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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

#101

Post by tomjen3 »

jotux wrote: post #91
libria wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The ability or inability to describe an idea in simple terms has no relation to the validity of the idea. >If Zappos has a unique take on how to replace middle management, let's all hear it. I think their idea is in this book, mentioned in the article, that they asked all zappos employees to read: http://www.reinventingorganizations.com/

>The ability or inability to describe an idea in simple terms has no relation to the validity of the idea.

Maybe not in physics, but in politics and business it does - those fields like to seem more complex than they are so they fake it, which is much more difficult to do with simple language.

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

#103

Post by sliverstorm »

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.

There's plenty of reasons to stick around that aren't religious zeal.

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

#104

Post by teraflop »

shanusmagnus wrote: post #84
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.

A determinant describes changes in volume under transformation, and an (n-1)-dimensional set of points has zero n-dimensional volume.

(very sketchy, but it's the best I could come up with under the constraints)

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

#105

Post by AceJohnny2 »

lojack wrote: post #32
kelukelugames wrote: post #5

I 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…

Yeah, I read this article and for whatever reason had a sense of this being very cult-like. The terminology being used is similar to how cults load the language to make everyone feel like they are part the in-crowd. And, his offer to pay severance to anyone who wanted to quit just felt like how a cult leader will say "the door is always open if you want to leave." Of course, he isn't actually building a cult, but I f…

They are provenly-effective techniques to make a disparate group of people work towards a common goal...

Whether the techniques and the end-goal are good or bad is left as an exercise to history :)

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

#106

Post by SEJeff »

jackmaney wrote: post #46
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. To determine loyalty to the company, possibly. Corporate loyalty has been dead for many, many years.

Corporate loyalty died when companies stopped paying pensions, or severely reducing pensions. Our parents always worried about pensions and corporate loyalty. In our generation, and especially technology, we make a lot more money, and can generally make even more by switching jobs. Therefor, corporate loyalty, in the current tech industry, is virtually dead.

The one case that it isn't is perhaps companies like google where an employee gets the founders award, which is millions of $$$ of stock options that vest over a relatively large stretch of years. I know a guy who won this award and he is google for life.

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

#107

Post by keithpeter »

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…

"Rather than having a bunch of people at the water cooler talking shit about the changes, you offer them money to leave so that people who aren't on board with the changes get out of the way."

Each change creates winners and losers. The losers will be around that water cooler. You can't manage this before the trajectory is flown. Best of luck to all involved.

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

#108

Post by [deleted] »

dingbat wrote: post #88
Spooky23 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

[deleted]

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

#109

Post by sliverstorm »

Touche wrote: post #72
slg wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is assuming that everyone is a hired mercenary. I could rather easily find a job that pays me a 10%-30% raise over what I currently make. I don't do that because I already make "enough" and I like my current job, company, and coworkers. It isn't even a matter of loyalty, it is a matter of different priorities that puts money further down the list than job satisfaction. Finding a good paying job is much easier th…

I can find a good job easier than I can find $30k+ free money.

If you can find a better job than you have, why haven't you done that already?

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

#110

Post by caseyf7 »

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.

I'm surprised the number isn't higher because they recently moved Zappos from Henderson to downtown Las Vegas.
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