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How Companies Make Us Worship Our Work - interview with Carolyn Chen, author of "Work Pray Code: When Work Becomes a Religion in Silicon Valley"
FromCurrent Affairs
How Companies Make Us Worship Our Work - interview with Carolyn Chen, author of "Work Pray Code: When Work Becomes a Religion in Silicon Valley"
FromCurrent Affairs
ratings:
Length:
37 minutes
Released:
Mar 26, 2022
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
Carolyn Chen's book Work Pray Code: When Work Becomes Religion In Silicon Valley is about how something disturbing is happening in Silicon Valley: people are becoming so totally devoted to their work that their relationship to their companies is a kind of religious devotion. Prof. Chen interviewed scores of employees at tech companies and found that traditional ties of family, church, and community are disappearing in favor of ties to the company. Corporations are providing a site where people find meaning, some even saying that they became their "true selves" on the job, or describing a "conversion" experience. In this interview, we discuss the implications of this kind of extreme devotion to for-profit companies. A certain class of high-paid workers who might once have viewed a job as something you did to earn a living, so that you could go and enjoy your life, view serving the company as the very purpose of life itself, the source of meaning and joy. It is a far cry from Marx's description of "alienated" workers who must sacrifice a piece of themselves to get their daily bread. These workers think that life on the clock is better than life off it—and so they aren't particularly interested in civic participation.
Released:
Mar 26, 2022
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (100)
Bonus episode excerpt: Masterpiece Pieshop: An excerpt from today's bonus episode, available in full to our Patreon patrons, in which *Current Affairs* legal editor Oren Nimni and social media editor Vanessa A. Bee explain and comment on the recent *Masterpiece Cakeshop* decision that came down from the Supreme Court last week. by Current Affairs