Paula Bialski – Middle Tech (EPUB)

Why software isn’t perfect, as seen through the stories of software developers at a run-of-the-mill tech company
Contrary to much of the popular discourse, not all technology is seamless and awesome; some of it is simply “good enough.” In Middle Tech, Paula Bialski offers an ethnographic study of software developers at a non-flashy, non-start-up corporate tech company. Their stories reveal why software isn’t perfect and how developers communicate, care, and compromise to make software work—or at least work until the next update. Exploring the culture of good enoughness at a technology firm she calls “MiddleTech,” Bialski shows how doing good-enough work is a collectively negotiated resistance to the organizational ideology found in corporate software settings.
The truth, Bialski reminds us, is that technology breaks due to human-related issues: staff cutbacks cause media platforms to crash, in-car GPS systems cause catastrophic incidents, and chatbots…