No-Collar is the first book to place the much-feted New Economy workplace in the context of industrial history and the struggle to win a humane work environment. From Horatio Alger to the Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, Americans have extolled the virtues of hard work as a source of meaning and identity as well as livelihood. Drawing on his yearlong study of two Silicon Alley companies, as well as on interviews with a range of employees in other Internet industries, Andrew Ross offers a dramatic report on how the self-directed "no-collar" life stacks up against earlier work utopias.Though urban knowledge workers enjoyed unprecedented autonomy and bargaining power, and their bohemian artisan style evoked a pre-industrial craft ethos, the volatile economy exposed even the rank-and-file to 24/7 schedules, emotional churning, and the kinds of pressure typically borne only by senior managers. With his characteristic mix of laser-sharp analysis and deft storytelling, Ross asks: How humane can, or should, a workplace be? In documenting the quixotic life of these neo-bohemian workplaces, No-Collar records a unique moment in American history and reveals what the landscape of work will look like for decades to come.
