Customer Reviews

Grindhopping: Building a Rewarding Career Without Paying Your Dues

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3 star:		(1)
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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.

Grindhopping is the answer for anyone who asks "is this as good as it gets?" or anyone looking for more out of life than 9-5 until retirement. It is packed full of real case studies, my favorite part, which gives you both the practical steps and confidence to take action. Too many career books are big on inspiration but lacking in detailed how-to. Vanderkam, by contrast, leaves no question unanswered in what will surely be looked back upon as a classic. Highly recommended!

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.

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.

I read this book and enjoyed it. Vanderkam has her finger on the pulse of the new work world. Younger people (particularly entrepreneurs) don't like the ball and chain of 'a' desk or 'a' job. I'm finding a lot of people that are experimenting with their careers are doing exactly what Laura describes - they have their paws in a lot of different projects and jobs. I currentlh have 4 myself (but I'm the classic Gemini she describes in her book...easily bored!) If anyone younger has been in the work world a couple of years and is asking themselves the question, "is this all there is?" needs to read this book.

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.

Well, I must say, there are alot of 5 star reviews. I read this book several times over and over. Vanderkam certainly has a convincing argument for why the corporate ladder is broken, and how employment (by others) is no guarantee for happiness. However, I am not 100% sold on her prescription: "spoiler alert" follow your childhood dream and live like a pauper for awhile until you make it work.

The problem with this, is that not everybody has that dream that they've kept inside as a little kid. I certainly didn't, and this book was a painful read in that respect. And besides, if you're dream is to be a doctor, well, sorry, you're going to have to pay your dues. This book is either not helpful to people who don't know what they want to do with their life, or just a blank check to those who need permission to follow their dreams, which probably they were just waiting for a push in the right direction!

The other problem I have with her book, is that she presents these ideas as if they are totally new to the world. I'm pretty sure people have been following their dreams for a long time before this. The internet makes their dreams more a reality, but that's thanks to Wired.com and others doing the hard research, not Vanderkam.

I'm sorry, I might suggest worth a cheap read from your local library, I wouldn't pay your hard-earned cash for it! Then again I might suggest you be suspicious of books with only 5 star ratings :)

Vanderkam chronicles the "grindhopping" phenomenon with a mix of vivid storytelling and solid reporting. And as someone who hopped out of the grind only after years of knowing something wasn't right, I was inspired to read about so many young people who have realized there's a another way.

Whether you're at the early stages of a career or have already spent some time in the grind, "Grindhopping" is a must-read for anyone with an entrepreneurial itch. Grindhopping, the word, is destined to become part of the workplace lexicon.

Vanderkam shows that what you do doesn't have to be a grind. It's a great resource for people who are ready to step off the corporate treadmill and get on with their lives.

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!