Abstract
Canaries in the Code Mine: Precarity and the Future of Tech Work makes a compelling case that even jobs that are often considered the most lucrative and desirable are becoming increasingly precarious. Drawing on interviews with 120 software developers based in New York City, author Max Papadantonakis traces how a diverse set of workers experience their jobs and how their struggles are indicative of growing instability in the U.S. labor market. The book is particularly prescient considering recent discussions about generative AI and the future of tech work, including predictions by some tech CEOs that lower-level software engineering jobs will soon be automated.
A great strength of the book is its ability to give voice to a diverse group of software engineers. Chapter Two focuses on the young white and Asian men who largely represent the ideal workers at their companies. Moving through the industry with remarkable ease, these “digital elites” do the best job of marketing themselves in ways that advance their careers. Many strategically describe themselves as full-stack developers, capable of tackling a variety of software development problems. This puts them in the best position to adapt to the rapid pace of change expected in the tech industry.
The book then introduces women, Black and Latine workers, and older workers in successive chapters. In Chapter Three, we see how women software engineers are pushed into roles that tend to be devalued, including those in web development and software testing. As one woman put it, “companies treat testers like janitors, not like technical professionals” (p. 53). Moreover, many of these women are employed on short-term contracts that expose them to greater job insecurity. Black and Latine workers similarly experience a lack of mentoring and support, leaving them feeling isolated and limiting opportunities for career growth. While some Black and Latine workers found support through external networks they built outside of their companies, Papadantonakis finds that these connections rarely helped to improve their work conditions.
I found the chapter on ageism particularly compelling. Rather than being an advantage, seniority is sometimes seen as a liability in the tech industry, standing in the way of innovation. Many “older” workers—which, in the tech industry, includes those in their early 40s—described how they struggled to find work and how their coworkers assumed their skills were obsolete. Mothers similarly found their skills routinely questioned and faced challenges reconciling the long hours expected in the industry with parenting and family life.
The final empirical chapter considers the potential for unionization in the tech industry. The chapter details various organizing attempts as well as the challenges that face unionization efforts, ranging from union busting to high turnover rates. Here, Papadantonakis argues that despite variation in experiences, “tech workers are not isolated professionals but a cohesive workforce confronting common challenges” (p. 95). Although fostering this sense of camaraderie will likely be necessary for further unionization efforts, it sometimes felt at odds with the findings presented in the earlier chapters, which highlighted differences in experiences between groups.
Throughout, Papadantonakis makes the case that software engineering jobs are more precarious than they are often portrayed. This argument comes through the most clearly in the introduction, where Papadantonakis points out that a growing number of tech workers are on temporary job contracts, positions that do not come with the same job stability or benefits as full-time workers. As he writes, “the increasing prevalence of contract-based workers within these high-paying sectors points to a pivotal shift away from stable, permanent employment models” (p. 6). According to recent estimates Papadantonakis cites, these contract workers represent about 40 to 50 percent of employees at most tech firms.
This is an intriguing argument, especially considering that much of the literature on precarious work focuses on low-wage jobs and gig work. At times, I did wonder if this emphasis on widespread precarity might downplay the fact that some workers in the industry have enjoyed staggeringly high wages, generous stock packages and benefits, and job opportunities. While Papadantonakis depicts a situation where “a vast majority face precarious employment akin to gig work” (p. 10), tech companies still retain a sizeable number of workers in more privileged full-time positions, even if white and Asian men make up the majority of this workforce. I couldn’t help but think of the recent “AI talent wars” and Mark Zuckerberg’s offer to pay $250 million to workers hired into his new “superintelligence” lab, despite widespread layoffs in other parts of the company. Perhaps this speaks to a growing bifurcation of good and bad jobs within the tech industry—and even within the same companies.
I also saw some promising possibilities to put the experiences of different groups in conversation. In Chapter Two, for instance, job-hopping is seen as beneficial for white and Asian men, who use their stints at different companies to network and gain experience. We later hear in Chapter Three how employers question the loyalty of women who bounce from company to company due to the nature of their short-term employment contracts. These are interesting findings, and there seemed to be an opportunity here to interrogate why we see these gendered patterns and responses. I sense an irony where women are seen as unloyal when forced to move, while (white and Asian) men are given a pass when they move under their own volition. It also stands to reason that even the young white and Asian men presented in Chapter Two, who seem the most insulated from precarity, might eventually become “too old to code” themselves. I would love to know whether these younger workers were conscious of this potential (or whether they optimistically expect to retire early before reaching that point).
Overall, Canaries in the Code Mine is a quick and engaging read. It would be interesting to teach in undergraduate classrooms, especially to a generation of students who have been encouraged to think of coding and software engineering as a stable and lucrative career pathway. The timing of the book makes it a fantastic jumping-off point for future research that seeks to understand whether software engineering will become less stable moving forward. Recent layoffs and threats of AI automation may also shift what unionization efforts could look like. It will be interesting to see, for instance, whether these shifts will have a chilling effect on future organizing efforts or whether they have the potential to increase worker solidarity.