nghia's review against another edition
2.0
I was so disappointed by this book. I think there is a huge story to tell about how to build a career in the modern winner-take-all-world. Irwin's first misstep is he doesn't even consider the geographic implications of winner-take-all. It affects the country you live in (try being a rocket engineer outside of the US), the region you live in (try being in petroleum in Maine), and the city you live in (try being a venture capitalist in DC). But even leaving that aside Irwin delivers an underwhelming and forgettable business book.
One reason the book was so underwhelming -- for me in particular -- was that much of what he talks about is half-a-decade or more "old news" among my friends and coworkers. He has long chapters on Moneyball (is there anyone who doesn't know this story already?), the Netflix culture deck (published a decade ago in 2009), Drucker quotes from 2001(!), the "T-shaped" worker (deep in one area but broad in several) and so on. When you read the story of Danny Meyer's restaurant it just comes across as people who were chefs who knew nothing about management learning Management 101 stuff that business books have been teaching for 30 years. Or there's a chapter about how software is eating the world so, you know, figure out how to work with software in some way (which doesn't mean you have to become a software developer per se).
But even if you don't have that same context I do, I argue that you'll find the book tedious and low-value because it suffers from the cardinal sin of business books -- tons of padding with "stories". A chapter might have a single (occasionally genuinely useful) insight but will wrap it up in long-winded stories of someone's entire career. For instance, there's a chapter making the point the taking a job is a big deal because you spend so much of you life there (duh) so you should think about whether a particular company fits you -- both in terms of personality but also where you are in your career. Kind of a duh-no-kidding insight but I guess some people haven't realised that. He provides a framework of there being 3 kinds of companies. Then he provides the entire life story of 3 people -- one for each kind of company. The upshot from reading this dozen pages on these 3 people? They worked at a series of companies that was a good fit for them. But it might not have been a good fit for someone else.
Likewise there's a chapter on using "big data", which (in addition the aforementioned long segue about Moneyball) tells the story of a guy who founds a company, and then the company is bought by Microsoft, and then another division is having poor morale, so they ask the acquired-company to analyse the Outlook Calendars of all their staff looking for insights about the low morale, and it segues into another story about how Major League Baseball has instituted a system that track 4 terabytes of data per game, and Sabremetrics, and there's this baseball player who gets on-base a lot and won an MVP but some fans don't like his style because he'll take a walk instead of swinging his bat, and then....it circles back around and the results at Microsoft were....people were in too many meetings. Oh, with a sidenote that you can't really do any of this analytics on your own because it requires a large dataset and fancy math. Leaving me wondering what take-away a reader is supposed to get from that chapter.
(On a side note: the majority of the interviews are with people who are CEOs, telling the story of how they climbed up to become a CEO. That's a common business book foible -- let's learn from the people who succeeded...and pretend survivorship bias isn't a thing! -- but in a book that is ostensibly targeted as a career-guide at "everyone" I would have liked to see a lot more non-CEO stories and a lot more data and fewer stories for that matter.)
Funnily enough, at the end of the book is an appendix of "The takeaways: What to remember from this book" which strips away all these discursive stories of questionable usefulness. 99% of readers should just skip to that part and read it first. If there's something unclear or that you're not convinced about, only then go back and read the full chapter. The book does have some morsels of good advice, which is why I'm rating it 2-stars and not 1-star, they are just few & far between and buried behind a lot of cruft.
One reason the book was so underwhelming -- for me in particular -- was that much of what he talks about is half-a-decade or more "old news" among my friends and coworkers. He has long chapters on Moneyball (is there anyone who doesn't know this story already?), the Netflix culture deck (published a decade ago in 2009), Drucker quotes from 2001(!), the "T-shaped" worker (deep in one area but broad in several) and so on. When you read the story of Danny Meyer's restaurant it just comes across as people who were chefs who knew nothing about management learning Management 101 stuff that business books have been teaching for 30 years. Or there's a chapter about how software is eating the world so, you know, figure out how to work with software in some way (which doesn't mean you have to become a software developer per se).
But even if you don't have that same context I do, I argue that you'll find the book tedious and low-value because it suffers from the cardinal sin of business books -- tons of padding with "stories". A chapter might have a single (occasionally genuinely useful) insight but will wrap it up in long-winded stories of someone's entire career. For instance, there's a chapter making the point the taking a job is a big deal because you spend so much of you life there (duh) so you should think about whether a particular company fits you -- both in terms of personality but also where you are in your career. Kind of a duh-no-kidding insight but I guess some people haven't realised that. He provides a framework of there being 3 kinds of companies. Then he provides the entire life story of 3 people -- one for each kind of company. The upshot from reading this dozen pages on these 3 people? They worked at a series of companies that was a good fit for them. But it might not have been a good fit for someone else.
