Research Findings Seminar by Mr He Tianjiao

Topic: Big Tech Dream: Tech Workers and Interns in the Internet Industry in China

Presenter: Mr He Tianjiao (PhD candidate)

Chief Supervisor: Prof Pun Ngai

Co-supervisor: Prof Roberto Castillo

Abstract:

In recent years, the discussions of “996” working arrangement (i.e., extremely long working hours from 9AM to 9PM, 6 days a week) in China and “hustle culture” in Silicon Valley in the Internet industry proliferate, which raise public concern on tech workers’ working conditions.

As the state of financial capital, market competition, and political regulations constantly evolves, the working conditions and labour process at the micro level are also in great fluctuations. In the golden age when transnational finance capital was streaming into China’s Internet industry with the lifting of governmental policies, round after round of companies were listed on the U. S. stock markets and tech workers were rushing into the industry and endeavouring to achieve upward mobility. Nevertheless, those impassioned dreams vanished, encountering large-scale layoffs, extreme working hours and decreasing promotion opportunities. The most intelligent graduates from top universities, impressed by the belief of “change the world”, found the inhumane and oppressive workplace in reality.

However, research about their working and internship experiences and why graduates keep rushing into big tech companies remain little. This study based on labour process theory (LPT) and insights of work and learning in the labour process from educational sociology, examines tech workers and interns’ working conditions, subjectivity and potential resistance, as well as the making or remaking of “Da Chang Meng” (Big Tech Dream) in China’s tech giants. Methods of in-depth, semi-structured interviews, participant observation in a tech giant Giga (pseudonym) in China, and netnography within social media platforms are employed to obtain comprehensive and dynamic understandings of work and life in the industry.

Specifically, the research analyses and discusses tech worker’s lived experiences through three “life courses” of their careers: student, intern, full-time tech worker. Through different life courses, the transformation and meanings of Big Tech Dream are uncovered. I combine LPT and Pankhurst and Livingstone’s (2006) insights on work and learning in the labour process to examine tech worker’s knowledge production and learning process, surplus value production, and the role of ICTs. Then I discuss Interns’ working conditions, labour organization and special position in Internet companies. Finally, worker’s power and agency, existing resistance practices and their future potentials are discussed.

This research contributes to the understandings of the backstage, localization and transformation of digital capitalism from tech worker’s perspective, especially in China’s context. It also uncovers the hidden labour process of knowledge production and labour competition in China’s Internet giants and the special role of intern labour which are overlooked and unprotected by laws and policies. Research on precarious labour, work and employment in digitalized workplaces could benefit from this study, as it shows new collaborative, learning and working practices in a monopolized Internet corporation, and its latest technologies and management. It helps us understand and imagine the transformation and trends of work and control in the digitalized era.
 

All are welcome!

Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions ([email protected] or 2616 7469).