210 Zappos employees – 14% of the staff – take buyouts after CEO ultimatum • Hacker News Board

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

#151

Post by DannyBee » Fri, May 08, 2015, 7:50 PM UTC

jmtame wrote: post #118

calinet6 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very similar in holocracy: the people who are natural leaders will fill the management needs of the organization; it's just more chaotic, less predictable, and not as good. The lack of structure brings out the worst in human behavior. In my experience, it is a horrible system in which to exist. It's highly ignorant of psychology and behavior theory almost intentionally, and it creates far more drama and politics…

Are you speaking from experience? It seems that if you completely do away with job titles, the politics would go away right?

Plenty of people are still status driven. So either you have to decide you want 0 of these people at your company, or else ...

Honestly, my experience has been that structure is one of the key things that makes teams effective (not structure as in "rigid meetings/etc", but structure in the sense of "understanding what their role is and where they fit in")

This doesn't strictly require managers, of course, but self-organization rarely works out that well either as the org gets larger (you have the same problems, they are just hidden and nobody is accountable) :)

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

#152

Post by bcoates » Fri, May 08, 2015, 7:50 PM UTC

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.

V. I. Arnold uses 17 words:

"The determinant of a matrix is an (oriented) volume of the parallelepiped whose edges are its columns."

http://pauli.uni-muenster.de/~munsteg/arnold.html

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

#153

Post by kabdib » Fri, May 08, 2015, 7:51 PM UTC

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've seen this done, but there was a class of employee not eligible for the buyout (e.g., engineer).

So you wind up with good engineers, and all the bad management and support that couldn't find jobs elsewhere, and that works out real well, you betcha...

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

#154

Post by SEJeff » Fri, May 08, 2015, 7:51 PM UTC

istvan__ wrote: post #137

SEJeff wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Could not agree more, the only downside is that some companies see you as a job hopper, but you can just explain to them that losing 30K-40K/year (aka staying in your job) is not an option

I've worked at companies at a minimum of 2 years or more and have switched between 5 companies. Would that be considered job hopping?

If I was a hiring manager, seems totally reasonable to me.

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

#155

Post by rifung » Fri, May 08, 2015, 7:52 PM UTC

istvan__ wrote: post #137

SEJeff wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Could not agree more, the only downside is that some companies see you as a job hopper, but you can just explain to them that losing 30K-40K/year (aka staying in your job) is not an option

Is 30k-40k really correct? That seems a bit high to me.. If you could make even 30k more a year from switching jobs, and you started at the standard 100k, after 10 years you would be making 400k.

I haven't heard of any developers who make 400k. Then again, I suppose you never said this was for developers, so is there another job where this actually applies?

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

#156

Post by vonmoltke » Fri, May 08, 2015, 7:53 PM UTC

grecy wrote: post #51

jackmaney wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 has been dead for many, many years. The higher-ups in be corporations have yet to get that memo.

They got the memo; they just want to have their cake and eat it, too. They want you to be loyal to them, but to retain the option to dump you on the street as soon as somebody needs to bump their profit numbers by 0.1%.

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

#157

Post by rifung » Fri, May 08, 2015, 7:55 PM UTC

sliverstorm wrote: post #109

Touche wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Note that he said a good job, not necessarily a better one. I think the idea is that if someone is giving you 30k to find one, you really only need to find one that pays the same, or close.

Technically you'd come out positive if you found something that's at least more than (what you make) - 30k, but then you have to consider raises and such.

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

#158

Post by rifung » Fri, May 08, 2015, 7:56 PM UTC

munificent wrote: post #90

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.

> 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.

Why better as opposed to one that is just as good? If you got another job that's just as good that'd be akin to getting a 3 months paid vacation. I would LOVE that

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

#159

Post by rifung » Fri, May 08, 2015, 7:58 PM UTC

timdierks wrote: post #83

duaneb wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Does the fact that it's a subsidiary mean it's not a company?

Otherwise, what separates a subsidiary from just being another team? I assume the difference is that a subsidiary can be legally considered to be a company on its own altogether, but I'm not a lawyer. If it is though, then assuming companies need a CEO, Zappos still needs one.

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

#160

Post by a_c_s » Fri, May 08, 2015, 8:00 PM UTC

ValentineC wrote: post #87

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...

This reminds me of Jo Freeman's excellent essay, "THE TYRANNY of STRUCTURELESSNESS". Based on her experiences within unstructured feminist organizations, I think her insights are broadly generalizable.

http://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm