Company We Keep

Daniel Marschall is a Professorial Lecturer in Sociology at The George Washington University. He works for the AFL-CIO as the Federation's Policy Specialist for Workforce Issues.

"The Company We Keep traces the rise and fall of a high-tech software firm in ways that illuminate our current moment, in particular how an organizational community of hardcore software developers shapes the digital architectures through which we increasingly live. It is a strong contribution to the emerging literature on technologists and how they organize their work."-Thomas M. Malaby, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and author of Making Virtual Worlds: Linden Lab and Second Life

• The Company We Keep: Occupational Community in the Network Society; Table of Contents; Acknowledgements; Prologue: First encounters of a techie kind; 1. Network Society and Occupational Community; A. The Network Society of Castells; Table 1.1; Table 1.2; B. Transformation of Work; C. Occupational Community; Table 1.3; D. Computer Technologists and Occupational Community; Endnotes: 1; 2. Setting: A "monster soft dev shop" in Silicon Swamp; A. Pushing Technology in Silicon Swamp; B. A "Very Cool" Atmosphere for Software Developers; C. Historical Overview of IntenSivity; Endnotes: 2;; 3. Constructing Occupational Identity; A. Constructing Identity: Personal and Collective; B. Ideology and The Founding Story; Table 3.1; C. A Sense of Community among "Renaissance Geeks"; D. Identity in a "Going Corporate" Place; Endnotes: 3; 4: Forging Bonds on Projects and Products; A. The Centrality of Projects; B. Project's Object: The Product; C. A Coding Scheme for Product Development; D. Bonding with One Another on Projects; E. Three Phases of Growth; F. Staff Augmentation Dominates Project Work; Endnotes: 4; 5. Language and the Persistence of Community; Table 5.1; A. Nurture the Hurt!; B. Core Mottoes; C. Military Metaphors and Gendered Discourse; D. A Sense of Community Persists; Table 5.2; E. Networked Occupational Community; F. Community Reconfigured; Endnotes: 5; Epilogue: Remembering the "Wild Ride" ... and what happened to its participants; Endnotes: Epilogue; References.