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When the holocracy was first introduced early last year and it resulted in more employees than predicted immediately leaving, Hsieh apologists said "It's ok, Za
by ebbv 11y ago
When the holocracy was first introduced early last year and it resulted in more employees than predicted immediately leaving, Hsieh apologists said "It's ok, Zappos will be stronger for it." But over the course of the year, people keep leaving, and people keep making excuses.
I think we have enough proof that the flat management structure doesn't work as well as a traditional hierarchy for a company of Zappos' size and in its industry. But I guess some people won't believe it until the company actually goes down the toilet or backtracks.
- codeonfire 11y agoIs the company unable to function? Can I not go to zappos.com and buy something? Zappos just reduced their payroll expense by tens of millions of dollars probably due to deadweight attrition. So I think they will be doing much better.
- ebbv 11y agoAs I said: > But I guess some people won't believe it until the company actually goes down the toilet or backtracks. You fall under that category. The criteria that Zappos website has to actually go down in order for it to have been a bad decision is a pretty bad way to make a judgment call. If you ran a company that way you'd never fix a bad decision until it was too late.
- bkirkby 11y agonote: i'm a former engineering manager at Zappos. (still with the company, just not a manager any more) you're making many mistakes in your opinion: 1. correlation and causation. this latest round of people leaving is only because there was an extension to the offer made in may for a group of people. far less left this last time than anticipated. 2. you aren't running the test long enough. because of this second offer, the hard work of self-organizing was largely being delayed. it actually feels like we are just beginning (at least in tech). 3. you are measuring the wrong thing. in no way does an attrition rate reflect the success of self-organization. any organization can be made better byt he right people leaving. the metrics i'm interested in are: 1) employee happiness, 2) customer delight, and 3) innovation rate. feel free to email me in a year to get an idea of what those are like then. (notice, a profitability metric is just an assumed by-product of those measurements, although it's not what we focus on).