The Sun Sets on the Bohemian Workplace

Foosball. Khakis. Overcaffeination. They were familiar trappings of the near-extinct dotcom culture. Live-work loft space. Flexible work schedules. Open-plan offices. The notion that all work is personal and that you are what you do.

Those cultural trends and buzzwords -- spawned in large part by the Internet Age -- fundamentally changed the psychology of the workplace, according to Andrew Ross, professor and director of the American Studies Program at New York University. The transformation marked what the outspoken cultural critic calls "the industrialization of bohemia." For the first time in the history of work, says Ross, a mentality more typical of artisans and craftspeople was imported into core sectors of the information economy. And work, he says, will never be the same.

From the mid-1990s until the dotcom meltdown, the office was reimagined as "a giant, multipurpose playroom for an ever-shifting team of workers," he says. And while that kind of freewheeling play has largely subsided in today's beleaguered economy, the informal workplace is here to stay.

Ross isn't another ivory-tower commentator on dotcom culture. In the last days of summer, weeks away from the start of another school year, Ross, 45, is working feverishly to chronicle what's left of a dying culture. He is conducting an in-depth study of Silicon Alley workplace culture. For the past year, he has made himself at home in two companies, where he has interviewed some 150 employees, attended dozens of staff meetings, and observed the daily grind.

It's a familiar in-the-trenches project for Ross, who has authored nearly a dozen books on technology and culture, including his most recent book, The Celebration Chronicles: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Property Value in Disney's New Town (Ballantine Books, 1999). He eventually plans to publish his current research in a book that will explore the new economy's work mentality.

In a recent interview with Fast Company, Ross offered a sneak preview of his findings so far.

What kind of Silicon Alley companies are you studying and why?

There's a lot of awareness of how exploitative sectors of that economy were and still are. So I decided to go to companies that were about as good as it gets. In many ways, these companies were labor aristocracies. The salaries were fairly high. There was a remarkable amount of personal autonomy on the job. Employees were given permission to manage themselves and their expressive energies. These companies also had strong, organically grown cultures, as opposed to culture with a capital C.

In what ways was bohemian culture imported into the workplace?

There was an attempt to bring the bustle and the vitality of urban street life into the workplace. Traditionally bohemian workstyles were visible in everything from casual dress and the informalization of the workday to the endorsement of a kind of general hedonism and party culture in the office. This contrasts with mainstream corporate America, which represents the bourgeoisie.

There is a civil war being waged between the old economy and the new economy. And in many ways, that battle is a replay of the 19th-century Parisian face-off between bohemians and the bourgeoisie. A lot of these companies presented themselves as alternatives to corporate America and took on all things bohemian. What's interesting is that both groups needed the other. The world of the bourgeoisie always needed a bohemian underside, a sort of fantasy demimonde, just as the bohemians always needed the bourgeoisie to define themselves against. And a lot of the culture that you find in the Internet economy is very much a reenactment of that century-old opposition between the bohemians and the bourgeoisie in an urban setting. The fact that such a familiar dialogue has been played out in the business world is quite extraordinary.

What was truly new about the new economy's work mentality?

It was everything, from the physical space -- the arrangement of the office -- to a greater sense of permission and personal autonomy. The true mark of humanity is choice. Is workplace community obligatory or optional? In other words, can you chose to treat your job as just a job? In some companies, employees who want to fit in have no choice but to hang out constantly with the "in" crowd -- which isn't entirely healthy or humane. There's a very thin line between communitarianism and obligatory community in the workplace.