Author: Will Huftalen

Northeastern Student

In the U.S. economy, workers have become increasingly specialized as the economy has developed. Adam Smith theorized this as the division of labor, that is we become increasingly more efficient as we have a narrower scope of work to become skilled at (Rojas, 2021). On a larger scale as the economy expands, workers can find a valuable niche within the labor market to work on within the wider economy. Ultimately this increases our productivity as an entire society. 

During my final co-op at Snyk.io, I saw this being played out in action for the company to not only operate but to scale up and grow. I was quite intrigued by the specificity of each position within the company, it is ultimately an example of Adam Smith’s theory of division of labor. Snyk provides software that scans code to ensure there are no vulnerabilities where hackers could exploit a company’s website or application. In order to build the product, sell it, and manage the trajectory of the company, the organization requires workers to be specialized in distinct areas. While there are many that I could get into, for the sake of this example we’ll look at a developer, a sales rep, and a strategy & operations analyst. The developer oversees building and up-keeping the product that Snyk sells, they need to know and understand how to code and what the coding ecosystem is like (to get even more specific there can be front-end and back-end developers). The Sales representative needs to have knowledge of the product and allocate their work to reaching out to potential customers and running the logistics of the purchasing process and deals. Meanwhile, the analyst will focus on the direction of the company and perform industry research to plan out how the company should scale up and grow. While not impossible, it would be incredibly difficult and inefficient to have workers who would do all three of these types of work, no matter how many of them the company had. Having these specialized positions for the company to sustainably grow. This division of labor at Snyk is an example in a single company yet it is just as applicable to all types of technology companies in the greater economy. Developers, analysts, and sales representatives are all able to focus on their skills and become more valuable and efficient for the companies that they work at, whether it be Google, AWS, or a smaller startup.  

More simply, consider getting a meal delivered on door dash. There is the driver who specializes in delivering food, the chef who put together the meal, the truck delivery drivers who delivered the ingredients in bulk to the restaurant, the sales rep who sold the food, the food distribution company, all the way back to the farmers who sold the original raw ingredients. It’s incredible to look at the product and backtrack the entire supply chain. All the while, specialized labor is crucial for the efficient process of getting the goods that we use daily.  

Cited Works:

Fabio Rojas (2021) Economic Sociology. In: Barian A, Brown JA, Clair M, et al. (eds.) A Sociology Experiment.