Free Agent Nation: The Future of Working for Yourself

by Daniel H. Pink

Overview

Widely acclaimed for its engaging style and provocative perspective, this book has helped thousands transform their working lives. Now including a 30-page resource guide that explains the basics of working for oneself.

It's about fulfillment. A revolution is sweeping America. On its front lines are people fed up with unfulfilling jobs, dysfunctional workplaces, and dead-end careers. Meet today's new economic icon: the free agent-men and women who are working for themselves. And meet your future.

It's about freedom. Free agents are the marketing consultant down the street, the home-based "mompreneur," the footloose technology contractor. Already 30 million strong, these 21st-century pioneers are creating lives with more meaning-and often more money. Free Agent Nation is your ticket to this world.

It's about time. Now, you can discover:

The kind of free agent you can be-"soloist," "temp," or "microbusiness"-and how to launch your new career.
How to get the perks you once received from your boss: health insurance, office space, training, workplace togetherness, even water cooler gossip.
Why the free agent economy is increasingly a woman's world-and how women are flourishing in it.
The transformation of retirement-how older workers are creating successful new businesses (and whole new lives) through the Internet.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780446678797
Publisher:	Grand Central Publishing
Publication date:	05/01/2002
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Daniel H. Pink is a contributing editor at Fast Company magazine. His articles on technology, economic transformation, and the future have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, New Republic, Salon, among others. A former White House speechwriter, Pink lives in Washington, DC with his wife and their two daughters.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1THE CRUX: In the second half of the twentieth century, the key to understanding America's social and economic life was the Organization Man. In the first half of the twenty—first century, the new emblematic figure is the free agent—the independent worker who operates on his or her own terms, untethered to a large organization, serving multiple clients and customers instead of a single boss. The rise of free agency shatters many ironclad premises about work, life, and business in America— from how companies should operate, to how we structure our health care, retirement, and education systems, to which values guide our lives. To truly understand the new economy, you must first understand the free agent.

THE FACTOID: The largest private employer in the U.S. is not Detroit's General Motors or Ford, or even Seattle's Microsoft or Amazon.com, but Milwaukee's Manpower Inc., a temp agency.

THE QUOTE: "This book is about the free agent. If the term is vague, it is because I can think of no other way to describe the people I am talking about. They are free from the bonds of a large institution, and agents of their own futures. They are the new archetypes of work in America."

THE WORD:Tailorism. The free agent's approach to work; descendant of Taylorism, Frederick Winslow Taylor's One Best Way method of mass production. Under Tailorism, free agents fashion their work lives to suit their own needs and desires— instead of accepting the uniform values, rules, and structure of a traditional job. Opposite of the One Size Fits All ethic of the Organization Man era. (Synonym: My Size Fits Me).

Copyright (c) 2001 by Daniel H. Pink

Table of Contents

	Prologue	1
Part 1	Welcome to Free Agent Nation
Chapter 1.	Bye, Bye, Organization Guy	9
Chapter 2.	How Many Are There? The Numbers and Nuances of Free Agency	27
Chapter 3.	How Did It Happen? The Four Ingredients of Free Agency	47
Part 2	The Free Agent Way
Chapter 4.	The New Work Ethic	59
Chapter 5.	The New Employment Contract	85
Chapter 6.	The New Time Clock	103
Part 3	How (and Why) Free Agency Works
Chapter 7.	Small Groups, Big Impact: Reinventing Togetherness in Free Agent Nation	123
Chapter 8.	Getting Horizontal: The Free Agent Org Chart and Operating System	143
Chapter 9.	The Free Agent Infrastructure	161
Chapter 10.	Matchmakers, Agents, and Coaches	171
Chapter 11.	Free Agent Families	183
Part 4	Free Agent Woes
Chapter 12.	Roadblocks on Free Agent Avenue: Health Insurance, Taxes, and Zoning	199
Chapter 13.	Temp Slaves, Permatemps, and the Rise of Self-Organized Labor	213
Part 5	The Free Agent Future
Chapter 14.	E-tirement: Free Agency and the New Old Age	233
Chapter 15.	School's Out: Free Agency and the Future of Education	243
Chapter 16.	Location, Location ... Vocation: Free Agency and the Future of Offices, Homes, and Real Estate	261
Chapter 17.	Putting the "I" in IPO: The Path Toward Free Agent Finance	271
Chapter 18.	A Chip Off the Old Voting Bloc: The New Politics of Free Agency	287
Chapter 19.	What's Left: Free Agency and the Future of Commerce, Careers, and Community	301
	Epilogue	313
	The Official Free Agent Nation Resource Guide	315
	Notes	347
Appendix	Results of the Free Agent Nation Online Census	369
	Acknowledgments	375
	Index	377

What People are Saying About This

Nancy Evans

Pink does a great job of understanding what inspires these individuals to strike out on their own…
— (Nancy Evans, Co-founder and Editor-in-Chief, ivillage.com)

Paul Orfalea

Paul Orfalea, founder of Kinko's
Ought to be on the reading list of anybody who runs a business. It’s rare to encounter a smart book that is this fun or a fun book that is this smart.

