No-Collar: The Humane Workplace and Its Hidden Costs

Rating:
Summary: More Than Insightful
Review: An entertaining and informative read about a time that will be remembered right along side tulip mania. No Collar differs from many business books because it gives valuable insights through the use of the powerful medium of story telling. The writer spent a good deal of time inside the company he focuses on and gives a compelling first hand account.

The lessons and ideas to be learned from this book are not spelled out like in many management books. The reader must read between the lines and come to his/her own conclusions.

One essential lesson to be learned from this account of a company during the inernet explosion and subsequent implosion is the necessity of corporate values and a vision.(built to last) While there is nothing wrong with striving to construct a workplace utopia, clear goals and direction are essential for any company. These ideas are not mutually exclusive from optimum working conditions and do not have to come at the expense of creativity.

Rating:
Summary: a band collar?
Review: An entertaining and informative read about a time that will be remembered right along side tulip mania. No Collar differs from many business books because it gives valuable insights through the use of the powerful medium of story telling. The writer spent a good deal of time inside the company he focuses on and gives a compelling first hand account.

The lessons and ideas to be learned from this book are not spelled out like in many management books. The reader must read between the lines and come to his/her own conclusions.

One essential lesson to be learned from this account of a company during the inernet explosion and subsequent implosion is the necessity of corporate values and a vision.(built to last) While there is nothing wrong with striving to construct a workplace utopia, clear goals and direction are essential for any company. These ideas are not mutually exclusive from optimum working conditions and do not have to come at the expense of creativity.

Rating:
Summary: My G-g-g-eneration
Review: If you've worked in the new technology world in the 90s you should read this book. It will help you understand what happened and why you now realize your job wasn't all that.

Rating:
Summary: Did the reader from Los Angeles read the book?
Review: It doesn't appear that the reader from Los Angeles read this particular book; it seems he/she simply took this space as an opportunity to rant about Andrew Ross and other vaguely related issues. Ross's book is a nuanced look at the peculiar culture of the new media workplace, just as the golden years began to fade. Considering that Ross was not actually an employee of Razorfish, the main company in his case study, his perspective is surprisingly sensitive. After spending the dot-com golden years in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, I was prepared to scoff at an outsider's interpretation of what the new media workplace was like, and how it felt to be an employee of that workplace. I was further prepared to roll my eyes at his choice of exploring New York's new media world rather than making the trip to the heart of it all, the San Francisco Bay Area. But in the end I was impressed: he explains his reasons for choosing New York, and they make sense. And he hits the nail on the head in terms of what was most odd and most interesting--as well as most consequential--about the feel-good, creative, ambitious new media work environment. The book grows significantly more "readable" after the first few chapters give way to more anecdotal scene-setting and conversations with Razorfish employees.

Rating:
Summary: Understanding the 90s workplace
Review: No-Collar is excellent. As someone who worked in a dot.com during the 90s boom, I can really appreciate the in-depth analysis that Ross offers. Most people think that my job had to do with free massages and pinball machines, but Ross dispels the myth that work can be play. While my job was a lot of fun at times, Ross hits the nail on the head when he discusses the "hidden costs" involved. I also liked the way this book puts the dot.com world and its unique management style in the larger context of late 20th century labor issues.

Rating:
Summary: More Than Insightful
Review: Ross is always worth reading, and this book might just be his best so far. If it's not, it's certainly the best hands-on analysis of what the New Economy was like for the grunts in the office, and for those us who do knowledge work. No one else took the time he did (over a year) to go inside companies and talk to employees on the daily grind, week in week out. I'm mostly convinced by his conclusions about the perils of the humane workplace, though there's lot more to this book than that. The best thing is that he puts it all in the larger context of historical patterns of work in corporate America. No one, that I know of, has done that. And it's a great read, too.