Spaghetti Time: Organisational Culture, Multi-tasking and Boundaries

Abstract

Chapter 2 detailed the long-hours myth that defines temporal culture in the software sector. Indeed, what was interesting to note in this study is that, despite control over one’s working hours, and the flexibility of the work process so few of the participants took the opportunity to work much shorter hours. The last chapter described the conflict between the two types of time that frame the temporal culture of software work: market time and work-process time, linear time versus non-linear time. It showed that the labour process is rhythmic: there are times of rising intensity at the end of a project, there is the time of ‘flow’, and the times where creative energies decline. While approaching deadlines may explain those occasions when hours are lengthened, they do not explain why these occasions aren’t matched by shorter hours at other points in the work life-cycle. This chapter address this problem by looking more closely at the boundary-transgressing nature both of knowledge work and the organisational culture of the workplace. Boundaries are the edges which define the centre. Examining the temporal boundaries which surround the working day can help us comprehend the nature of intellectual labour and its working time. By looking at the boundaries, we can unpick the tension between dreams of satisfaction and dreams of escape, between engrossing work and the threat of increased work intensity and longer working days.

We were working on a project that nobody cared about and we wanted to work on something that we thought was fun so we switched to twitter, and everyone told us it was the stupidest idea in the world.

Biz Stone, on setting up Twitter¹