Web Design as a "Boundaryless" Career: An Exploration of Shifting Career

Many theories of the high-tech career focus on the purported benefits of “boundarylessness”, or the lack of workers’ dependence upon specific organizations for training, financial wellbeing, and personal and professional advancement or growth. This paper calls into question many of the underlying assumptions behind “boundaryless” careers and proposes an alternative model for high-tech employment: the “multiple” career. The multiple career takes into account the shifting nature of “career structures” that vary significantly from those structures in place as recently as twenty years ago in the United States and around the globe. This paper also addresses an issue that is often ignored within studies of high-tech work: racial and sexual inequality at work and at home. Finally, this paper raises practical policy issues that affect high-tech work and workers within the current fiscal environment and economic recession. * Please do not cite without permission of the author.