Occupations are increasingly embedded with and affected by digital technologies. These technologies both enable and threaten occupational identity and create two important tensions: they make the persistence of an occupation possible while also potentially rendering it obsolete, and they magnify both the similarity and distinctiveness of occupations with regard to other occupations. Based on the critical case study of an online community dedicated to data science, we investigate longitudinally how data scientists address the two tensions of occupational identity associated with digital technologies and reach transient syntheses in terms of “optimal distinctiveness” and “persistent extinction.” We propose that identity work associated with digital technologies follows a composite life-cycle and dialectical process. We explain that people constantly need to adjust and redefine their occupational identity, i.e., how they define who they are and what they do. We contribute to scholarship on digital technologies and identity work by illuminating how people deal in an ongoing manner with digital technologies that simultaneously enable and threaten their occupational identity.

中文翻译：

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当数字技术启用和威胁职业身份时：数据科学家的微妙平衡行为

职业越来越多地嵌入数字技术并受其影响。这些技术既使职业认同成为可能，也威胁到职业认同，并造成了两种重要的张力：它们使一种职业的持久性成为可能，同时也可能使其过时，它们放大了职业相对于其他职业的相似性和独特性。基于专注于数据科学的在线社区的关键案例研究，我们纵向研究数据科学家如何解决与数字技术相关的职业身份的两种紧张关系，并在“最佳独特性”和“持续消亡”方面达成瞬时综合。我们建议与数字技术相关的身份工作遵循一个复合的生命周期和辩证的过程。我们解释说，人们不断地需要调整和重新定义他们的职业身份，即他们如何定义他们是谁以及他们做什么。我们通过阐明人们如何以持续的方式处理同时启用和威胁其职业身份的数字技术，为数字技术和身份工作的学术做出贡献。