Cambridge Business Association
Escape from Corporate America
Book

Escape from Corporate America

A Practical Guide to Creating the Career of Your Dreams

Pamela Skillings
Ballantine, 2008
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Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Applicable
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Recommendation

Martha Stewart worked as a stockbroker before she began catering. Walt Disney labored in advertising before he started the Walt Disney Company. Mary Kay Ash sold Stanley Home Products for years before she founded her woman-to-woman cosmetics business. You, too, might be dreaming of a work life you just can’t find within the corporate world. Corporate escapee Pamela Skillings provides the key to a different future. First, you need to understand what’s making you so unhappy. Is it your current job you hate or would you hate any corporate job? Perhaps you simply need a break. Skillings suggests exploring career alternatives, such as working for a small company or a start-up, going out on your own as a consultant or a freelancer, or fulfilling your entrepreneurial dreams by building a business. Skillings provides the tools to get you started. Her amusing, practical profiles of successful escapees, including gossip blogger Perez Hilton and restaurant reviewers Tim and Nina Zagat, will motivate and cheer you. getAbstract recommends this career guide to anyone who is singing the workday blues.

Summary

Dilbert Is Not Alone

Would you be surprised to learn that half of all Americans are unhappy in their jobs and the vast majority dream about a better work life? This widespread dissatisfaction is not limited to those on the lower rungs of the corporate ladder; it affects executives, too. However, people who work for small companies or for themselves are happier than their corporate counterparts.

If you number yourself among the unhappy 50%, there may be several reasons. Perhaps you feel as if something is missing from your work life. Maybe you initially found a thrill in the fast pace but now feel burned out. Since, on average, people devote more than 100,000 hours to their jobs throughout their lives, shouldn’t work be fulfilling? Yet, even if you dislike your job, walking away from a steady income and a package of benefits is scary. However, your choices are not limited to a lifetime of corporate drudgery versus a bunk in the poorhouse. If you are unhappy, you can take control of your career and make a change without risking your financial security.

“The Phases of Corporate Disillusionment”

You might not have hated your job at first. Perhaps, in the ...

About the Author

Pamela Skillings escaped from her corporate job in 2005 to start her own career and consulting business. This is her first book.

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