Working Algorithms: Software Automation and the Future of Work By Benjamin J. Shestakofsky A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Michael Burawoy, Chair Professor Neil Fligstein Professor Kim Voss Professor Calvin Morrill Professor Leslie Salzinger Summer 2018 Abstract Working Algorithms: Software Automation and the Future of Work by Benjamin J. Shestakofsky Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology University of California, Berkeley Professor Michael Burawoy, Chair While some argue that the rise of software automation threatens workers with obsolescence, others assert that new complementarities between humans and software systems are likely to emerge. This study draws on 19 months of participant-observation research at a software firm to investigate how relations between workers and technology evolved over three phases of the company’s development. The empirical chapters proceed in chronological order, tracking the temporal trajectory of the firm. The company’s strategic direction was guided by its pursuit of venture capital. Executives’ priorities frequently shifted in response to investors’ expectations. Each priority generated new problems that I call “lags” to denote how managers’ vision outpaced technological and organizational realities. At each stage of the company’s development, managers deployed particular types of labor, located in San Francisco, the Philippines, and Las Vegas, to address these lags. As they labored in and around AllDone’s digital machinery, workers at each site affixed particular meanings to their labor and their place within the company. I find two forms of human-software complementarity: computational labor that supports or stands in for software algorithms, and emotional labor aimed at helping users adapt to software systems. Instead of perfecting software algorithms that would progressively push people out of the production process, managers continually reconfigured assemblages of software and human helpers, developing new forms of organization with a dynamic relation to technology. The findings suggest how the dynamism of the organizations in which software algorithms are produced and implemented will contribute to labor’s enduring relevance in the digital age. 1 Table of Contents Introduction: Work, Technology, and Organization in the Digital Age 1 Phase 0: AllDone San Francisco, the Labor of Innovation, and Speculative Optimism 15 Phase I: Machine Lag, Computational Labor, and Familial Love 30 Phase II: Human Lag, Emotional Labor, and Frustration 55 Phase III and Beyond: Organizational Lag, Managerial Labor, and Rationalization 82 Conclusion 106 Methodological Appendix 113 References 119 i Acknowledgments It is often said that social research is inevitably a collective enterprise. It wasn’t until I undertook a project of this magnitude that I understood just how much truth there is to this statement. Without the guidance and support of numerous mentors, colleagues, and friends, this project would not have been possible. I am grateful first and foremost to the members of AllDone far and wide who shared their work lives with me. I have tried to do justice to the richness and complexity of their social world, but I know that the representations inscribed onto each page are inevitably partial truths. My hope is that, at a minimum, I have adequately conveyed the humanity of the people who appear here. I also thank my parents for supporting me throughout an extended intellectual journey. They gave me space to figure out where I wanted to be and what I wanted to do, and had faith that something good would emerge from a very lengthy process. I cannot imagine a friendlier or more vibrant place in which to undertake a dissertation than the UC Berkeley Department of Sociology. Dedicated staff including Catherine Norton, Carolyn Clark, Anne Meyers, Tamar Young, and Carmen Privat-Gilman helped me navigate bureaucracy and kept a smile on my face. The department provided two small research grants that funded trips to the Philippines, as well as a Lowenthal Fellowship that supported the writing of the dissertation. Beyond the department, I benefitted from participating in a variety of workshops and programs on campus, including the Center for Culture, Organizations, and Politics, the Center for Ethnographic Research, the Work and Politics in the Digital Era workshop, and the Algorithmic Fairness and Opacity Working Group. I am also grateful for support from the Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy, the UC Berkeley Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, and the Berkeley Connect program, and to members of the 2018 Chicago Ethnography Incubator. Many faculty members provided thoughtful and timely feedback on various aspects of this project, including Christopher Muller, Marion Fourcade, and Heather Haveman. Claude Fischer’s course on professional writing was immensely useful. Beyond Berkeley, Stephen Barley and Mary Gray provided important comments at pivotal moments in the project’s