It bears noting that virtually all interviewees stated that they desire permanent employment, at least at some junctures of their lives. They speak of its advantages (see below), but these may, to some extent, be rationalizations of their unfortunate situations. Still, it is apparent that temporary employment is not a simple, well-defined “problem” that can be solved by a solution.
 

2. What are the consequences of
     temping for individual lives?

In discussing their lives as temporary workers, many of our interviewees cited its advantages; some of these were mentioned in the preceding discussion. Interviewees repeatedly mentioned that it entails little stress or commitment.  They are expected to show up and do the work, to offer no suggestions nor to care much, and to depart quietly. Whether they go beyond this depends on whether they see a particular job as leading to a desired and obtainable permanent position. For some folks this lack of commitment is frustrating, but for others it is exactly what they want. It provides the ability to sample areas, industries, occupations, and companies. It enhances their ability to develop a well-rounded resume. Much can be learned by temping, but most spoke of their work as something they did because they needed an income, and not as an integral part of their lives. Few mentioned creativity or self-fulfillment as temporary workers: Such concerns were luxuries for the permanently employed to enjoy.

The drawbacks of temping were numerous and they were described consistently. Prominent in all interviews was the lack of benefits, and the resulting stress as individuals worried about on the job injuries. The story told by Jeremy, a middle age interviewee, captures the worst fears of many temps. His saga began as a lengthy temporary placement was drawing to a close. He describes the fateful day:

Jeremy went home and awakened the next morning with a painful shoulder. He returned to work, reported the injury and was taken to a hospital where he was diagnosed with a torn rotator cuff. Unable to lift more than twenty pounds, he was unable to work on the manufacturing floor and his hours were reduced. Then he was laid off: “I wasn’t too pleased with it, but because it was a temporary assignment I knew there was not much I could do about it.”  And then he explained, his problems began in earnest. The firm at which he worked and where he was injured claimed that he was being let go at the request of the temporary agency that had placed him because some of the duties he performed were not in his job description. He argued that the description was generic and vague: “The initial job description submitted was that I did little more than sit in a cubicle and operate a mouse and keyboard.”  The complexities of this case cannot be captured in a paper of this length, but soon Jeremy found himself caught between the temporary agency, the firm at which he had been working, and an insurance agency. Initially awarded only unemployment insurance, he finally obtained workman’s compensation, but only at great personal cost:

Jeremy was also involved in a dispute regarding payment for overtime, and he feels that that dispute contributed to his problems. After a contentious series of meetings and hearings over none months, during which he was accused of making invalid unemployment claims, he prevailed and was able to secure workman’s compensation. However, the toll on his family was great: “I feel real bad for my children. They had to suffer along with myself and my wife had to suffer.” Clearly, this case is complex and presented only from one perspective, but it captures the feelings of frustration  and powerlessness expressed by other interviewees.

The very lack of commitment that was so prized by many also had its dark side: transitory relationships and lack of membership. The following comments express a widespread sentiment:

Another person welcomed the freedom and lack of commitment that accompanies temping, but also noted its disadvantages:

Despite the oft-mentioned sense of freedom, people also spoke of poor placements and their reluctance to decline too many referrals. One person noted a particularly difficult situation: 

A middle-age woman with a long history of temping noted the pressure to accept all but the most undesirable referrals:

Another disadvantage is the perceived lower status of much temporary work and the lack of recognition from supervisors and co-workers. Again, the ability to come and go without attachments was praised, but the lack of acknowledgment often hurts:

This person went on to say that such thanks were not often forthcoming in temporary work.

Jeremy, who we met above, also desired recognition for his efforts:

Jeremy believes that in addition to the financial setback that resulted from his injury,  the treatment he received was an attack on his many contributions at work.

Temping also creates difficulties in personal lives since stable schedules are often unavailable and planning becomes difficult at best. The constant change to new employers in different places makes getting to work especially problematic, especially for those without reliable transportation. Richard remarked, 

Another interviewee echoed the same sentiment:

The conditions of temporary work also expose people to large and small injustices, with few options for grievance. A young African American woman described the supervisor at a previous position:

Another woman explained the frustration of trying to address injustices on the job.