Stephen M. Case

Stephen M. Case, Chairman, AOL/Time Warner
Free Agent Nation is the shape of things to come in the Internet Century…

Scott Adams

Scott Adams, Dilbert cartoonist
Will turn your notion of a "career" upside-down…might even set you free. It's the defining book on the untethered workforce.

Seth Godin

The most important book on the death of the large economy I've seen . . . Listen to Pink or lose out!
— (Seth Godin, author of Unleashing the Idea Virus)

Alan Webber

A brilliant book…the literary skill of a masterful prose stylist and the irreverent wit of a stand-up comic…a must read…and instant classic.
— (Alan Webber, founding editor, Fast Company magazine)

Tom Peters

the book is as beautifully written as it is profoundly prophetic. Its so original and comprehensive, I grew exhausted from underlining.
— (Tom Peters, author of In Search of Excellence)

Guy Kawasaki

Guy Kawasaki, CEO, Garage.com
The declaration of independence for the self-employed. Read this book if you want to understand and profit from the new self-reliance.

Thomas Petzinger, Jr.

Will change how you see the world and live your life . . . Nobody gets the new economy like Daniel Pink.
— (Thomas Petzinger, Jr., chairman LaunchCyte LLC, author of The New Pioneers, and former “Front Lines” columnist, Wall Street Journal.)

Bo Peabody

Bo Peabody, co-founder and chairman of Village Ventures, Inc.
For baby boomers, it's the new corporate bible…

Terri Lonier

fast-paced, fun, and intellectually liberating. If you want a map of the future landscape…read this book.
— (Terri Lonier, author of Working Solo and founder of SOHO Summit)

Virginia Postrel

Virginia Postrel, columnist, New York Times and Forbes
Bound to be one of the decade's most important books…

Editorial Reviews

"A delight."--Financial Times

"As beautifully written as it is profoundly prophetic... the best book on work since The Organization Man."--Tom Peters, author of In Search of Excellence

"Provocative."--New York Times

"Warning: This book may make you rethink your career."--CNN

From the Publisher

Author Pink argues that athletes aren't the only Americans who are renouncing traditional team allegiances. Citing the country's 25 million self-employed workers, he predicts the incremental undermining of conventional corporate society. The job that your parents knew, he contends, is defunct. Pink believes that post-baby boomers subscribe to creating their own destinies, not to old company loyalties. Instead of looking to mega-corporations, he says, they think small, noting for example that since 1994, firms with fewer than 20 employees have created 80 percent of new jobs in our economy. An eloquent manifesto about a glacial shift.

Free Agent Nation will turn your notion of a career upside down. It might even set you free. It's the defining book on the untethered workforce.

Scott Adams

A groundbreaking book ...for the new digitocracy, this book represents both a readable and persuasive benchmark.

Naomi Wolf

FREE AGENT NATION ought to be on the reading list of anybody who runs a business... a smart book that is this fun or a fun book that is this smart... an original!

Paul Orfalea

The trend Dan Pink writes about so knowledgeably is already transforming the future of business. FREE AGENT NATION is the shape of things to come in the Internet Century.

Stephen M. Case

A brilliant book. Pink defines...with the keen eye of a trained sociologist, the literary skill of a masterful prose stylist, and the irreverent wit of a stand-up comic...a must-read — an instant contemporary classic.

Alan M. Webber

Not all "free agents" are highly paid athletes whose main skills are dunking a basketball or hitting a baseball. In fact, as Pink (contributing editor, Fast Company) reveals, over 25 million Americans are now self-employed, and fewer than one in ten works for a Fortune 500 company. This excellent work synthesizes the seismic shift in attitudes about and patterns of work in the economy from the early 1950s era of William Whyte's The Organization Man to today's independent worker, the free agent. Pink astutely summarizes what this major shift in the definition of employment now means to millions of Americans and explains the various types of free agents (including soloists, temps, and those involved in their own microbusiness). Other chapters cover examples of how self-sufficiency works so well for numerous life situations, while in many cases free-agency employment does not work well at all. This work may not be rooted in empirical research, but Pink's thorough review of the literature and his extensive roadwork interviewing hundreds of independent workers successfully merges psychosocial data with pragmatic reality. This major contribution to better understanding the trend toward independent contract work is highly recommended for all university libraries and larger public libraries. Dale Farris, Groves, TX Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Over the past decade, in nearly every industry and region, legions of Americans are abandoning one of the Industrial Revolution's most enduring legacies -- the "job" -- to become free agents -- as self-employed knowledge workers, proprietors of home-based businesses, temps, freelancers or independent contractors. Daniel H. Pink spent a year traveling the country, talking with hundreds of these workers. The composite sketch Pink reveals in Free Agent Nation displays the political, economic and personal effects these individualists are having on all our institutions.

