Grindhopping: Building a Rewarding Career Without Paying Your Dues
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Manufacturer: McGraw-Hill
Author: Laura Vanderkam
Publisher: McGraw-Hill
Grindhopping: Building a Rewarding Career Without Paying Your Dues Description
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 650.1
EAN: 9780071479332
ISBN: 0071479333
Label: McGraw-Hill
Manufacturer: McGraw-Hill
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 224
Publication Date: 2006-11-28
Publisher: McGraw-Hill
Studio: McGraw-Hill
Dewey Decimal Number: 650.1
EAN: 9780071479332
ISBN: 0071479333
Label: McGraw-Hill
Manufacturer: McGraw-Hill
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 224
Publication Date: 2006-11-28
Publisher: McGraw-Hill
Studio: McGraw-Hill
Editorial Review of Grindhopping: Building a Rewarding Career Without Paying Your Dues
If the Corporate Grind is Keeping You Down, Skip It!
Grindhopping is the hottest career alternative for anyone who wants to skip the long hours, low pay, and lackluster rewards of entry-level corporate jobs. Join the wave of young professionals who are starting their own companies, freelancing, consulting, job-hopping, and networking their way to success.
Discovering Grindhopping will help you
get up and go after your dreams.
get off the corporate treadmill.
get out of the job you hate.
get paid for the work you love.
get better at negotiating.
get savvy about networking.
get smart about taking risks.
get in on the biggest opportunities.
get hopping and make it happen!
Customer Reviews of Grindhopping: Building a Rewarding Career Without Paying Your Dues
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Highly Recommended!
Review: Vanderkam's book is insightful, well-researched and, most importantly inspiring. It is filled with compelling case studies and tips that motivated me to explore a new career path. I have since hopped from the grid, am working from home and doing what I love!
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Insightful, practical, well-written
Review: Grindhopping provides a look at living life outside the box. The decision to take the veer off society's typical path is a difficult one, and Vanderkam offers assurance that, provided you're willing to put in unfettered enthusiasm and hard work, this path can be a wildly successful one. She also outlines the practical, nitty-gritty details on how to make this lifestyle choice work.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Grindhopping strikes a chord.
Review: Vanderkam offers practical advice for jumping out of the world of the 9-to-5, bosses, and the low and middle rungs of the corporate ladder. The title of the first chapter illustrates the author's straightforward tone and approach for the rest of the book: "Always Be Your Own Boss: No compromises, no excuses". She offers compelling reasons to take this path and practical advice for getting there (e.g. how to find reasonable health insurance, how to keep expenses down, and how to maintain multiple projects in the "Craig's List Economy" to keep the money coming in). Vanderkam draws on her personal experience as a freelance writer as well as a number of case studies of "Grindhoppers" who have found success or are on their way. She also addresses the downsides and risks of striking out on your own head-on and offers sound and empathetic advice for dealing with these. But she also confronts the downsides and risks of staying in the grind to your long term career success and satisfaction.
As with other career/entrepreneur books, Vanderkam stresses the importance of planning, goal setting, saving money, and, of course, networking. Yet, she delivers her advice and personal experiences in a way that feels somehow more authentic than with other books I've read. For example, in the networking chapter, she talks about her own tendencies towards shyness and how she overcomes and works around these. She opens up her own life and experiences to the reader just enough and in a way that is not self-indulgent. She succeeds in striking the right balance between focusing on her case studies and her own trials, tribulations, and successes in the world outside of the grind. Her writing is honest, and at times refreshingly quirky. (Check out the section on hunting mastodon and you'll see what I'm talking about.) Highly recommended.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Tired of killing time in your cubicle? This book's for you!
