ABSTRACT
This chapter explains Vidar Heps's account of experiences informed by doing ethnographic work for more than 20 years as an 'insider' employee at a large corporation. It focuses on the study of field repair service technicians as the basis of original research for a thesis and maintained a corporate insider's perspective, looking out for what could be of interest and use to his corporate sponsor. However, becoming an insider member of the group he was studying had the effect of rendering certain of the copier service technicians' actions and practices transparently obvious and not worth mentioning. The chapter explores several abbreviated stories intended in one way or another to present the main points learned over the course of multiple projects. Rather than focus on differences between the two positions of internal and external ethnographers, it elaborates the back and forth commonalities they share, depending on the features of their work projects.
