Knee Deep in the Weeds-Getting Your Hands Dirty in a Technology Organization

Abstract

For many months our organization had us performing “technical grunt work.” Upon reflection, getting deep into our company's technological system put us in the unique position of understanding, at a much finer level of detail, the entire assemblage of people, objects, systems, and organizations that make up the world that this technology is becoming a part of. Our paper recounts how we eventually recognized our engagement in technological grunt work as participant observation and how it enabled us to better contribute to decisions about how the technology should work, present itself to users, and be sold. Further, we reflect on an expanded notion of what constitutes the field and fieldwork in corporate ethnography.