Pink explains that the American working economy for several generations had a single, human emblem -- the "Organization Man," so dubbed after the 1956 book of the same name by William H. Whyte, Jr. The label described what was then the quintessence of work in America - an individual (nearly always male) who ignored or buried his own identity and goals in the service of a large organization, which rewarded his self-denial with a regular paycheck and job security. Organization Men abided by what Whyte named a Social Ethic, a secular theology that placed the organization at the center of the universe, and defined entrepreneurs as "selfish type[s], motivated by greed."

Beginning in the 1980s, conditions and attitudes changed. Companies that had formed the bedrock of American work began winnowing their work forces in response to economic stimuli, corporate restructuring, and technology that could do people's work for less money. Pink writes that the social contract of job security was broken; the Organization Man was relegated to the annals of history. What replaced him as the archetype of work in America is the free agent - the independent worker who operates on his or her own terms, untethered to a large organization, serving multiple clients and customers instead of a single boss.

Pink explains that free agency has already begun overturning many of today's central assumptions about American work and life, among them the following:

• Loyalty is dead. It's not dead; it's different. Instead of up-and-down loyalty that runs from individual to institution, free agents practice side-to-side loyalty - an allegiance to clients, colleagues, teams, projects and industries.
• The work force is adrift, operating without a broad social contract. The implicit employment promise that reigned in the days of the Organization Man has disappeared, replaced by a new one that trades talent for opportunity.
• The free-agent economy makes workers less secure. As free agents compile a diverse portfolio of clients, customers and projects, they often find themselves in a more secure position than traditional workers.
• Parents must try to balance work and family. Corporate and government efforts to be more "family-friendly" offer a one-size-fits-all approach to the work/family balance. Free agents tend to erase the boundaries between the two, blending, rather than balancing.
• "Empowerment" and "retention" are wise strategies for corporate managers. These concepts are built on the fact that organizations hold all the power. In a free-agent economy, organizations need individuals more than individuals need organizations, which can inspire and challenge people, but cannot "empower" or "retain" them.
• Rampant individualism is fraying our social fabric. Critics claim our common culture is corroding, and the free agent economy is speeding the problem. In actuality, it may be providing a solution, mending bonds and repairing our concepts of community.

Through his experience and research, Pink has found that most free agents are at least approximations of one of three basic free agent species - soloists, temps and "microbusinesses."

Pink writes that the most common variety of free agent is the soloist - someone who works for him- or herself, generally alone, moving from project to project, selling his or her services. Over the years, soloists were termed "freelancers" in the cultural vernacular; "independent contractors" in legal vernacular; and any one of a dozen or more terms for self-employed soloists.

If soloists are free agents by design, Pink explains that temps are often free agents by default. Many of the 3.5 million workers in the temp population would rather have a "permanent" job with a company, but coldly efficient corporations, temp agencies looking after their own interests, and the temps' own lack of ambition or ability conspire to pin them to the bottom of the economic ladder.

Erupting across the Free Agent Nation is a blaze of enterprises that are smaller than the typical "small business" - sometimes consisting of only two or three people. Pink explains that these microbusinesses are a growing force - more than half of American companies today have fewer than five employees.

While many pundits bemoan the loss of a sense of community in the business world (and elsewhere), Pink writes that free agents are, as a result of and in response to their independence, finding ways to create their own communities, with their own infrastructure, and their own network of professionals whose business it is to make their lives and work easier. He writes that it is in part due to these things that the Free Agent Nation continues to grow, not just in numbers, but also in richness and depth of community.

Why Soundview Likes This Book
Free Agent Nation delves into a current trend that has transformed the way people think about work and working, and captures a fresh perspective on the transformational effects that entrepreneurship is having on the modern working world. Managers, business owners, and anyone thinking of becoming a free agent will want to understand this powerful new demographic and its impact on the business landscape. Copyright (c) 2002 Soundview Executive Book Summaries

Soundview Executive Book Summaries