“Normal People. Down-to-Earth, Regular Guys”: The Gendered and Racialized Blueprint of Belonging in Tech

• In Event: Gender and Race at Work

Abstract

Sociologists have established how the culture of local workplace settings serves as a vehicle of powerful labor market sorting in hiring and evaluation processes. Cultural similarities facilitate trust and bonding among organizational members, and cultural resources also construct group boundaries and social networks to benefit people who can signal their cultural fit to a company. We know less about the relational strategies used by workers to signal their cultural fit –and to what end. Drawing on an organizational case study of a tech firm, including ethnographic observations and interviews with workers, I ask: which workers can signal their cultural fit and form relationships with coworkers, how do they form internal relationships, and to what effect on their careers? I consider the role of gender and race and examine how employees navigate internal networks. I link what I call the ideal networker norm with workplace culture. Once hired, employees network with coworkers to gain inside information, coveted project assignments, and work perks that might include box seats at Friday’s Red Sox game or the first notice of a promotion opportunity. Men are the demographic majority and hold most positions of power in the firm, and so culture rewards masculinity, especially engineering masculinity. Men can embody the ideal networker and wield the “right” cultural resources to strategically socialize, bond with colleagues, and capitalize on internal relationships. Women struggle to maneuver through the workplace to fit in and compete with men for career advantages. Some women who possess class and racial privilege can navigate the interactional climate and earn cultural approval by playing up their femininity, but doing so only reinforces gender and racial status hierarchies in the company. Networking constitutes an informal system by which white men can simultaneously monitor adherence to workplace cultural norms and maintain a gendered-racialized opportunity structure.

Author

• Ethel L. Mickey, California State Univ-San Bernardino