Introduction: a tale of two hybrids

The evidence reviewed in chapter four highlighted the fact that some workers in Softech's R&D unit had experiences of it which could not be reconciled with the official account of its organisation and aims. Given special prominence was the fact that the careers of male and female technical employees seemed to follow differently configured paths through the allegedly meritocratic system. Two individual cases will serve to illustrate the discrepancies well here. In many senses they were at the extremes of those available insofar as no explanation was even offered as to why the woman, ‘Sam’, was yet to meet a client at the time of the research, or why the man, ‘James’, had ever been allowed anywhere near one. However, the themes that were evident in their cases were also echoed in those which were less extreme, and the features they demonstrate were not, therefore, atypical.

James (Male, HCI, 31: 60%) had been in the unit for three years. Before that he had worked for a couple of years in a similar company that he joined after completing an undergraduate degree in physics. Whilst working at Softech, he maintained an active academic interest in science and technology, mathematics and history, all subjects in which he had taken Open University courses during his spare time. His interest in computing developed as an undergraduate, although he saw it as an extension of the technical hobbies he had taken up as a child.