Canaries in the Code Mine

""Canaries in the Code Mine is an important and timely contribution to the study of precarious work. Through vivid portrayals of the work lives of software engineers, Max Papadantonakis engagingly shows how even some of the most culturally valued and highly paid workers face insecurity and instability. Within this workforce, women, people of color, and older employees are disproportionally more likely to be laid off and vulnerable to being replaced by artificial intelligence.""--Alexandre Frenette, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Vanderbilt University ""Bringing interview-based insights to the field of critical technology studies, Papadantonakis provides an intersectional analysis, going beyond the tired stereotypes about 'tech bros' to discuss the ways that various forms of inequality and precarity produce differential experiences in software development. After worker-led gains during a time of growth and expansion in tech, we have sharply pivoted from a techlash to a tech crash. Canaries in the Code Mine offers a glimpse of how workers are faring on the ground--the focus on ageism in the industry is especially refreshing--and how assumptions about the elite status of software engineers are not always accurate.""--Tamara Kneese, Director of the Climate, Technology, and Justice Program at the Data & Society Research Institute, and author of Death Glitch: How Techno-Solutionism Fails Us in This Life and Beyond