One man spoke of finding himself in a situation of sexual harassment and being unable to resolve it. He ultimately quit and moved on to other temporary jobs.

Another man described the futility of trying to meet an impossible work schedule:

Finally, one person noted that the supposed benefits of permanent employment were not always forthcoming.

Temporary agencies are viewed ambivalently. The primary advantage cited is that they find the jobs. This represents enormous savings of time when the job search can be longer than the duration of the appointment. Ideally, they provide a one-stop interview process: several people spoke disparagingly of submitting to additional interviews at the work site. Most interviewees use multiple agencies that they hope will connect them to different job markets. They hoped that such a strategy would increase their chances of finding steady work, and they acknowledged that it provided a poor buffer to any general shortage of jobs. The main complaint about agencies was the frequent lack of information about specific jobs. There were many tales of poor placements and of jobs that bore almost no relationship to their description.   Several people spoke of the frustration of going to placements and receiving no instruction as to their duties, much less training. Other people echoed Jeremy’s concern that agencies and companies have mutual interests that may be pursued at the expense of the temp.

Temporary agencies, however, are typically only one element in the quest for permanent employment. Most people spoke of pursuing a complex strategy of using several temping agencies, plus job training centers and employment agencies, and word of mouth via friends and family.
 

3. What is the Silicon Valley in which people temp,
     and why does it matter?

There is a deceptive clarity about formulating the issue as “temporary work in Silicon Valley.”  Silicon Valley is a name that has passed effortlessly into the national and international lexicon. Many people recognize it as a place in California, although they may be uncertain as to its geographic parameters. “Are we in Silicon Valley here?” and “Is this still Silicon Valley?” are oft-heard questions from visitors. Debating the boundary around the place is a long standing local sport, and the resulting formulations are shifting and situation dependent. For example, few people doubt that Palo Alto, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, Cupertino and San Jose are “in” Silicon Valley. The status of the cities of southern Alameda and San Mateo Counties may be debated. San Francisco is not part of it, but that city’s Multimedia Gulch area might be. Likewise, Santa Cruz County is “over the hill,” except that Scotts Valley just might be an extension of Silicon Valley.

The debate is even more complex than one about geography, for there are entirely different conceptualizations of Silicon Valley. In one, Silicon Valley refers to a high tech industrial sector that exists within a geographic region. Thus, people often say, “I live in Silicon Valley,” referring to the geographic place, and “But I don’t work in Silicon Valley,” referring to the high tech industrial sector. Alternatively, people sometimes speak of Silicon Valley as a fusion of selected high tech jobs distributed across employers and a sort of supportive infrastructure that includes travel agencies, health clubs, restaurants and caterers, law offices, financial services, etc. Here a personal fitness coach might speak of being in Silicon Valley because of their clientele and how it has shaped their delivery of services. Silicon Valley is also routinely defined as a “state of mind” that embraces technological savvy, risk taking, entrepreneurship, heroic individualism and acceptance of at least some kinds of change. It is also defined temporally as a place where the future has arrived today as it is becoming tomorrow.

These various definitions can be quite confusing, and the reader may seek solace in a simplifying definition that purports to define the essential or real Silicon Valley. Yet such solace is likely to be illusory because multiple and inconsistent definitions are simultaneously used, and they have important consequences for how we think about temporary work in this region. Silicon Valley has a panache that is sought by cities, companies and even individuals. To speak of working in Silicon Valley might mean to have a job in a taken for granted geographic region, but it might also refer to working at any job within a high tech industrial sector or to working with a high tech clientele or to adopting a certain set of assumptions and values. Working in Silicon Valley is ambiguous, and temping in it is no exception.

