Gina Neff

Bio

Gina Neff is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Washington. She is co-editor of Surviving the New Economy (Paradigm Press, 2007) and author of the forthcoming book Venture Labor, which traces the change in U.S. employment structures through the experience of the early pioneers of the commercial internet. Her research focuses on organizational dynamics in the face of technological change in areas such as green commercial architecture and new media industries. She holds a Ph.D. in sociology from Columbia University, where she is now an external faculty affiliate at the Center on Organizational Innovation

Abstract

Venture Labor: The Risks of Work in Social Media

Several social theorists note that contemporary jobs entail a lack of job security and observe the increase in the precarity of modern life. While there is much writing on theories of these changes, less has been done on why people accept riskier work and how they are adapting, especially within technology industries. I examine what I call "Venture Labor"--the investment of financial, human, and social capital that ordinary employees make in the companies they work using a case study from the early pioneers of the commercial internet. I argue that not only is Venture Labor applicable to many different high-risk and innovative industries, but it arises during a particularly charged moment in the transition of the U.S. economy from an industrial economy to a post-industrial economy. Drawing on ten years of research in New York's Internet industry, or "Silicon Alley," I will outline the origins and rise of employees' entrepreneurial behavior, the dynamics of risk during the dot-com boom and bust, and employees' strategies for managing this risk.