Book Review: The Alliance by LinkedIn's Reid Hoffman

The organization man used to spend a lifetime at a company. He’d start out as an assistant and end up with a nice office and a pension, maybe even running the business. He gave up his best years but got a good retirement. Now no one expects to spend his days working for one institution, unless it’s the Mafia.

Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, knows this well; he makes his living helping people hop from job to job. And he’s proposing a way for employers to benefit from this rootlessness. In The Alliance, which he co-authored with entrepreneurs Ben Casnocha and Chris Yeh, he suggests companies align with these roving employees, keeping them engaged by setting up “tours of duty” involving specific tasks such as managing groups, then mining the networks they form.