Diane Mulcahy - The Gig Economy: The Complete Guide to Getting Better Work, Taking More Time Off, and Financing the Life You Want

Take this job and shove it.

JOHNNY PAYCHECK

Five years ago, I created and started teaching an MBA course on the Gig Economy, which was still an emerging trend. The course gained immediate traction and was named by Forbes as one of the Top Ten Most Innovative Business School Classes in the country. Now the Gig Economy is a common topic in the media and has become part of the election cycle debates, but few people really understand how to navigate it to build a thriving, satisfying, and successful work life. This book, like my class, fills that information gap.

If we think of the current world of work as a spectrum, anchored by the traditional corporate job and career ladder on one end, and unemployment on the other end, then the broad range and variety of alternative work in between is the Gig Economy. The Gig Economy includes consulting and contractor arrangements, part-time jobs, temp assignments, freelancing, self-employment, side gigs, and on-demand work through platforms like Upwork and TaskRabbit.

Many of the topics in this book are based on what I teach, and many of the exercises are based on assignments that have helped my students succeed in the Gig Economy, and have led them to start new businesses, plan time off, restructure their finances, and begin to create lives that are more engaging, satisfying, and better aligned with their priorities.

The Gig Economy is still in the early stages of disrupting how we work. Only one generation ago, most workers could expect to be full-time employees in secure full-time jobs, working for just one or two companies over the course of their careers. The generation retiring now built a life anchored around the expectations of a stable and rising income, a steady package of corporate benefits, and a corporate-financed retirement at the end of work. That predefined climb up the corporate ladder is much less available to todays workers. Thats how rapid the transformation has been. In just one generation, the corporate gravy train full of plentiful, progressive, benefit-rich, and secure full-time jobs has left the station.

The MBA students I teach today are facing a very different work world when they graduate. They dont expect security from one job. Instead, they plan to hold multiple jobs over the course of their careers, most likely for the median tenure of just three to five years each. Their working lives will be made up of a variety of diverse work and work experiences.