DaveNash3 reviewed The Alliance by Reid Hoffman
Review of 'The Alliance' on 'Storygraph'
2 stars
The Alliance, published this spring to many positive reviews, written by trio of Silicon Valley execs including Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn founder, promises a new roadmap for employee development and a new social contract for employee-employer relationships. A new paradigm that is set in the reality of today’s business and economic environment; a paradigm that fills the vacuum left by the destruction of the old employment for life model, if such a model ever existed on a wide scale. Yet, the Alliance does not deliver. It does not deliver on a number fronts and who knows the reasons for sure, but overall the work does not reflect full engagement by the authors. Where is the supporting data, the illustrative charts, the tightly argued logic wrapped up in proficient prose? The reader will not find any trace of that in its 150 broadly spaced pages.
While the work is e-book quality at …
The Alliance, published this spring to many positive reviews, written by trio of Silicon Valley execs including Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn founder, promises a new roadmap for employee development and a new social contract for employee-employer relationships. A new paradigm that is set in the reality of today’s business and economic environment; a paradigm that fills the vacuum left by the destruction of the old employment for life model, if such a model ever existed on a wide scale. Yet, the Alliance does not deliver. It does not deliver on a number fronts and who knows the reasons for sure, but overall the work does not reflect full engagement by the authors. Where is the supporting data, the illustrative charts, the tightly argued logic wrapped up in proficient prose? The reader will not find any trace of that in its 150 broadly spaced pages.
While the work is e-book quality at best, its support of a flawed culture and dangerous ideology require a sharp rebuke. Merely than casting stones, I will propose a better way — value driven self interest.
Not just a poor effort, perhaps reflecting poor thinking around poorer ideas, the Alliance has it wrong. Not only in its workplace assumptions, but its proposed roadmap and paternalistic social contract. While it attempts to export a model used at LinkedIn and some other Silicon Valley firms, the model will not work outside the Valley. Resistance to the model is required not only because it threatens whatever slim gains have been made in the workplace over the last thirty years, but because the Alliance will lead to a new paternalistic aristocracy
