6 ms·

Tony Hsieh’s American Tragedy: Self-Destructive Last Months of Zappos Visionary

173 points by AlexMuir 6y ago

smabie 6y ago
seems like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25235843 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25235843 was right. Of course his comment got flagged and no one believed him (except me I suppose)
- divbzero 6y ago
  We can honor a man’s accomplishments and contributions to the world while being frank about what he suffered and potentially died from. Furthermore, we could probably cope with addiction and other forms of mental illness better if we continue to talk about it more openly. It’s no better or worse than suffering from purely physical conditions like diabetes or cancer or obesity. There are things we can and should do to try to be healthy, but there are also other genetic and environmental factors that are out of our control. I think the article was good to be not judgmental of it, and hope others in similar situations do not fear that others will judge either.
  - jonoon4484 6y ago
    Agreed. It is heartbreaking this happened, but something we can learn from. The silence due to the stigma of addiction and mental illness only serves to worsen it. Thousands die from these conditions every day. Why should we not talk about it?
- danso 6y ago
  I think the Forbes story is well-done and important, but I also don’t blame HNers for flag-killing that comment. Not because it was disrespectful and/or “too soon”. But because it was essentially a “just trust me” assertion by an anonymous user, who also admitted they heard this second-hand. Without additional context, the only basis for accepting the assertion is faith that anon-HN users wouldn’t be so malicious. Contrast the exzappos comment with its top (grandchild) reply - which asserted firsthand knowledge and provided context with references to past public reports: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25236958 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25236958 (it obviously helps that the replier is non-anonymous, but I’m not criticizing u/exzappos for being anonymous)
  - tempsy 6y ago
    There were just as many people all over that thread that attempted to rationalize the unusual circumstances of this death by pointing to how quickly fire can spread, why someone would be awake or in the basement or difficult to reach by firefighters at 3am with zero evidence as well. Point is, I found it just as baffling as to why so many felt compelled to explain away the strange elements of the initial story as I would if someone said something totally outlandish with no evidence as well.
    - mattm 6y ago
      It's difficult for people to reconcile the real person when all they know is the carefully crafted public persona.
- filmgirlcw 6y ago
  Or maybe people believed it but found it to be in poor taste and lacking any proof aside from a burner account and a smug whiff of, “trust me.” It’s really important to talk about addiction and to help loosen the stigma around it. It’s also gross to flippantly gossip without any context or details, hours after someone has died, in a forum where people who were affected by the person are grieving. Both things can be true. The gossip in the comment can be true and it can get flagged for being in poor taste.
baybal2 6y ago
Why do Americans live in houses made out of wood in 21st century?
- claydavisss 6y ago
  What does that have to do with anything? The house wasn't visibly damaged after the incident.
- ChrisLomont 6y ago
  Because they didn't cut down all their trees centuries ago like most places that don't have lots of current wooden houses. It's still cheap and durable to build wood framed houses in America.
- anonAndOn 6y ago
  Because they are cheaper to build, flex in an earthquake and are relatively easy to modify in a country obsessed with 'home improvement'.
  - skrtskrt 6y ago
    Modern particle-board (cheap material houses) provide significantly less time to get out in case of a fire than much older, sturdier wood construction however. "Research shows that 30 years ago, you had about 17 minutes to escape a house fire. Today it's down to three or four minutes. The reason: Newer homes and the furniture inside them actually burn faster." https://www.today.com/home/newer-homes-furniture-burn-faster-giving-you-less-time-escape-t65826 https://www.today.com/home/newer-homes-furniture-burn-faster...
- rmk 6y ago
  Wood is abundant (in America and many other new-world countries) and well-suited for building dwellings. You build with what's cheap and robust. Even in the 21st Century, economics rules.
- ed25519FUUU 6y ago
  Modern, fire-resistant material can protect you from fires. But what building material can protect you from yourself? I think that's the whole point of the article.
maskaler 6y ago
I'm not sure I'd heard of fun before his death. It sounds sad, and somewhat of a loss. Nice, evenly and non-judgemental written piece.
ALee 6y ago
In my 10+ yrs in this industry, it's astounding how many founders we've lost trying to hack Maslow's hierarchy. I'm not against drugs, I'm against addiction because it is terrible, destructive, and so short-term. Founders, you're not Peter Pan, your shadow stays with you no matter how many lost boys you surround yourself with. Such a tragedy that he was taken away from us too soon
- ed25519FUUU 6y ago
  At the bottom you have suffering and physical pain. At the top you have drug addiction, depression, and psychological pain. There really is no escape no matter which direction you move. It's a cruel world indeed.
  - JabavuAdams 6y ago
    There is escape, and there is hope. We can increase our resilience to life's trials. You're right that it is a cruel world. But there is still joy to be had. Lots of it.
    - cambalache 6y ago
      Not that I dont believe you, but why dont you share what the options are? The problem is that if you say something along the lines of "family and friends" there are millions of people who for different reasons dont get to enjoy good experiences in that front or any experience at all. Same with health, travel, food, jobs, peace, company, love, justice or hope.
      - kgin 6y ago
        I don't think there's one answer for this. Life on its own is ultimately a tragic story for everyone. So once we have our basic necessities met, it's the job of each of us to try to layer on top of that tragic story a personal story of meaning, a story explaining why the pain mattered somehow. That layered story can take many forms. The most time-tested one is having children. But there are many other ways to write the story too. There's also no law saying we have to layer any story of meaning at all, but human brains seem to really crave it and don't seem to do well without one.
