digital capitalism.

Drawing on over 50 original interviews and discourse analytical research conducted in the US and Germany, The Social Codes of Tech Workers takes readers deep into their hearts and minds. Robert Dorschel demonstrates how tech workers’ subjectivity is structured by a return of social critique, hybrid professional roles, and distinctive lifestyles. The book identifies tech workers as a contradictory class formation, oscillating between a spirit of emancipation and yet another spirit of capitalism. This work will appeal to scholars across disciplines concerned with digital labor, identity, and class, as well as to the broader public interested in the culture of the tech industry and the evolving future of work.Prologue
1 Introduction
2 The Return of Social Critique
3 Hybrid Professional Roles
4 Lifestyles
5 Contradictory Class Formation
6 Contours of a New Spirit of Capitalism
7 Glitches in the Class Matrix
8 Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Appendix
Notes
Bibliography
IndexENDORSEMENTS

“In this beautifully crafted book, Robert Dorschel makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the perils of tech professions at a time when they are only gaining in importance. This book will surely be widely read and discussed.”
—Michèle Lamont, Professor of Sociology, Harvard University; author of Money, Morals, and Manners


“Robert Dorschel achieves the rare feat of making visible the transformation of society through the study of a single group. The Social Codes of Tech Workers is to the digital society of the twenty-first century what C. Wright Mills’s White Collar was to the late industrial society of the twentieth century."
—Philipp Staab, Professor of Sociology, Humboldt University of Berlin; author of Markets and Power in Digital Capitalism

Datafication is perhaps the most consequential social transformation of our time, and whatever we think of the oligarchs who extract most from it, it is essential to understand its ordinary workers too. Robert Dorschel's book opens up the experiences and complex positioning of ordinary coders in an enlightening and theoretically rich way. In so doing, he opens a key route to glimpsing what resistance to Big Tech's dominance might eventually look like.
—Nick Couldry, Professor Of Media, Communications and Social Theory Emeritus, London School Of Economics and Political ScienceRobert Dorschel is Assistant Professor in Digital Sociology at the University of Cambridge. His work has been recognized with awards from the Association of Internet Researchers and the German Sociological Association.