"This Man Is Not Responsible for Anything": Engineers and Their Everyday Concerns

• In Event: Engineers: Makers of the World or Cogs in the Machine? - I: Engineers and Power in Politics, Organizations and Everyday Life

Abstract

The dominant mode of technocracy in current Russian political discourse and cultural beliefs requires strong engineering community. However, we observe a relatively weak representation of engineers being public experts or decision makers. The possible reason is that it is hard to imagine how engineers work, which actions, decisions, and activities might be referred to as engineering. One of the ways to understand the arrangement of engineering work is to dive into their daily working activities. Ethnography of tech company allows discovering domains of responsibility and management, as well as showing everyday practices, distribution of activities, skill sets for different types of tasks. Our study was conducted with observations and in-depth interviews. Based on the materials of the first three months of observations and dozen of interviews, we will present preliminary results. The first findings raised the following three aspects of engineers’ work at the factory:
the boundaries of responsibility of engineers are fluid;
formal instructions regulate work of engineers, but sometimes there is a need to use informal ties for optimization of the production process;
gender beliefs influence the organizational structure and procedures of the company in many ways (i.e. a distribution of responsibilities, structure of power and working time, role relationships and identities).

Authors

• Liliia Zemnukhova, European Univeristy at St. Petersburg

• Irina Evseeva, European University at St. Petersburg