Likewise there's a chapter on using "big data", which (in addition the aforementioned long segue about Moneyball) tells the story of a guy who founds a company, and then the company is bought by Microsoft, and then another division is having poor morale, so they ask the acquired-company to analyse the Outlook Calendars of all their staff looking for insights about the low morale, and it segues into another story about how Major League Baseball has instituted a system that track 4 terabytes of data per game, and Sabremetrics, and there's this baseball player who gets on-base a lot and won an MVP but some fans don't like his style because he'll take a walk instead of swinging his bat, and then....it circles back around and the results at Microsoft were....people were in too many meetings. Oh, with a sidenote that you can't really do any of this analytics on your own because it requires a large dataset and fancy math. Leaving me wondering what take-away a reader is supposed to get from that chapter.
(On a side note: the majority of the interviews are with people who are CEOs, telling the story of how they climbed up to become a CEO. That's a common business book foible -- let's learn from the people who succeeded...and pretend survivorship bias isn't a thing! -- but in a book that is ostensibly targeted as a career-guide at "everyone" I would have liked to see a lot more non-CEO stories and a lot more data and fewer stories for that matter.)
Funnily enough, at the end of the book is an appendix of "The takeaways: What to remember from this book" which strips away all these discursive stories of questionable usefulness. 99% of readers should just skip to that part and read it first. If there's something unclear or that you're not convinced about, only then go back and read the full chapter. The book does have some morsels of good advice, which is why I'm rating it 2-stars and not 1-star, they are just few & far between and buried behind a lot of cruft.
krayfish1's review against another edition
3.0
A bit of a review of how the working world is turning into a dystopian hellscape, with a layer on top of "here's how to make sure _you_ end up okay while everything goes to shit!!"
The person who recommended it was probably focusing on the advice to
1. have a 3 year itch, and try to get a position where you're uncomfortable every 3 years so you can develop new skills
2. become "Pareto-optimal" -- be as good as you can be at several skills (the fewer the skills the better you should be at them)
3. be aware of what's going on in your industry
4. watch job postings to see what two skills together are more valued
5. if you're a manager have a good network at your company, meet with employees one-on-one often, and don't demand longer hours b/c that just makes work quality go down.
The person who recommended it was probably focusing on the advice to
1. have a 3 year itch, and try to get a position where you're uncomfortable every 3 years so you can develop new skills
2. become "Pareto-optimal" -- be as good as you can be at several skills (the fewer the skills the better you should be at them)
3. be aware of what's going on in your industry
4. watch job postings to see what two skills together are more valued
5. if you're a manager have a good network at your company, meet with employees one-on-one often, and don't demand longer hours b/c that just makes work quality go down.
a_b_lee33's review
4.0
For those out there hopping from one position to the next, chasing job experiences, networking their asses off, honing their digital skillset, and all the while worrying if they're doing something wrong because they haven't found a "home" in a company yet, this book is for you. Through a series of case studies and interviews, Irwin clearly demonstrates that the 21st-century economy now favors large, complex, technologically advanced firms. With this shift, the typical career path has also changed dramatically. Gone are the days of the linear career path and staying with one company over the course of your entire career.
Irwin makes an excellent argument regarding how a linear career path is obsolete and being open-minded to technological advances is essential. Keeping an open mind will serve young professionals well as they enter and navigate the workforce. However, in targeting low-level and midlevel employees with his latest work, Irwin is often preaching to the choir. Young professionals are accustomed to making sidesteps rather than linear advancements. And they certainly are no strangers to taking on responsibilities and tasks that are well above their experience level (and pay grade). But, at least it's reassuring that they're taking the right steps to advance their career and ultimately find success and happiness.
Three key takeaways from HOW TO WIN are:
1.) Develop a mindset and skillset that allows you to be adaptable and embrace change.
2.) The Career Lattice
3.) What it means to be successful or "to win" varies from person to person.
Irwin makes an excellent argument regarding how a linear career path is obsolete and being open-minded to technological advances is essential. Keeping an open mind will serve young professionals well as they enter and navigate the workforce. However, in targeting low-level and midlevel employees with his latest work, Irwin is often preaching to the choir. Young professionals are accustomed to making sidesteps rather than linear advancements. And they certainly are no strangers to taking on responsibilities and tasks that are well above their experience level (and pay grade). But, at least it's reassuring that they're taking the right steps to advance their career and ultimately find success and happiness.
Three key takeaways from HOW TO WIN are:
1.) Develop a mindset and skillset that allows you to be adaptable and embrace change.
2.) The Career Lattice
3.) What it means to be successful or "to win" varies from person to person.
More...