floatingatoll 6y ago
I've seen several really smart people self-destruct under the stress of their lives in my lifetime to date. Each exhibited the same pattern of awesome-burnout-intoxicate-destruction as Hsieh is described as having here, but none were founders, so they had to do it more cheaply. The drugs they each used varied wildly, but every single one was trying to disassociate from burnout long enough to reach their goals — to escape, to get rich, whatever. I can understand why the list of what they fell prey to varies so wildly, because the typical top two most common drugs, alcohol and marijuana, have essentially no intoxicating effect on my brain at all — they do one time per year, but the 'addiction' curve for me is far sharper than other people, and they won't work again for months after that first time. It's always been like this for me, before and after I was diagnosed and prescribed medication for ADHD. Every one of them started with alcohol and/or marijuana, and after a very brief period of time, those had minimal or no effect whatsoever, so they escalated to a wide variety of more potent disassociative drugs. My mental list is: LSD, cocaine, nitrous, other inhalants. It isn't even a surprise anymore to see that someone with charisma and a really interesting view of the world end up failing as they try as hard as they can to get a break from their thoughts. I don't blame them. If I hadn't watched one of my friends self-destruct and die over this as a teenager, I'd probably have burned out my brain decades ago by now. So I go through my life with no known intoxicants that work on me — of the set of intoxicants that are considered 'safe', anyways — and, bluntly, I would never wish this on anyone. I have an unusual brain that can interrupt addictive cycles with willpower, but until I learned this lesson, I repeatedly found myself caught in the same Hsieh-like loop of "if I just double down, I can finally disassociate enough to get an evening's rest from my thoughts and worries", thinking that maybe if I just consumed more, it might be enough. It never was, and I am lucky beyond belief to now be able to interrupt that cycle without external intervention, before I do harm to my life and body. The pandemic has put crushing pressure on me, and strained my ability to bear reality to the limit, and I still worry that someday I'll end up like Hsieh, trapped in a cycle of addiction because I just wanted a one-day vacation away from it all and couldn't find it. I'm not a startup founder, and most of my friends weren't either. When I find myself wanting an escape from life for a day, it's not because my life is terrible, it's because my life is intense like the noon sun is bright. (Like Lantern, if you Know.) It turns out that burnout is the one thing that's guaranteed to push my ability to bear the intensity of life to my limits, and in that I think there's a critical warning for founders, for workers, for anyone in our industry with the tendency to drink caffeine to calm down and to do the entire project the night before it's due. Managing burnout is your number one priority for staying alive, after the bare minimum of bodily basics, because when your burnout level overflows, it can easily and trivially send you into severe addiction and possible death, as happened to Hsieh here. If you suffer the same kind of brain issues that I and those I knew did, if you think that ADHD may apply to you — even just if coffee slows you down - then I beg of you: Beware burnout. It is your greatest enemy, it can undermine your willpower and your defenses against escapism and futility, it can't be cured with money or intoxication or hard work towards a goal, and it can lead to you sucking your life away from a small metal canister in the blink of an eye, just trying to get a single instant away from it all. Footnote: The desire to escape can find outlets in religious and cult-like experiences as well; one friend with severe burnout fell prey to "self help" seminars trying to heal from it. I wonder sometimes if this offers a glimpse into the rise of personality "cults" in our modern world. Disclaimers: Yes, everyone has different experiences. Yes, not every ADHD brain is the same. Yes, burnout can affect normal people in this way too. But I'm not speaking to those circumstances here today. No, I don't have secret information about Hsieh, and maybe he spiraled in a familiar way for an unfamiliar reason. This is a reply to the story, not gossip about Hsieh.
pontifier 6y ago
I feel as though I closely missed out on a friendship that could have meant a lot to both of us. In September 2011 a group from Utah went to Vegas to start an entrepreneurial effort called "LaunchUp" I was going to go, but for some reason didn't. A friend met Tony there and was recruited by Tony to head the Las Vegas startup ecosystem there. I kept looking for a reason to meet him, and spent a month in Vegas back in 2017. I hung out on Fremont Street a lot, toured Zappos, and tried to contact him through every avenue I could, but couldn't meet him. I became disheartened by the business and startup ecosystem in Utah, and began moving everything from Utah to Arkansas right at the time he was moving in. It feels like we had a bunch of near misses and I can't help but think that things could have been different if we had connected.
m0netize 6y ago
Typical Forbes hit piece on an unorthodox thinker. Tony was a little to 'anarchistic' for Forbes. Key phrase: "He experimented with a revolutionary—some would say anarchistic—version of a “holacracy” management philosophy, where no one at Zappos reported to anyone nor carried any titles. (It didn’t work: One out of seven employees took a buyout.)" It didn't work? Really? Company was and is doing fine after 17% took advantage of a nice buyout. The bias in the article is obvious - some clips: "while Hsieh remained an extremely rich Peter Pan", or his "fatal trait" of "not wanting to be alone" Sure, it sounds like Tony was off the rails, and it ended in tragedy. But this hatchet job is not necessary. Just the facts please.
guiambros 6y ago
Don't miss Jewel's elegy[1]. She's the one one who sent the letter in August. What a beautiful and heartbreaking gesture. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxqeOwVl0IQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxqeOwVl0IQ
rlt 6y ago
I never met him, so take this with a grain of salt, but I always got a bit of a weird vibe from Tony’s obsession with “happiness”, like he was faking it or overcompensating or something.

