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

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

#261

Post by istvan__ »

rifung wrote: post #196
istvan__ wrote: post #186

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…

Staying with one company is hard. Especially getting promoted in Amazon, that is crazy crazy hard. Your best promotions are when you are changing jobs, I think the best time is to change when you can get a more senior position with obviously more responsibilities but also more recognition.

In SF this can be achieved quick, enough if you demonstrate your knowledge during the interview loops. For certain positions they also ask for previous experience but those positions more of the management side I think. If somebody walks in and writes good code we are willing to hire even into senior position, I don't care too much about the history. I have seen a candidate walking in to the interview from a grocery story where he worked as a cashier. Not only he got hired based on the interviews but he became one of the top performers on the team.

I think it is definitely easier to get "promoted" by changing jobs, especially if you are in a meritocratic environment, like some of the startups in SF.

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

#262

Post by istvan__ »

byoung2 wrote: post #226
SEJeff wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Same here, I had to explain to a HR manager once, but I told them if they don't get it they are not looking for me. :)

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

#263

Post by braythwayt »

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?

My definition is that they use tech as their differentiator and/or as their value proposition.

You can be a tech company and sell commodities, Amazon is an example of that.

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

#264

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#265

Post by rylee »

rosser wrote: post #175
vonmoltke wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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%.

You missed a zero or two on the right side of your decimal point.

Surely you meant "left side".

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

#266

Post by yuhong »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #112
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…

This is the risk (the "wrong" people taking the buyout). It was the source of a lawsuit during one of HPs many acquisitions and then downsizes where HP tried to give "selected" individuals the option to leave early, and the folks who were not given the option sued. The courts affirmed that you could not give preferential treatment for early retirement/severance it was everyone had the same choice or no one did. For w…

Personally I think this idea is probably flawed in the first place.

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

#267

Post by ghaff »

byoung2 wrote: post #226
SEJeff wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe at Silicon Valley startups but it will raise flags in many places. That may be fine based on your interests however.

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

#268

Post by jevanish »

mathattack wrote: post #209

I love the idea, but can a company that big really survive without management? Didn't Google backtrack on a similar idea?

Yes. Google tried not having managers and A/B tested against a team that had managers. Manager teams outperformed. Some of that is in this video http://youtu.be/l6ISTjupi5g

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

#269

Post by deelowe »

kansface wrote: post #234
ryoshu wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Talk to employees and you may hear differently.

I've heard the same. The answer to bad managers and overly complex corporate structure isn't to completely get rid of all structure and managers.

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

#270

Post by bigiain »

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?

A 10 or 15k pay increase per job hop should be easily achievable by much of the Hackernews demographic/stereotype. Sticking around several years for a single digit percent annual payrise could easily cost you 30k/yr over 2 or 3 years compared to switching jobs yearly or faster.

The speed with while a typical ~100k dev role gets promoted or awarded payrises to become a 200k position is _much_ slower that the dev who cherry-picks better opportunities when that arise, and works out close-enough-to-truthful explanations for any resulting 6 or 12 months roles (usually with ex-colleagues who'll give references backing up your post-role-claim that it was a 6 or 12 month contract role, not a permanent position.)

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