Work's Intimacy

by Melissa Gregg

This book provides a long-overdue account of online technology and its impact on the work and lifestyles of professional employees. It moves between the offices and homes of workers in the knew "knowledge" economy to provide intimate insight into the personal, family, and wider social tensions emerging in today’s rapidly changing work environment. Drawing on her extensive research, Gregg shows that new media technologies encourage and exacerbate an older tendency among salaried professionals to put work at the heart of daily concerns, often at the expense of other sources of intimacy and fulfillment. New media technologies from mobile phones to laptops and tablet computers, have been marketed as devices that give us the freedom to work where we want, when we want, but little attention has been paid to the consequences of this shift, which has seen work move out of the office and into cafés, trains, living rooms, dining rooms, and bedrooms. This professional "presence bleed" leads to work concerns impinging on the personal lives of employees in new and unforseen ways. This groundbreaking book explores how aspiring and established professionals each try to cope with the unprecedented intimacy of technologically-mediated work, and how its seductions seem poised to triumph over the few remaining relationships that may stand in its way.

Genres: Nonfiction, Labor

271 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 2, 2011

Reviews

[Tara van Beurden · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book reads like a PHD thesis, and while the topic is an interesting one, its presentation here is rather dry. Gregg looks out how work has infiltrated our private lives, and how we come to view this not as an infiltration per se but as necessary for us to feel competent at our jobs. Having worked in a Big 4 accounting firm for six years, I can relate (I think I worked 10 years in six with all the overtime!). Despite the dryness of Gregg’s style, I could relate to much of her findings. She comments on both the casualization of the workforce, and the insecurity this creates for employees, as well as the way employees are increasingly exploited by employers, particularly when they will do most anything to succeed in their chosen field. Both of these factors contribute to employees doing more and more work in their own time, but rather than be construed as work invading our lives, many employees, particularly those of the more conscientious variety, see this behavior as simply necessary to keep up, and achieve their career goals. This is combined with the access that new technologies gives us, allowing companies to ‘offer’ flexible work arrangements that often just convert to more net time working. Ultimately, despite the dryness of Gregg’s style, I think many professionals will relate to her findings.

[Ari Stillman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book captures the phenomenon of "presence bleed" enabled by digital technology by which the boundaries between the personal and professional spheres disintegrate. This leads to invisible, affective labor of employees checking email or otherwise stressing about work outside of work hours. Workers are largely expected to rise to the occasion and companies provide workshops on work-life balance and mindfulness instead of taking steps to reduce the workload to a manageable amount. While some – especially mothers – view the ability to access email from home as a boon supporting a more flexible lifestyle, the availability of the technology for doing so is coercive in reinforcing psychological connection to the job... which is to say offering a competing intimacy from that experienced with friends and family.

Gregg does an excellent job documenting the mechanisms by which corporations take advantage of workers through technology and even HR's role in artificially seeking to foster community and manipulate feelings of friendship among workers that used to happen organically. By cultivating work-based relationships, this creates further incentive to work outside of normal hours to support the "team". Gregg likewise notes how workers of long hours are prone to use social media more to seek connection with friends in recompense for the lack of traditional connection constricted by their jobs. In this way, social media provides an avenue to intimacy for the busy professional.

[manon]

skimmed through this for uni and my thesis but I did read a large chunk of it so why not count it towards my reading goal?

[Andrew McMillen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tone was too academic for me. I know it's based on a study and requires background research but a lot of that kind of shit was boring to me. I was most interested in the sections discussing her interviewees' experiences with email, workplace, 'always on' etc.

At a personal level reading the book reinforced my decision to cut back on my working hours for the benefit of my relationship. I felt quite sorry for some of the interviewees and their addiction to work/email/impressing their colleagues. I'm a bit different in that I have no real 'team' around me but I am fuelled by my own desire to succeed. So I need to curtail that a little by reducing the hours I spend in front of the computer. Which I had been doing already, but it's nice to have that decision reinforced through the negative experiences of others.