The interviewees reveal the same diversity of understandings of Silicon Valley that we have found in our previous projects in the region. One person’s definition captures the sense of a high tech industrial sector:

Here the high tech industrial employment drives an entire way of life that affects interpersonal relationships, the consumption of products that mark one as an insider, and participation in a specific status system. One is not simply a person who gets a job in an industry within a place, for there are implications for personal identity and social life. A specific set of skills might be implied, but so is a way of life.

To work in Silicon Valley, however it is defined, is often seen as participation in a larger endeavor that is changing the world, generally for the better. It can transform work into an activity that helps people construct meaningful personal narratives centering around education, excellence and transformation. The following remarks capture this sense of participation in a meaningful, transformative activity:

Another person links Silicon Valley with quality, excellence and high standards:

These comments are echoed by yet another interviewee who explicitly defines Silicon Valley in terms of technology and education:

Not everyone, of course, concurs with these assessments of Silicon Valley panache. Some people critique the status hierarchy, but in so doing they confirm that it is operative. The following skeptic, for example, defines the place in terms of jobs but disconnects them from larger issues of status: 

There are thus multiple Silicon Valleys, and not everyone has clear ideas about it or them. The comments of Maria, a young woman living in Fremont, a city in southern Alameda County that is deliberately defining itself as part of Silicon Valley, indicate that Silicon Valley can be a place of considerable mystery.

When asked if she would move in order to be closer to those job opportunities, she admitted to ignorance about whether Silicon Valley was a place or a business: “I didn’t know if it was an area or it’s a business. So it’s an area?”

What sense are we to make of these diverse understandings of Silicon Valley, and what are their implications for how we think about temping in this region?   Based on these interviews and our eight years of studying Silicon Valley, I offer several suggestions.

First, there are a variety of jobs in this region. Some have a distinctive high tech flavor, although this needs to be spelled out for each job. Other jobs are decidedly non-high tech, although they many are defined as “technical” jobs with distinctive skill sets due to the penetration of technical work in the region and its accompanying status. We have interviewed many people over the years who speak of the special technical qualities of seemingly ordinary jobs because of the local predilection to define work as technique and to reward the technical.

Second, entering Silicon Valley’s workforce may involve moving across the boundaries between seemingly invisible worldviews. Working in Silicon Valley is partially a matter of possessing the required skill sets, but for some people it also involves entering a different social world. The work that characterizes this world may not be viewed as “real work” and its claims to significance and status may be off-putting. The implication here is that preparation for work in Silicon Valley may involve embracing a somewhat distinctive worldview and “soft” or social skills, as well as the more familiar technical skills needed to perform tasks.

Third, Silicon Valley values of risk taking, entrepreneurship, and individual responsibility shape jobs in Silicon Valley. Workers are expected to assume primary responsibility for constantly “working on” or improving themselves, upgrading their skills, managing their own careers, and—in Silicon Valley parlance—reinventing themselves.   Such a work environment poses distinct challenges, especially if new workers expect the sheltered or protected employment of previous generations. An implication is that skill mastery is but part of the challenge that workers face: managing themselves and their careers in a turbulent job market is an equally formidable challenge.

Fourth, Silicon Valley may be emblematic of a personal high tech career that is not well defined. The mantra of “computer literacy,” for example, is ubiquitous but what it means is not consistent. Preparing for work in such a region may well be guided by unfounded assumptions about requisite skills promulgated by purveyors of training and networks of friends and family members. Accordingly, people may spend considerable resources on developing skills that map poorly onto available jobs.
 

4. How do family and 
    social networks affect temping? 

The roles of family and social networks figure prominently in the lives of our interviewees. Sometimes family obligations set constraints that shape the selection of jobs, as when a parent declines permanent work in order to perform childcare duties. Several people mentioned children with disabilities that demanded more time than is available with permanent employment. Others spoke of exchanging baby-sitting services and helping each other out in various ways.

