Carolyn Chen

The religion of work and welfare: Laurie Taylor explores the way in which our understanding of jobs and joblessness has become entangled with religious ideologies. He's joined by Tom Boland, Senior Lecturer in Sociology at University College, Cork, who argues that Western culture has ‘faith’ in the labour market as a test of the worth of each individual. For those who are out of work, welfare is now less a means of support than a means of purification and redemption where job seeking becomes a form of pilgrimage. Also, Carolyn Chen, Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, explores how the restructuring of work is transforming religious and spiritual experience in late capitalism. She spent five years conducting an ethnographic study in Silicon Valley and found that tech companies have brought religion into the workplace, in ways that replace churches, temples, and synagogues in workers’ lives and satisfy needs for belonging, identity, purpose, and transcendence. What happens when work replaces religion and are there wider lessons for workers beyond the niche world of high tech?Producer: Jayne Egerton

Carolyn Chen, an Associate Professor at UC Berkeley and author of *Work, Pray, Code*, discusses how Silicon Valley’s hustle culture resembles a religion, complete with devotion to work. Journalist Laura Kelly sheds light on the 996 work trend—9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week—and its rise in the tech industry. Economist Ara Karazian analyzes data revealing a spike in weekend work as companies expect employees to embrace the grind. They explore whether this relentless hustle can sustain without burnout and its implications for diversity in the workforce.