Review: Why is it that so many career books--unique among how-to books--advise you to settle for less? Diet books don't tell you to settle for being overweight; relationship books don't tell you to settle for dysfunctional partnerships; cookbooks don't tell you to settle for takeout. Yet career books often tell you that the only way to get ahead is to settle for putting in time that feels more like doing time. If you're not the kind of person who can ignore how much cubicle slavery feels like any other kind of slavery, then these kinds of self-help books are no help to you--and no wonder. As Grindhopping makes clear, the days of slow and steady wins the corporate race are long gone. So even if that is your comfort zone, you'd do well to read this book instead of all the others premised on a corporate model that's all but extinct. Grindhopping actually examines those statistics that are always cited to discourage free-lancers and entrepreneurs and exposes how they're skewed. But this is not some unrealistic fantasy book for impractical dreamers. Grindhopping covers common pitfalls first-time entrepreneurs fall into--often by blindly following that same outdated corporate model. It also addresses the very real concerns that keep so many chained to their cubicles: student loans, credit-card debt, health insurance, risk management. But unlike career books that only acknowledge the risks of putting your dreams into action, Grindhopping lays out the just-as-real risks of putting your dreams permanently on hold. In a rapidly changing world, survival of the fittest means survival of the most flexible, and this book practices what it preaches, providing real-life examples from every field imaginable of how the shortest distance from here to your goals isn't necessarily straight up the corporate ladder. Grindhopping refuses to ignore the question: If sitting at a desk all day, every day, putting in face time isn't the most efficient way to get the experience and contacts you need to achieve your goals, then what are you still doing there? Instead this book offers concrete strategies for networking, project juggling, delivering results, and learning what you need to know outside of school. Nor does it advise an all-or-nothing mentality: if hopping out of the corporate grind for a while enables you to gain more quickly the experience and contacts you'll need to hop back in later at a higher level, then more power to you. Conversely, if you need a steady stream of cash to pay off debt or need to learn about a particular industry, then a temporary stint in the daily grind may be to your advantage. The main thing is not to let temporary steps along the path to your goals turn into permanent dead-ends, but to weigh risks and make decisions based on whether or not each move you make brings you closer in some way to where you ultimately want to go. Instead of telling you to abandon your dreams, Grindhopping tells you how to make them a reality.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Hopping around your career options
Review: Grindhopping:
1. Hopping out of the corporate grind and into the work you want.
2. Building a rewarding career without paying your dues.
For the most part, the author is talking about developing skills that will allow you to "hop" into the corporate world at the point YOU want to without putting in all those years of meaningless drudgery and traditional corporate ladder climbing.
The author lays out the characteristics essential to successful Grindhopping, urging her readers to follow their dream and get someone else to pay you to do it. She offers as much 'sage' advice as a 29-year-old can, and gives illustrative examples of her points, shoring them up with statistics. But, I wonder if the 'reader' is hearing what she is saying.
While the external environment and internal motivation may differ between the true Grindhopper and the corporate ladder climber, many of the character traits and advice for success apply to both.
Grindhoppers are people who either by desire to be their own boss or lack of options, have a combined fiscal acumen, the ability to long-range plan and set goals, with a lot of self-control to succeed at controlling their own career destiny, much like the corporate climber.
The advice offered for potential Grindhoppers--know where you're going, work hard, network, get experience, stay ahead of the curve, pay attention to detail--has a vague business school ring to it.
The difference is that the Grindhopper IS the boss - either of her one-woman operation or of others who desire to climb her company's ladder!
While I'm not convinced Grindhopping is as revolutionary as the author wants you to believe, the book is worth a read, especially if you allow it to provoke questions about your own career choices.
Armchair Interviews says: A look at transitions written by a New York City-based freelance writer who is a contributing editor at Reader's Digest and is a member of USA Today's Board of Contributors. She reports and writes on a variety of topics including careers, education, health and pop culture trends.
Review Summary: Highly Recommended!
Review: Vanderkam's book is insightful, well-researched and, most importantly inspiring. It is filled with compelling case studies and tips that motivated me to explore a new career path. I have since hopped from the grid, am working from home and doing what I love!
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Insightful, practical, well-written
Review: Grindhopping provides a look at living life outside the box. The decision to take the veer off society's typical path is a difficult one, and Vanderkam offers assurance that, provided you're willing to put in unfettered enthusiasm and hard work, this path can be a wildly successful one. She also outlines the practical, nitty-gritty details on how to make this lifestyle choice work.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Grindhopping strikes a chord.
Review: Vanderkam offers practical advice for jumping out of the world of the 9-to-5, bosses, and the low and middle rungs of the corporate ladder. The title of the first chapter illustrates the author's straightforward tone and approach for the rest of the book: "Always Be Your Own Boss: No compromises, no excuses". She offers compelling reasons to take this path and practical advice for getting there (e.g. how to find reasonable health insurance, how to keep expenses down, and how to maintain multiple projects in the "Craig's List Economy" to keep the money coming in). Vanderkam draws on her personal experience as a freelance writer as well as a number of case studies of "Grindhoppers" who have found success or are on their way. She also addresses the downsides and risks of striking out on your own head-on and offers sound and empathetic advice for dealing with these. But she also confronts the downsides and risks of staying in the grind to your long term career success and satisfaction.