Family and friends typically play a role in directing our interviewees to likely job prospects or training opportunities. As with our larger sample of Silicon Valley denizens, the interviewees acknowledge that work-related issues are a major topic of conversation at family gatherings. Legitimate topics of conversation exist within cultural contexts, and work is not an acceptable topic in some cultures. Here it is widely accepted, and our larger research suggests that the sheer importance of work in defining lives in this region drives out many other topics. Accordingly, temporary workers may be like any other workers in discussing work. In some cases, such conversation leads to direct suggestions about job preparation, industry trends, and opening in specific companies. Susan, a young temporary worker, speaks for most when she says, “Oh yeah!  We are always keeping our eyes out for things.” You know, “Did you know about this over here?” and things like that. We all do that.”

Individual family networks do not extend systematically throughout Silicon Valley, but they connect with specific segments of jobs, industries, companies, schools, and other job-related services. They subtly direct job seekers in some directions and away from others. They provide the bases for diverse models of attainable jobs, ways to prepare for them, building careers or work histories, and integrating work into other social responsibilities. Some interviewees were connected to family networks in which permanent technical work in the region’s high tech industries was commonplace, and they assumed that they, too, would eventually assume positions there. Other networks rarely touched high tech industries directly, and other contours of the employment landscape were prominent.

One woman described a circuitous work history in which she received a massage therapy certificate. She is deeply interested in health care, but has not been able to earn a regular income in the field. Her latest idea comes from a conversation with a relative: 

Maria, the young woman for whom Silicon Valley was largely unknown territory, described at length her own large and tight family network. It is a network that has long helped those who enter it to find jobs.

Maria spends much of her time with family members, and augments her income from temporary jobs by baby-sitting and house-sitting for relatives. Family members constantly exchange information about jobs and training, but it is not about the region in general, but rather about particulars segments of it. Most interviewees fit a similar pattern, although the specific content of their knowledge varied widely.

The interviews also suggest the importance of upbringing in shaping expectations about work and life. Several people commented on the disjunction between their own work histories and those of their parents who had held stable and secure permanent jobs for many years. They are slowly becoming resigned to the fact that their own lives are not likely to follow the same pattern. Others spoke of the early socialization that has prepared them well for lives of hard work under changing conditions. The woman who noted that her father jokingly complained of raising “workaholics” described her own upbringing and the continuing influence of her parents:

The implications of family and other social networks for employment, including temping, are enormous. They obviously provide important resources of labor, money, and information, but they also establish important constraints on acceptable jobs. Their indirect role in shaping models of work and life, and of connecting people to particular job markets is perhaps even more significant, if only because it may be only obliquely discussed.
 

5. How do positions in organizations 
     affect the careers of temporary workers? 

Not surprisingly, the interviewees spoke of temporary positions that required very basic skills. These skills, and the very temporary nature of the placement, often meant that workers could not demonstrate any higher level skills that are required for permanent employment. Foe example, many of today’s permanent jobs require ill-defined “soft” skills such as teamwork, self-management or flexibility that can be difficult to demonstrate within the constraints imposed by many temporary jobs. The following four descriptions suggest the simplicity of many of the temporary jobs held by the interviewees.

#2. Just basic, like data entry, Windows, basic knowledge, mostly customer service because you were dealing with the public except in publication, but most of it was with the public: receiving people, executives, CEOs.

#3. It’s the kind of job that anybody can really be taught. However, people have never worked in the warehouse environment find it kind of difficult to work at a fast pace at first. They get dizzy with the conveyor belts and things like that which they don’t know they’re gonna do in the first place when they go there.

#4. Filing, know how to use a fax machine. There wasn’t any typing. The jobs that I’ve gone to, basically they want you just for phones. But, you know, other stuff on the side when you have time. But a lot of the companies I’ve gone to are really busy with phones. That’s their main thing. And the mail.