development that helped me shape its theoretical framework. I have been fortunate to share my time at Berkeley with brilliant friends who doubled as interlocutors and supporters, including Jonah Stuart Brundage, Rebecca Elliott, Katherine Maich, and Alex Roehrkasse. I will miss weekend sessions mapping out works in progress on the blackboard with Jason Ferguson. I am certain that I will never encounter a group of scholars as dedicated to each other’s success as the dissertation-writing group convened by Michael Burawoy. I thank each of the revolving cast of characters for the time and care they put into reading my writing at various stages of development, writing lengthy memos, and debating and discussing the work. The group included Andy Chang, Herbert Docena, Fidan Elcioglu, Aya Fabros, Shannon Ikebe, Andrew Jaeger, ii Zachary Levenson, Thomas Peng, Josh Seim, and Shelly Steward. There is nothing I looked forward to more during my time at Berkeley than our bi-weekly meetings. I couldn’t have asked for a more thoughtful, generous, and engaged dissertation committee. I am grateful that Leslie Salzinger took an interest in this project and offered intellectual space in which to think more broadly about the relationship between affect and economic activity. Our conversations have opened new vistas for me that I am still just beginning to explore. Every time I visited Cal Morrill’s office, I would inevitably emerge with new ideas and renewed excitement about this project. Cal helped me forge deeper connections between my work and a variety of intellectual traditions. Additionally, his course on qualitative field methods prepared me to think rigorously about the methodological decisions I made in the field. His influence has been indelibly stamped on my own teaching of qualitative methods. During my second semester at Berkeley, I developed a proposal to study startup workers in Kim Voss’ course on the sociology of work. Since then, Kim has encouraged me to think broadly about this project without losing touch with the core ideas and interests that have motivated me from the beginning. In conversations about work, life, and politics, Kim gave me a venue in which to develop and articulate who I am as a scholar and a teacher. I am fortunate to have benefitted for so many years from her influence and support. This dissertation also benefitted greatly from Neil Fligstein’s wide-ranging thought and generosity. Neil has a unique talent for considering a project from seemingly every possible angle. Over the years, he has opened my eyes to theoretical frameworks and reinterpretations of data that have become central to my own thinking. With enthusiasm, encouragement, and candor, Neil has helped me experiment with new approaches while staying focused on the big picture. And then there is Michael Burawoy. I’m sure he would be chagrined to hear how profoundly he has shaped my intellectual development. Since my earliest days at Berkeley, he has often seemed to understand my interests and capabilities better than I understood them myself. I am fortunate to have studied theory, method, and teaching—as well as the intersections between them all— alongside Michael and the many other graduate students who he convenes to collaborate in intellectual enterprises large and small. Michael will forever stand as the benchmark against whom I measure my own teaching and advising, and in comparison with whom I will inevitably fall short. His mentorship has been a gift for which I am deeply grateful. I met Isheh Beck just as both of our dissertations were beginning to take shape. Now we find ourselves embarking on a new journey together. Isheh’s strength and support have made everything possible. I can’t wait to find out how the next chapter begins. iii Preface In 2009, a small group of recent college graduates living and working in a townhouse in San Francisco launched AllDone, a digital marketplace for local services.1 Just as Uber was beginning to “disrupt” the transportation industry and Airbnb was starting to change how travelers choose a place to stay, AllDone would use technology to make it easier than ever before for consumers to find and hire someone to do a job for them—from wedding photographers to plumbers to house cleaners and math tutors. AllDone aimed to create more efficient markets by reducing transaction costs for two distinct types of users: buyers (consumers) and sellers (local service providers). Instead of combing through directories or asking friends for recommendations, buyers could use AllDone to receive custom quotes from trusted sellers. If AllDone succeeded in its mission to become “Amazon for local services,” it would transform dozens of trades accounting for hundreds of billions of dollars of consumer activity every year. My first moments in AllDone’s San Francisco loft office in early 2012 appeared to confirm the triumph of technology. I was a doctoral student eager to examine Silicon Valley’s second dot-com boom from the vantage point of its young, high-tech workforce.