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210 Zappos employees – 14% of the staff – take buyouts after CEO ultimatum

businessinsider.com

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Re: 210 Zappos employees – 14% of the staff – take buyouts after CEO ultimatum

#61

Post by Spooky23 »

exelius wrote: post #37
logicalmind wrote: post #22

I work at a company that was in bad shape during the financial crisis. A temporary CEO was put in charge. Ultimately, a number of companies were merged to create one company that could survive. In the end, one of the CEO's of the merged companies became the CEO of the final company. His first act as CEO was to offer everyone in the company a tenure-based package to leave the company. I don't know the full numbers, bu…

I think the idea with Zappos is that they're supposed to be such a great place to work that you wouldn't want to leave. And in Zappos' case, I get why they offered severance deals. They were embarking on a radical experiment in organizational structure, and not everyone is going to be on board with it. Rather than having a bunch of people at the water cooler talking shit about the changes, you offer them money to lea…

I'm surprised the number of people taking the deal isn't higher. If I need religious zeal, I'll go join a religion.

Re: 210 Zappos employees – 14% of the staff – take buyouts after CEO ultimatum

#62

Post by jasonmp85 »

cpr wrote: post #17

Does anyone know how this relates to Ricardo Semler's efforts with Semco? ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricardo_Semler )

From what I've read, Semco employees help set their own compensation and hours, something that will not be happening at Zappos (at least not in such a direct fashion). Semco is a workplace democracy, not a holacracy. It isn't a worker cooperative (like certain MONDRAGON group members), so there isn't shared ownership, so it has that in common with Zappos.

In a nutshell, the holacracy system will have "circles" of individuals which act as semi-autonomous groups to achieve results. Each circle might function democratically. Semco is a more traditional company with a workplace democracy overlay on top. This piece goes into more detail: http://jonathangifford.com/maverick-ricardo-semler-10-key-de...

EDIT: And oh yeah, both Zappos and Semco are privately held. The linked article discusses this in the comments, but in recent years we've had more illustrative examples of how profit incentive sucks character and morals from a company, e.g. Cook shouting down an investor questioning the need for green initiatives, or Schultz telling investors they could sell if they don't like his support for same-sex relationships. These two held on, but countless others surely sacrificed their values at the altar of shareholder value. In short, I'm not holding my breath that we'll see workplace democracy or holacracy at a public company anytime soon.

Re: 210 Zappos employees – 14% of the staff – take buyouts after CEO ultimatum

#63

Post by jccalhoun »

jedmeyers wrote: post #11

Are warehouse workers considered to be 'Zappos employees'? Will they also be managing themselves?

Those are the kind of things I wonder about when I hear about zappos or valve or other companies that claim to be without managers. Is the person who cleans the restrooms getting to be part of this (although in the modern world the companies probably pay another company to do their janitorial work)

Re: 210 Zappos employees – 14% of the staff – take buyouts after CEO ultimatum

#64

Post by venomsnake »

jquast wrote: post #38

My experience working for one of "the big 3" automakers is that the very best employees take the buyout offer, confident that they can find a better job for better pay elsewhere. Years after the employee buyout programs began in the auto industry, they were requesting buyout packages of their own to save the company as a whole. I believe this is the beginning of the "death spiral" described by PG in his "What happene…

Not that bad. Best employees not always are the best "flat structure" employees.

And a lot of the great ones may want to hang on just for the fun of it.

Re: 210 Zappos employees – 14% of the staff – take buyouts after CEO ultimatum

#65

Post by _nhnp »

sageabilly wrote: post #14

This 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…

The valve employee manual is a great read. And well illustrated; worth a look: http://www.valvesoftware.com/company/Valve_Handbook_LowRes.p...

(From an earlier discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9250527)

Re: 210 Zappos employees – 14% of the staff – take buyouts after CEO ultimatum

#66

Post by kzhahou »

encoderer wrote: post #28
UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #15

Strange 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.

Just because you don't need management doesn't mean you don't need leadership.

Good managers lead.

Re: 210 Zappos employees – 14% of the staff – take buyouts after CEO ultimatum

#67

Post by jotux »

gergles wrote: post #54

Every time this comes up, I have one simple question that I have yet to have answered to any degree of satisfaction. (Someone who endorses this structure) explain to me in one sentence with fewer than 20 words how a 'lead link' is not the same role as a 'manager'.

>in one sentence with fewer than 20 words

Seems like an arbitrary restriction to put on something that's probably complex.

Re: 210 Zappos employees – 14% of the staff – take buyouts after CEO ultimatum

#69

Post by venomsnake »

UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #15

Strange 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.

Depends. Someone has to sign the contracts. And to be the top dog legal wise. We don't have good legal framework that endorses flat corporations. Yet.

Re: 210 Zappos employees – 14% of the staff – take buyouts after CEO ultimatum

#70

Post by legohead »

7Figures2Commas wrote: post #4

> 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…

No more managers! Now read this book!
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