A01=Tongu Wu
A01=Tongyu Wu
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
Author_Tongu Wu
Author_Tongyu Wu
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Big Five
big tech
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=JHB
Category=KCF
Category=KJU
Category=UMK
competition
COP=United States
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
digital labor
engineering
eq_bestseller
eq_business-finance-law
eq_computing
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
exploitation
gamers
gamification
gaming
governance
hegemony
identity
IT
labor
Language_English
organizational culture
PA=Available
Price_€20 to €50
productivity
PS=Active
softlaunch
software
software engineering
solidarity
tech companies
tech work
video games
white-collar
work games
workplace
workplace culture
Product details
- ISBN 9781439922989
- Weight: 399g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 28 Jun 2024
- Publisher: Temple University Press,U.S.
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
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Games are often a fun perk of a tech company job, and employees can “play to win” in the competition to succeed. But in studying “Behemoth” (a pseudonym for a top American tech company), Tongyu Wu discovered that gaming work culture was far more insidious.
Play to Submission shows how Behemoth’s games undermined and manipulated workers. They lost their work-life balance and the constant competition made labor organizing difficult. Nonetheless, many workers embraced management’s games as a chance to show off their “gamer” identities and create a workplace culture with privileged insiders and exiled outsiders, with female and migrant workers usually in the latter group. Moreover, Wu indicates this may be the future of work for high- and low-skilled and, creative workers in an environment where capitalists have heightened demands for technology and creativity.
Drawing from 13 months of ethnographic work, Wu presents a persistent reality in which the company reaps the reward of surplus productivity, leaving employees themselves in a highly competitive and sometimes precarious work position.
Play to Submission shows how Behemoth’s games undermined and manipulated workers. They lost their work-life balance and the constant competition made labor organizing difficult. Nonetheless, many workers embraced management’s games as a chance to show off their “gamer” identities and create a workplace culture with privileged insiders and exiled outsiders, with female and migrant workers usually in the latter group. Moreover, Wu indicates this may be the future of work for high- and low-skilled and, creative workers in an environment where capitalists have heightened demands for technology and creativity.
Drawing from 13 months of ethnographic work, Wu presents a persistent reality in which the company reaps the reward of surplus productivity, leaving employees themselves in a highly competitive and sometimes precarious work position.
Tongyu Wu is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Zhejiang University in China.
