A Company of One

摘要

A Company of One is a commendable addition to the growing literature on the New Economy. Carrie Lane makes her contribution by focusing on the ideologies and internal thought processes of workers affected by tumultuous employment and the emphasis on career management, rather than just on the documentation of those trends. The book is based upon fieldwork, especially interviews, conducted with precariously employed and unemployed workers in the high-tech sector in Dallas, Texas. While Silicon Valley is better known as a hotbed for tech, Dallas, too, was a site of early growth in the internet and computing sector. Lane conducted the bulk of her fieldwork from 2001 to 2004, a rough time for the tech sector and those who made their living from it, with follow-up interviews during the recession in 2009. She found many of her subjects through networking events for unemployed tech professionals. They were mostly men who worked in fields such as telecommunications and computer programming. They possessed college degrees and had work experience. Some were unemployed throughout Lane's period of contact with them, while others slipped in and out of employment.