Are warehouse workers considered to be 'Zappos employees'? Will they also be managing themselves?
210 Zappos employees – 14% of the staff – take buyouts after CEO ultimatum
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Re: 210 Zappos employees – 14% of the staff – take buyouts after CEO ultimatum
#12> Hsieh sent a nearly 5,000-word company-wide memo... > To get their severance, employees had to be in good standing with the company. They were also asked to indicate by email that they had read the management book "Reinventing Organizations" and disagreed with its manager-free vision or else state that they were not reading it. Crazy. I wonder how many more employees would have left if Zappos was based in a region…
A lot of zappos employees are customer support types and so on, so they don't necessarily have more job mobility in the bay area. If your not a high paid professional in the bay area, it's pretty painful to live there. Vegas is cheap, affordable and has no state income tax. All good things if you have a more typical american career trajectory.
Re: 210 Zappos employees – 14% of the staff – take buyouts after CEO ultimatum
#13Thought experiment: ignore the holacracy angle and offer everyone in any company 3-months severance if they quit by a certain date. What percentage would quit?
I wouldn't be surprised if the average was 10-20% and a vast majority of these people are taking advantage of what they see as a good deal irregardless of their feelings on holacracy as a management style.
Re: 210 Zappos employees – 14% of the staff – take buyouts after CEO ultimatum
#14This sounds a lot like the flat structure they have at Valve, except at Valve they have had that since Day 1 and everyone is used to it. I can't imagine the headaches and the absolute confusion that would result from trying to take a traditional management tree and flatten it. It seems like by its very nature the kinds of people you hired when you had tiered management might not be able to easily transition to a flat management, nor would they want to. Having worked in both environments, I can see that there's advantages and disadvantages to each, but I personally prefer having a manager to bounce things off of and to (for lack of a better term) shield me from any unpleasant office politics.
I suppose I've just had good managers when I've had them, which is of course going to make things work out well for me.
Re: 210 Zappos employees – 14% of the staff – take buyouts after CEO ultimatum
#15Strange it isn't former CEO as you wouldn't have a CEO in a flat company. Seems hypocritical to me, but maybe it isn't and I don't get the distinction.
Re: 210 Zappos employees – 14% of the staff – take buyouts after CEO ultimatum
#16> Hsieh sent a nearly 5,000-word company-wide memo... > To get their severance, employees had to be in good standing with the company. They were also asked to indicate by email that they had read the management book "Reinventing Organizations" and disagreed with its manager-free vision or else state that they were not reading it. Crazy. I wonder how many more employees would have left if Zappos was based in a region…
Wow, I wish my company would do something like this - middle management is clearly slowing us down and adding very little value right now. I can't wait to read that book.
You're making a flawed assumption many people make: because many managers are poor managers, management is bad.
Be careful what you wish for. A company without management is like a boat without a captain. You might appear to be fine for some time, but eventually you'll be hopelessly adrift at sea.
Re: 210 Zappos employees – 14% of the staff – take buyouts after CEO ultimatum
#17Does anyone know how this relates to Ricardo Semler's efforts with Semco?
Re: 210 Zappos employees – 14% of the staff – take buyouts after CEO ultimatum
#18I just finished Tony's book "Delivering Happiness". I admire how positive and optimistic he is. And I even agree with forcing self improvement on the employees. But he also stresses running the company like a family aka cult. One of the advantages of moving to Vegas from SF was the employees were forced to spend more time together. He even said Zappos is his tribe. I wonder how these experiments would fare at a large…
Henry Ford was a leader in this area. At the time he was praised for it; then as social values evolved he came to be vilified for such practices.
Re: 210 Zappos employees – 14% of the staff – take buyouts after CEO ultimatum
#19Thought experiment: ignore the holacracy angle and offer everyone in any company 3-months severance if they quit by a certain date. What percentage would quit? I wouldn't be surprised if the average was 10-20% and a vast majority of these people are taking advantage of what they see as a good deal irregardless of their feelings on holacracy as a management style.
It's like cleaning your email subscriber list every few months.
Re: 210 Zappos employees – 14% of the staff – take buyouts after CEO ultimatum
#20Thought experiment: ignore the holacracy angle and offer everyone in any company 3-months severance if they quit by a certain date. What percentage would quit? I wouldn't be surprised if the average was 10-20% and a vast majority of these people are taking advantage of what they see as a good deal irregardless of their feelings on holacracy as a management style.
Actually, that aspect of Zappos's strategy isn't new at all.
Here's an article from 2008.
tl;dr is "If you quit today, we will pay you for the amount of time you’ve worked, plus we will offer you a $1,000 bonus."