MIDDLE TECH

Why software isn t perfect as seen through the stories of software developers at a run of the mill tech company Contrary to much of the popular discourse not all technology is seamless and awesome some of it is simply good enough In Middle Tech Paula Bialski offers an ethnographic study of software developers at a non flashy non start up corporate tech company Their stories reveal why software isn t perfect and how developers communicate care and compromise to make software work or at least work until the next update Exploring the culture of good enoughness at a technology firm she calls MiddleTech Bialski shows how doing good enough work is a collectively negotiated resistance to the organizational ideology found in corporate software settings The truth Bialski reminds us is that technology breaks due to human related issues staff cutbacks cause media platforms to crash in car GPS systems cause catastrophic incidents and chatbots can be weird Developers must often labor to patch and repair legacy systems rather than dream up killer apps Bialski presents a less sensationalist more empirical portrait of technology work than the frequently told Silicon Valley narratives of disruption and innovation She finds that software engineers at MiddleTech