
Janet Vertesi
Sociologist of Science & Technology

The Future(s) of Work
[A]n unexplored link between two sides of the platform gig economy: platform coordination of labor, on the one hand, and expansion of automation techniques for said labor on the other... an organizational configuration that we call ‘pre-automation.’ We define pre-automation as the coincident, strategic effort to scale a workforce and monopolize a distribution network via platform while simultaneously investing in its automated replacement.
This line of my work examines political economic shifts through the lens of changing experiences of the labor force, especially in gig work and contract labor. With collaborators at Princeton such as Adam Goldstein, Diana Enriquez, and Larry Liu, we have worked under a Sloan Foundation grant to understand gig workers' role in the automation of labor. With David Reinecke, I am studying the Covid-19 transition as it affects workers in planetary sciences, who are often on soft money and rely on grant cycles. This work examines labor in socioeconomic context, drawing on literature in economic sociology.
Key Publications
2025
PaperThe Ghost of Middle Management: Automation, Control, and Heterarchy in the Platform Firm
Sociologica (Open Access)
2021
PaperPre-Automation: Insourcing and Automating the Gig Economy
Sociologica (Open Access)
2019
PaperWorking apart, together: the challenges of co-work, with Casey Swezey
ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, Article 204)