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Tony Hsieh has died

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Re: Tony Hsieh has died

#121

Post by Kephael »

ceilingcorner wrote: post #114
Beldin wrote: post #83

> It's no more a cult than cheering for your school mascot To just react to this part: from the perspective of someone growing up in a country without school mascots or inter-school sports competitions, the whole US treatment of school sport teams and their mascots (or, at least, their depiction in media) is rather cultish behaviour.

European and South American obsession with football and footballers goes far, far beyond anything Americans do with sports. Unless you live in West Texas, it's fairly easy to avoid anything to do with it.

Yeah, the US has nothing like the "Soccer hooligan" culture that's found in Europe. I'm not sure why someone would think high school sports are a massive deal. I think it's due to media depictions of small towns being engrossed with them.

Re: Tony Hsieh has died

#122

Post by elsjaako »

ceilingcorner wrote: post #118
skrebbel wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> or daily pledging your unconditional allegiance to a nation Wut, that's some serious 1984 shit, where is this common?

Most schoolchildren do the Pledge of Allegiance every morning, but in my experience, the only people who think it's some sort of dystopian practice are foreigners whose primary knowledge of America comes from watching Netflix. For actual Americans, it's a mildly respectful gesture that simply implies patriotism...and it's not a particularly huge deal.

As someone who had never heard of the practice before moving to the US as a teen, it seemed pretty culty to me.

I understand most Americans aren't that bothered, but that makes it even more creepy to us foreigners.

I'm sure North Koreans are used to the Kims' pictures in every room, but that doesn't make it less weird from an outsiders perspective.

Re: Tony Hsieh has died

#124

Post by skrebbel »

adi2907 wrote: post #34

Really sad , I remember when I was setting up Myntra (Indian zappos) customer experience department, Tony and his book were a huge influence and everything that we did was measured up with the zappos way of customer experience. We were one of the few large companies having in house call centre with a five day week and training period of one month to all customer cate executives, plus a mandatory call listening sessio…

> There are still some question marks on the ROI

How did you solve this in practice?

Re: Tony Hsieh has died

#125

Post by baccheion »

dclusin wrote: post #40
dvt wrote: post #4

This is crazy, he's a veritable legend (and so young). RIP. My condolences go out to his friends and family. Maybe related to his stepping down 3 months ago[1]? My comment from that 3-month-old thread, regarding Hsieh: From 2015-2017, I worked at Edmunds.com which was (to put it lightly) a bit obsessed with "Delivering Happiness" and Zappos' culture. So much so, that the leadership team visited Vegas to get a tour of…

What sticks out to me in your comment is that in spite of all your nice words about their culture, the nicest/best people you worked with still left for other companies. I suspect it was probably a 20% pay raise that convinced them to.

A better work environment doesn't have any effect on tenure. Only the extremes make a difference. That is, lower when extremely bad and a bit longer when extremely good.

According to the BLS, median tenure is 2.x years for those 25-34. For those 35-44, it's 4.x years. Keeps going up with age, peaking at 10.x years starting in the 50s.

Not much seems to change it in a relevant way, maybe another many companies are blah in this regard: not worth the money/time/effort. Just mumble some BS to look good to the world, then repeat as the same dead company. The BS isn't even mumbled to recruit, as it also doesn't have any effect there.

The only ones in a position to be affected by such marketing are new grads, a group typically viewed as worthless and that have to take what they get. It's all just air in the winds.

Re: Tony Hsieh has died

#126

Post by ceilingcorner »

elsjaako wrote: post #122
ceilingcorner wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most schoolchildren do the Pledge of Allegiance every morning, but in my experience, the only people who think it's some sort of dystopian practice are foreigners whose primary knowledge of America comes from watching Netflix. For actual Americans, it's a mildly respectful gesture that simply implies patriotism...and it's not a particularly huge deal.

As someone who had never heard of the practice before moving to the US as a teen, it seemed pretty culty to me. I understand most Americans aren't that bothered, but that makes it even more creepy to us foreigners. I'm sure North Koreans are used to the Kims' pictures in every room, but that doesn't make it less weird from an outsiders perspective.

Comparing the Pledge of Allegiance to North Korean indoctrination is exactly the sort of absurd nonsense that I'm talking about. It's a basic tradition that helps instill patriotism, which from a purely practical point of view, is almost a political necessity in a country as diverse as America. Criticizing one's own country, which is probably one of the most American things one can do, is absolutely not possible in North Korea.

I don't want to assume the country that you're from, but I'll say this: Europeans often have this constant attitude that they're the forefront of civilization and that anyone who doesn't match their highly subjective standards is ethically "behind." It's nauseating and frankly just the new flavor of Eurocentric imperialism.

Re: Tony Hsieh has died

#127

Post by Gibbon1 »

ceilingcorner wrote: post #126
elsjaako wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who had never heard of the practice before moving to the US as a teen, it seemed pretty culty to me. I understand most Americans aren't that bothered, but that makes it even more creepy to us foreigners. I'm sure North Koreans are used to the Kims' pictures in every room, but that doesn't make it less weird from an outsiders perspective.

Comparing the Pledge of Allegiance to North Korean indoctrination is exactly the sort of absurd nonsense that I'm talking about. It's a basic tradition that helps instill patriotism, which from a purely practical point of view, is almost a political necessity in a country as diverse as America. Criticizing one's own country, which is probably one of the most American things one can do, is absolutely not possible in N…

> It's a basic tradition that helps instill patriotism

AKA culty and weird.

Re: Tony Hsieh has died

#128

Post by ceilingcorner »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #127
ceilingcorner wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comparing the Pledge of Allegiance to North Korean indoctrination is exactly the sort of absurd nonsense that I'm talking about. It's a basic tradition that helps instill patriotism, which from a purely practical point of view, is almost a political necessity in a country as diverse as America. Criticizing one's own country, which is probably one of the most American things one can do, is absolutely not possible in N…

> It's a basic tradition that helps instill patriotism AKA culty and weird.

This kind of snarky, low effort comment belongs on Reddit, not HN.

Re: Tony Hsieh has died

#130

Post by unishark »

Beldin wrote: post #83

> It's no more a cult than cheering for your school mascot To just react to this part: from the perspective of someone growing up in a country without school mascots or inter-school sports competitions, the whole US treatment of school sport teams and their mascots (or, at least, their depiction in media) is rather cultish behaviour.

In what way is it like a cult? It's more like cheering for your country in international sports competitions. If that's a cult then I guess fans of any competitive sports are a cult to you.

If you're talking about the actual guy in the mascot suit some schools have, they're just clowning around to entertain people. Drunk fans appreciate them the most.

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