Gigged
The Gig Economy, the End of the Job and the Future of Work
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- ¥1,400
発行者による作品情報
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'Excellent' Martin Wolf, Financial Times Books of the Year
'Essential' Daniel Pink, author of Drive
'Wonderful' Martin Ford, author of The Rise of the Robots
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Profit. Innovation. Greed.
Welcome to the gig economy.
Between Uber drivers and Airbnb hosts, freelance jobs are becoming an increasingly prominent part of our economy.
Gigged goes inside the Silicon Valley companies leading the way to this emerging 'gig economy'. It tells the stories of the workers - from computer programmers to online comment moderators - who are getting by in a new wave of precarious, short-term employment. And it sketches out what tomorrow's economy might look like: one where the fortunate get to work when they want, how they want, while the rest live lives of extraordinary hardship.
It might just be the future of work for all of us.
*Longlisted for the FT/McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award*
Praise for Gigged
'Well researched and beautifully written . . . Essential reading for anyone who is interested in understanding the future of our economy and society.' Ha-Joon Chang, author of 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism
'Well crafted . . . a multitude of anecdotes supported by data and extensive reporting.' Forbes
'Kessler's timely book explores the personal, corporate and societal stories behind a massive tech-driven shift away from permanent office-based employment.' Books of the Month, Financial Times
'Kessler illuminates a great divide: For people with desirable skills, the gig economy often permits a more engaging, entrepreneurial lifestyle; but for the unskilled who turn to such work out of necessity, it's merely "the best of bad options".' Harvard Business Review
'Sarah Kessler writes like a dream. If you want to know how work is changing and how you too must change to keep up, you must read this book.' Dan Lyons, author of Disrupted
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Reporter Kessler delivers a stark, skimpy look at the future of work. She begins by describing how, when she graduated from college, in the middle of the 2008 recession, there were few full-time jobs to be had, and increasingly more part-time, "contingent" jobs. She goes on to examine both sides of the gig economy: the one creating opportunity, and the one increasing insecurity and risk. Business leaders quoted here, including Stan Chia of Grubhub and Carole Woodhead of Herm s UK, identify flexibility as a primary benefit of this kind of work, whether it's driving a car for Uber or prowling for short-term tasks on Mechanical Turk, Amazon's crowdsourced task marketplace. Contrary to Silicon Valley's optimism, the gig economy is not a net positive, argues Kessler, particularly for low-wage workers like the house cleaner she describes commuting two hours to earn $10 an hour. Restructuring the way people work is a good idea, the author writes, but it's also necessary to fix the support structures underlying the economy. Kessler concludes that the U.S. needs another labor movement, another New Deal, or similar revolutionary idea to accompany such a radical change, while warning it took decades for legislators to address the comparable disruptions brought by the Industrial Revolution. This is a brief study stretched to book length; good points are made, but on the whole it feels light.
