Review: Wisdom at Work: The Making of a Modern Elder

Wisdom at Work: The Making of a Modern Elder by Chip Conley
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This starts off as the title would suggest, describing older workers as mentors to other employees based on their extensive experience. That covers the first half of the book. The last half is a traditional how to find a job when you are older book. I’ve read lots of those, and this is just another one. While the first part was somewhat unique, and of personal interest, there wasn’t much there that I found of personal value. The author uses his own experience, relating many anecdotes of his career in the hospitality industry and of being an older mentor to many employees at AirBnB, including the management team. This was certainly an ego-boosting exercise for the author, as he shared how he was able to provide value to his new employer through his experience. The problem is that this really is at the top level of an organization, one that has a lot of money they are willing to invest in getting some experienced advice. This certainly isn’t a common situation.

So while the first half of the book was about a situation that seems quite rare and personally out of reach, and the second half repeated job finding advice I’m over familiar with, I still enjoyed this. The author’s stories about how AirBnB operates, and how he was able to bring his own hotel experience to play were interesting. I also noticed that in the audiobook version, the author narrated. As he read the chapter headings, which included one or two quotes related to the topic at hand, the author sheepishly would say something like, “This and all other chapters start with some quotes, and the first one is….”. I’ve not run across a narrator explaining what is on a page to that level before, and I’m guessing the author doesn’t listen to a lot of audiobooks. But that personable way to explain his book was very human – I liked it.


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