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

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211–220 of 327 posts

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

#211

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.

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

Recently? I'm pretty sure it was over 12mths ago as I toured the Vegas HQ in late May last year and it was well lived in by then.

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

#212
post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> "Pretend to do work"

Little presumptuous isn't it?

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

#213
post #126

I'm not sure how to gauge this. I think Holacracy may be one of the dumber pseudo-science management theories that's ever come out. If it works for Zappos I'll eat my hat I guess, but I have a feeling that all we'll hear about it is that "it's working great!" as the ship goes down in flames. Holacracy and other ultra-flat org structures always share two features: - It consolidates power in the people at the top (the…

Seems to work for Valve, with a few obvious problems: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valve_Corporation#Organizationa...

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

#214
post #126

I'm not sure how to gauge this. I think Holacracy may be one of the dumber pseudo-science management theories that's ever come out. If it works for Zappos I'll eat my hat I guess, but I have a feeling that all we'll hear about it is that "it's working great!" as the ship goes down in flames. Holacracy and other ultra-flat org structures always share two features: - It consolidates power in the people at the top (the…

That's my prediction as well. Without a designated leadership structure, it will devolve into high-school-esque in- and out-crowds where the cool kids and big-talkers run the show and the smart kids and do-ers leave.

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

#215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 monitorin…

Yes, I haven't seen anything requiring scrutinizing assumptions as a core role/responsibility, so it would have to be something the organization wants to do. I do think the model empowers employees to question assumptions very nicely once it is their responsibility, though.

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

#216
post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was following this pattern: test engineer, administrator, junior developer, developer, senior developer, principal developer, architect, principal architect. My last 2 job changes were in the 20 - 40K increase range. 250K is not unheard of. I guess this caps out somewhere, but if the US immigration keeps H1Bs under this control than we are going to soon experiencing 300K wages.

Ah okay I think when you said job change I just assumed it meant going to another company, not having a new position or title. I do wonder how quickly you can change positions though. I imagine once you get to senior it's very difficult keep going higher. At least this was what I heard at Amazon. Do you know if it's easier to get promoted when switching jobs? I have a hard time believing that since I think you would…

I think you are overestimating companies... For most of my career (12 companies, 3 of them my own) it has been easier to get hired at a higher position in a different place than being promoted internally.

When you are applying for a new, higher, role having enough experience at your current level, being sure enough of yourself and demonstrating the ability to create value within the test period will be more than enough for most companies out there.

When trying to get promoted internally you have to deal mostly with office politics. In a way, the quality of your work is only a small part. And, if you are good enough, it can go against you, I know people that have been skipped for promotions for years because their managers knew that the whole department depended on them.

Of course, there are exceptions and I admire those companies, but they are just that: Exceptions.

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

#217

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…

Did he make the offer without consulting HR? I've received occasional buyout offers - they're always subject to approval and capped based on a number of factors.

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

#218

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…

People work at a company for a variety of reasons. Some want or need the money. Some really believe in the company's mission. Some like the people they'll be working with. Some want to develop skills for their next move. Some want the brand name or status. Over time, the company will accrete people of all sorts of different motivations. What a buy-out does is take money out of the equation. It makes it so that everyo…

"What a buy-out does is take money out of the equation. It makes it so that everyone who is there for financial reasons has a financial reason to leave."

Unless you're not confident enough that you'd be able to get a job in those X months, either because of your skills or there not being jobs around.

Also, even if you like your coworkers, or want to acquire skills, if the ship is going down and you feel confident enough that you'd be getting another job quickly, then you might jump ship anyway.

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

#219

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…

The company I worked at "solved" this problem by offering the same package but with a clausing stating "key employees are not eligible to receive this package". There was some legalese at the end of the document that deciding who was "key" was ultimately up the company and no explanation was required. As one of my co-workers explained it: If you're incompetent you can get a great payout and then go be someone else's…

Isn't that illegal, though?

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

#220
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

Then they'll simply complain that you're only "motivated by money" and that you "don't really want to be part of this team". This is, of course, ignoring the fact that everyone is motivated by money, and almost none of their employees would still be working there if they stopped paying.
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