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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

#221

Post by SilasX »

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…

>But what actually happened was that people who were good at their job, and could find work elsewhere, left. So they would have had all of the top talent leave the company and the remaining employees would be the people who did just enough to get by.

I remember this being an issue with General Motors near bankruptcy (2008) too. They couldn't lay off union workers, and figured it would be cheaper to offer them buyouts than keep paying their above-market salaries.

There too, people pointed out that the only takers would be the best workers, who can easily find work elsewhere, and they'd be left with the ones who can't.

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

#222

Post by s73v3r »

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?

Their current job might be "good enough" in that the benefits of switching are not significantly over the costs of switching. But when you add 3 months of salary to the equation, that might tip the scales.

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

#223

Post by s73v3r »

1123581321 wrote: post #96
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'.

A lead link can appoint people to roles, but the people have autonomy in that role. A manager has the authority to both appoint roles and micromanage execution. Also, there is a parallel to lead link called rep link who is appointed by the lead link's circle to check against bad decisions/behavior by the lead link.

If they also have the authority to remove people from roles, how do they not also have the authority to micromanage execution, at least not indirectly?

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

#224

Post by s73v3r »

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.

If it can't be properly explained in simple terms, it might not be a great idea.

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

#225

Post by sokoloff »

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.

There's that element directly, but I think even more powerful is the sense to the employees that they are consciously opting in to staying. They are literally passing up a (small) pot of gold in order to stay in the new structure. The mere fact of choosing in such a way (even if that's the default choice) will tend to increase commitment in the inevitable dark moments of the transition.

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

#226

Post by byoung2 »

SEJeff wrote: post #154
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

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.

I have been at 6 companies in 10 years and have not had a problem explaining it. In tech, 1 year per company is reasonable as a minimum.

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

#227

Post by sokoloff »

sobkas wrote: post #85
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?

In my (thankfully limited) experience, it's entirely standard for severance packages to be tenure-based and, IMO, most of those reasons have nothing to do with ageism.

The longer you've been with us, the more you've likely contributed and we should recognize that as we part ways. The longer you've worked with us, the more life upheaval the separation represents. The longer you've worked with us, the more personal relationships you have developed, perhaps with the same people making the decision to eliminate your position. A generous severance (which IMO requires a tenure component) sends an important signal of stability to the employees who remain AND makes it easier for managers (who are of course humans themself) to make the decision to eliminate the position of a long-tenured but "surplus to ongoing operations" employee.

What's the alternative? The person who joined 6 weeks ago gets the same package as the 10-year veteran? That seems worse all around to me.

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

#228

Post by larzang »

ryoshu wrote: post #213
bane wrote: 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...

Valve is the exception that proves the rule, i.e. you need a stable cash cow so large that your frequently-aimless often-delayed progress on anything else doesn't break the company.

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

#229

Post by hinkley »

vonmoltke wrote: post #156
grecy wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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%.

Since we've learned that they are almost all sociopaths (not as an epithet, but clinically so), this behavior is perfectly consistent.

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

#230

Post by shanusmagnus »

teraflop wrote: post #104
shanusmagnus wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Brilliant effort!
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