As with other career/entrepreneur books, Vanderkam stresses the importance of planning, goal setting, saving money, and, of course, networking. Yet, she delivers her advice and personal experiences in a way that feels somehow more authentic than with other books I've read. For example, in the networking chapter, she talks about her own tendencies towards shyness and how she overcomes and works around these. She opens up her own life and experiences to the reader just enough and in a way that is not self-indulgent. She succeeds in striking the right balance between focusing on her case studies and her own trials, tribulations, and successes in the world outside of the grind. Her writing is honest, and at times refreshingly quirky. (Check out the section on hunting mastodon and you'll see what I'm talking about.) Highly recommended.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Tired of killing time in your cubicle? This book's for you!
Review: Why is it that so many career books--unique among how-to books--advise you to settle for less? Diet books don't tell you to settle for being overweight; relationship books don't tell you to settle for dysfunctional partnerships; cookbooks don't tell you to settle for takeout. Yet career books often tell you that the only way to get ahead is to settle for putting in time that feels more like doing time. If you're not the kind of person who can ignore how much cubicle slavery feels like any other kind of slavery, then these kinds of self-help books are no help to you--and no wonder. As Grindhopping makes clear, the days of slow and steady wins the corporate race are long gone. So even if that is your comfort zone, you'd do well to read this book instead of all the others premised on a corporate model that's all but extinct. Grindhopping actually examines those statistics that are always cited to discourage free-lancers and entrepreneurs and exposes how they're skewed. But this is not some unrealistic fantasy book for impractical dreamers. Grindhopping covers common pitfalls first-time entrepreneurs fall into--often by blindly following that same outdated corporate model. It also addresses the very real concerns that keep so many chained to their cubicles: student loans, credit-card debt, health insurance, risk management. But unlike career books that only acknowledge the risks of putting your dreams into action, Grindhopping lays out the just-as-real risks of putting your dreams permanently on hold. In a rapidly changing world, survival of the fittest means survival of the most flexible, and this book practices what it preaches, providing real-life examples from every field imaginable of how the shortest distance from here to your goals isn't necessarily straight up the corporate ladder. Grindhopping refuses to ignore the question: If sitting at a desk all day, every day, putting in face time isn't the most efficient way to get the experience and contacts you need to achieve your goals, then what are you still doing there? Instead this book offers concrete strategies for networking, project juggling, delivering results, and learning what you need to know outside of school. Nor does it advise an all-or-nothing mentality: if hopping out of the corporate grind for a while enables you to gain more quickly the experience and contacts you'll need to hop back in later at a higher level, then more power to you. Conversely, if you need a steady stream of cash to pay off debt or need to learn about a particular industry, then a temporary stint in the daily grind may be to your advantage. The main thing is not to let temporary steps along the path to your goals turn into permanent dead-ends, but to weigh risks and make decisions based on whether or not each move you make brings you closer in some way to where you ultimately want to go. Instead of telling you to abandon your dreams, Grindhopping tells you how to make them a reality.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Hopping around your career options
Review: Grindhopping:
1. Hopping out of the corporate grind and into the work you want.
2. Building a rewarding career without paying your dues.
For the most part, the author is talking about developing skills that will allow you to "hop" into the corporate world at the point YOU want to without putting in all those years of meaningless drudgery and traditional corporate ladder climbing.
The author lays out the characteristics essential to successful Grindhopping, urging her readers to follow their dream and get someone else to pay you to do it. She offers as much 'sage' advice as a 29-year-old can, and gives illustrative examples of her points, shoring them up with statistics. But, I wonder if the 'reader' is hearing what she is saying.
While the external environment and internal motivation may differ between the true Grindhopper and the corporate ladder climber, many of the character traits and advice for success apply to both.
Grindhoppers are people who either by desire to be their own boss or lack of options, have a combined fiscal acumen, the ability to long-range plan and set goals, with a lot of self-control to succeed at controlling their own career destiny, much like the corporate climber.
The advice offered for potential Grindhoppers--know where you're going, work hard, network, get experience, stay ahead of the curve, pay attention to detail--has a vague business school ring to it.
The difference is that the Grindhopper IS the boss - either of her one-woman operation or of others who desire to climb her company's ladder!
While I'm not convinced Grindhopping is as revolutionary as the author wants you to believe, the book is worth a read, especially if you allow it to provoke questions about your own career choices.
Armchair Interviews says: A look at transitions written by a New York City-based freelance writer who is a contributing editor at Reader's Digest and is a member of USA Today's Board of Contributors. She reports and writes on a variety of topics including careers, education, health and pop culture trends.