Just as variations in social networks may have differential impacts on employment opportunities, so too do positions differ in their consequences for careers. Some jobs, such as light warehousing, may seldom lead to more demanding and higher paid positions. The work is narrowly defined and often quite regimented, and opportunities to demonstrate abilities that may be required elsewhere are curtailed. Furthermore, the work is performed at the lower levels of the organizational hierarchy. This situations contrasts with other placements that provide some opportunity to demonstrate a variety of skills, to learn how the organization operates, and to be in contact with people who have the power to alter career trajectories. One person, whose temporary position had ultimately become permanent, described her first day on the job at a major high tech firm:

This case contrasts vividly with the comments of other interviewees who said that they generally worked surrounded by other temporary employees who obviously lacked the ability to offer them permanent employment:

All this suggests that the relationship between the lower end temping positions that are the focus of this paper and permanent positions that offer opportunities for better pay and advancement is problematical. The difficulties may be quite direct and obvious, as in the case of jobs requiring simple skills that are inadequate for permanent employment. More subtle are the ways that jobs structure learning about organizations and appropriate ways for presentation of self, and the myriad of soft skills that mark many contemporary jobs.
 

6. How do people reason about the future 
     and their places in it? 

Ideas about the future provide a context for current decision making about training, education and the pursuit of jobs. They can reveal important assumptions and values about the social and physical environment, and human agency. They make some choices likely and sensible, while making others unlikely and incomprehensible. They are the foundation for planning and taking action to realize aspirations.

Many of the interviewees spoke of their futures in terms similar to those used by the WICSV interviewees. In those interviews people speak of relatively optimistic futures which they anticipate will correspond closely to their expected futures. These optimistic scenarios are generally quite realistic and there are explicit connections between current actions and anticipated realities. In no case have our interviewees been unable to articulate such future visions. The following remarks from a temporary worker express this sense of modest optimism: 

The interviewee had completed college and went on to describe how she would realize her middle class aspirations.

This sense of future was not shared among all the temporary worker interviews, and indeed, the perplexity with which several people responded is striking. A middle age woman with a long history of temping responded, “I have no clue. It’s really hard to imagine. I have no clue, I really don’t, I really don’t.”  When probed about what future she desired, she spoke of her dream of starting a newspaper, but she did not link it to her current actions or immediate plans.

Other interviewees grounded their lack of future scenarios in religious faith, sometimes speaking explicitly about the likelihood of Armageddon.

When the interviewer asked if these events might occur within ten years, she responded, “Exactly, if not before.” This religious based vision of the future has obvious implications for educational preparation and career building. Other interviewees expressed incredulity regarding speculations about their futures that was based on a lack of information or interest, rather than being grounded in religious faith. Yet both shared two characteristics. First, the interviewees who spoke this way spoke more generally about being affected or buffeted by events beyond their control. They were not merely passive, nor did they fail to act, but immediate events and concerns, such as a need to pay important bills, drive their actions. Second, these interviews also convey the sense of lives that are made meaningful beyond the domain of work. Indeed, the measure of many of our WICSV interviewee’s lives is their success through work and career, a practice that is alien to many of the temporary workers interviewed.

The sense of being buffeted by external events that one can only partially control was also reflected in accounts of work histories. Several people spoke casually of pivotal events or lacunae in training that shaped their work histories. Some of these events and lacunae are only dimly remembered and they are spoken of without regard to their consequences. They give eerie sense of “things happen.” A young woman recalled, 

Another woman, looking back over a lengthy career, spoke of a missed opportunity:

A third interviewee spoke of leaving one company to take another job that she thought would last longer.

When asked if she wanted to return to the job she said, “Yeah, I did want to go back but I wasn’t available because my phone was cut off. They couldn’t get a hold of me and when they did they had already sent someone else.” 
 

Concluding Remarks

The goal of this paper has been to develop some ideas that may provide a useful basis for at least some discussions that are germane to this conference. A subsidiary goal has been to present at least some insider perspectives on lower end temping in the words of those who perform the work. While certain commonalties emerge, so too do the variations in perspectives. Clearly, temping does not simply describe a monolithic way of working, for it is embedded in complex ways in the lives of people. Those lives, of course, vary in markedly in their trajectories and in the meanings that those who live them attach to family, work, and community. The challenge is to simultaneously acknowledge this variability while seeking the junctures and mechanisms that can affect work histories in ways that improve individual lives and communities.