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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

#201

Post by bunderbunder »

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 are reasons to stay besides religious zeal, too. I'm not certain how one can easily see this change as seriously threatening unless you're somewhere in the middle of the org chart. If you're at the bottom, hey, your day probably won't change that much (unless you hate your boss). If you're at the top, well, I've yet to hear that Mr. Hsieh is planning to abdicate.

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

#202

Post by nsxwolf »

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.

A job offer by the end of the day? Seriously? Or did I misunderstand you?

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

#203

Post by jasonmp85 »

digikata wrote: post #86
jasonmp85 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Heh. Yeah, I somehow forgot about that in my zeal. Complicates my thesis somewhat. You'd think I'd remember who Amazon bought while I was working there, but there were a lot of acquisitions that year…

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

#204

Post by latj »

bunderbunder wrote: post #58
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 imagine that people in management positions have reason to take the package even if their skill set is perfectly aligned to the new job. If you're on a career path where one of the major measures of your success is how many people are under you, then you better be pretty committed to the Zappos vision if you're staying on. A long stint of not having anyone reporting through you might be a bit of a black spot on you…

The list of people who took the offer was posted internally. I imagine it must be out in the wild somewhere by now as well.

Besides managers who are looking to jump ship and pretend to do work somewhere else, a lot of professionals are on the list- lawyers, accounting people. I imagine some of these people will show up on Amazon's roster in the near future.

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

#205

Post by SEJeff »

rifung wrote: post #155
istvan__ wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You absolutely can make 400k or more by working as a developer in finance. I work in finance and have made more than that some years at my previous job.

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

#206

Post by s73v3r »

danielweber wrote: post #187
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.

Three months is cool, but it's a big reordering of life. If you enjoy your job, you shouldn't take it. Maybe your next job is worse. And people in SV say "every good developer has 5 offers waiting for him by breakfast" but it's not that way in every part of the country. On the other hand, if you've been contemplating a job change, take it.

I believe Zappos is in Las Vegas. And they're not really a tech company, although they use tech.

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

#208

Post by keithpeter »

1123581321 wrote: post #162
keithpeter wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I think one of the bets holocracy makes is that a group of people with a better understanding of their responsibilities and who receive quicker, clearer feedback will naturally be more proactive about problems." Who provides the feedback? Based on what credentials? Explain why that person not a manager.

Tensions, which are problems or issues or defects, are provided by anyone who notices. In addition to that, some roles may have responsibilities to provide particular support and feedback. For example, in a team of developers, a developer who has a code reviewer role may have the responsibility of providing feedback on others' code. Other kinds of feedback-providing responsibilities could be proofreading, listening t…

"Tensions, which are problems or issues or defects, are provided by anyone who notices."

Interesting but 'deficit model' approach. No mentoring available for performance that does not cause what you define to be a 'tension' but that could be improved with little effort. I'm thinking of double-loop learning (Argyris) as opposed to single-loop learning which I interpret as covering proof reading/QA/Sales call monitoring.

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

#210

Post by jakejake »

"I don't clean toilets anymore, I'm in charge of strategic marketing now. I'll be taking this office"

On the one hand, I can see this being the ultimate meritocracy. Perhaps the person cleaning toilets is actually a marketing genius? On the other hand, it could be like an episode of Hell's Kitchen where nobody is in charge and the whole operation goes to shit.

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