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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

#241

Post by shagie »

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.

This reminds me quite a bit of a blog post from The Wetware Crisis on what he deemed The Dead Sea Effect ( http://brucefwebster.com/2008/04/11/the-wetware-crisis-the-d... )

While not a forced evaporation which you describe, its the 'the best people can get jobs elsewhere' and 'the less capable people entrench themselves as experts on critical systems to where they can't afford to be let go'.

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

#242

Post by rifung »

loopbit wrote: post #216
rifung wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 enou…

Interesting. Well, you would know better than I do since you obviously have way more experience! I appreciate the advice and will keep that in mind!

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

#243

Post by sytelus »

Lot of people seems to be thinking that these 14% are leaving because they miss having a manager. Employees who take buyout in this situation are usually the ones in people manager roles. Many of them might also believe that they probably would not do as great in "individual contributor" roles as they did in management role. Some of these may be good managers and some may be just great politics player. However rarely would be the individual contributor who would want to take ultimate step of leaving because of the fear of not having a manager. If Zappos had 1:5 managers to people ratio then 14% makes sense using this theory.

Beside, in any large enough company, I think offer of fat severance is likely to be taken up by 5% or more of its employees at any point in time who were thinking about leaving anyway.

Management-less company needs to hire employees with specific cultural and social mindset. So this needs to happen at the birth time. Trying to do this at later date can feel like circumcision at 18.

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

#244

Post by sopooneo »

sokoloff wrote: post #225
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…

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…

Doesn't Zappos make a similar offer to everyone that finishes their new employee training program?

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

#245

Post by jqm »

mattmanser wrote: post #239
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…

Well, today Paddy Ashdown in the UK said he'd eat his hat if the exit polls in the UK were correct. They were correct. He didn't eat a hat. No matter what happens, you won't eat a hat. No matter what happens at zappo's I can 100% guarantee you will never eat a hat. I will 100% confirm that you will never, ever eat a hat because you are a liar. The only thing we can be 100% sure about is that you are a liar who will n…

In this case "I'll eat my shoe" might be more appropriate.

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

#246

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#247

Post by kyllo »

todd3834 wrote: post #237
s73v3r wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> they're not really a tech company By your definition, what is a tech company?

Guessing he or she means they sell shoes, not software or hardware.

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

#248

Post by deegles »

mattmanser wrote: post #239
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…

Well, today Paddy Ashdown in the UK said he'd eat his hat if the exit polls in the UK were correct. They were correct. He didn't eat a hat. No matter what happens, you won't eat a hat. No matter what happens at zappo's I can 100% guarantee you will never eat a hat. I will 100% confirm that you will never, ever eat a hat because you are a liar. The only thing we can be 100% sure about is that you are a liar who will n…

"Avoid gratuitous negativity."

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

#249

Post by jevanish »

eclipxe wrote: post #236
exelius wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that Amazon is content to let Zappos experiment. If Zappos loses customers, statistically most of them will end up at Amazon anyway. Tony Hsieh is pretty out there, and a lot of his ideas sound kind of crazy, but I think Bezos believes in him and is willing to let him try. Even though everyone says "Oh, that won't work" you don't know until you try. If Zappos can experiment with a new leadership style, maybe…

It's a great place to work. There, you can no longer say "you never heard it's a great place to work". Sample size of 1, but I love it.

That's great to hear, but how much did that change for you or others when the holocracy processes were added? I can see where that could totally change how I feel about a job even if I still love my coworkers, the job perks, etc.

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

#250

Post by nilkn »

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?

I got a $40k raise when I switched jobs the first time, and I was paid pretty well before then (not quite $100k, but I'm not in a tech hub either).

Then again, that's the only time I've ever done it, so I can't really say at all whether that trend might continue (almost certainly not).

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