Programming labor

Ensmenger takes us on a historical journey through the labor, pride and discursive struggle for social acceptance of professionalsm of the computer programmers. As such, the social status of programmers have been historically changing over time and were the results of social contexts such as the conflict between the management and the programming laborers. As a conclusion, Ensmenger argues that they are neither routinized laborers nor autonomous professionals (ULIR p.178) but technicians.

However, in my view it seems that today the labor range of programmers have become wider, so that some do routinized labor, while a few still are autonomous, and then again some technicians. Today they seem to exist simultaneously, as computers became more embedded and widespread in society and everyday life. With the widened range, it is hard to embrace all functions as one. There's the Wordpress that was 'created' by two guys, while many programmers spend their long hours mechanically building small pieces of modules for MS Windows without ever having control over the whole product (Fordism style - or 'Software factory', as Ensmenger calls it). As history goes forth, it is often the case that some of the different forms of discourses alongway accumulate to widen the overall scope of the concept, rather than undergoing a complete and uniform change.

And it would be not appropriate to say that programmers should be regarded only one way or another, because some programs require more management while othe programs need creativity. It is that programming has changed from the job itself to a specific skill needed to do a job. The relationship between the labor performance and the job becomes less tight.