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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

#81

Post by libria »

jotux wrote: post #67
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.

It's essentially "Explain it like I'm 5", which in this case can help discern between an interesting corporate experiment and PR bullshit.

No one wants to get halfway through an article claiming the former and ending up being the latter. If Zappos has a unique take on how to replace middle management, let's all hear it.

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

#82

Post by swombat »

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'.

I actually don't like the way they've defined lead link in Holacracy. It does feel too manager-like because they have the ability to create roles or remove people from roles.

We had this as a stepping stone at GrantTree, in our previous implementation of holarchy (note: that's not the same as holacracy, it's just one subset of holacracy that deals with how to organise work without organising people) but since then, we got rid of that managerial aspect (and also of the word "lead", which is needlessly managerial).

The links at GrantTree now do just one thing: they represent the circle they're a link of in the meetings of the supercircle.

This is just one role among many for the person, and it has absolutely zero managerial authority. It's an administrative and communications role. We're still in the early days of it, but the intention is that the person in that role will be rotated out every 3 months or so, to make sure the role doesn't turn into a manager role inadvertently (but at the moment there's no sign that it will).

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

#83

Post by timdierks »

duaneb wrote: post #75
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.

Companies are required to have a CEO, as (famously) Gabe Newell does.

Zappos doesn't; it's a wholly-owned subsidiary of Amazon. They could all just be subordinate to Jeff Bezos.

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

#84

Post by shanusmagnus »

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'.

After you've done that, please explain in one sentence with fewer than 20 words how a determinant is a measure of fullness-of-span in n-dimensional space. I know that it is, but I've never understood the intuition.

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

#85

Post by sobkas »

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…

>It was unclear what his intentions were.

"a tenure-based package to leave the company"

People who have been longer with company are also more likely to be older than average employee. So I think he wanted to get rid of "old" people who would "slow down" company and be unfit for its "new and vigorous" culture?

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

#86

Post by digikata »

jasonmp85 wrote: post #62
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 ind…

Wikipedia has Zappos down as being acquired by Amazon in 2009

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

#87

Post by ValentineC »

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…

There are articles on how Valve has "hidden management" cliques though [1]. I'm not sure if this was ever addressed by Valve itself.

[1] http://www.develop-online.net/news/valve-s-perfect-hiring-hi...

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

#88

Post by dingbat »

Spooky23 wrote: post #61
exelius wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

well another way to look at it is that there is already a fundamentalist organizational religion that most people adhere to, they're just unaware of being part of one already

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

#89

Post by coldcode »

Phlarp wrote: post #42
velodrome wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What percentage would quit? The ones that could land another job by the quit date. They would essentially get a 3-month "bonus" for doing nothing. I would say this is only possible if the these people were looking to jump ship anyway.

What percentage of any competent IT team can't have a competitive offer in writing by the end of the day? Even if your anticipated time between jobs is 1-2 months, you can still confidently quit by the deadline and end up with six weeks paid vacation and a six weeks bonus.

Not everywhere in the US. Some places are full of mostly crap jobs.

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

#90

Post by munificent »

velodrome wrote: post #34
basseq wrote: post #13

Thought 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.

What percentage would quit? The ones that could land another job by the quit date. They would essentially get a 3-month "bonus" for doing nothing. I would say this is only possible if the these people were looking to jump ship anyway.

> The ones that could land another job by the quit date.

The ones that are confident they could land another better job by the quit date.

It's not enough to be possible to get any job. The offer only makes sense if you are certain you will trade up.

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