Grenzenlose Freizeit und Arbeit ohne Limit?: Die Privatisierung des Arbeitsalltags am Beispiel der Berliner Start-up-Szene

This article deals with the blurring of boundaries between work and leisure in the everyday life of founders and employees of different start-ups in Berlin. In particular, we focus on the privatization of working time. The data is based on two weeks of ethnographic fieldwork carried out at five start-ups where individual employees and founders were accompanied throughout their working days. The results illustrate actors’ attitudes to and actions for boundary management between work and leisure and show that the privatization of working time is an integral part of everyday working practice in start-ups. Based on our observations we elaborate different types of leisure activities, most of which are initiated by ubiquitous digital devices such as mobile phones. The methodical triangulation of different modes of collecting qualitative data illustrates that boundary management requires considerable but often unnoticed efforts by both founders and their employees. The application of ethnographic methods in combination with an analytical focus on leisure activities during working hours does not only allow a multi-layered understanding of everyday activities in start-ups, but also suggests that the privatization of work is a relevant phenomenon that requires further attention.