173 points by AlexMuir 6y ago

seems like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25235843 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25235843 was right. Of course his comment got flagged and no one believed him (except me I suppose)

divbzero 6y ago
We can honor a man’s accomplishments and contributions to the world while being frank about what he suffered and potentially died from. Furthermore, we could probably cope with addiction and other forms of mental illness better if we continue to talk about it more openly. It’s no better or worse than suffering from purely physical conditions like diabetes or cancer or obesity. There are things we can and should do to try to be healthy, but there are also other genetic and environmental factors that are out of our control. I think the article was good to be not judgmental of it, and hope others in similar situations do not fear that others will judge either.
- jonoon4484 6y ago
  Agreed. It is heartbreaking this happened, but something we can learn from. The silence due to the stigma of addiction and mental illness only serves to worsen it. Thousands die from these conditions every day. Why should we not talk about it?
danso 6y ago
I think the Forbes story is well-done and important, but I also don’t blame HNers for flag-killing that comment. Not because it was disrespectful and/or “too soon”. But because it was essentially a “just trust me” assertion by an anonymous user, who also admitted they heard this second-hand. Without additional context, the only basis for accepting the assertion is faith that anon-HN users wouldn’t be so malicious. Contrast the exzappos comment with its top (grandchild) reply - which asserted firsthand knowledge and provided context with references to past public reports: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25236958 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25236958 (it obviously helps that the replier is non-anonymous, but I’m not criticizing u/exzappos for being anonymous)
- tempsy 6y ago
  There were just as many people all over that thread that attempted to rationalize the unusual circumstances of this death by pointing to how quickly fire can spread, why someone would be awake or in the basement or difficult to reach by firefighters at 3am with zero evidence as well. Point is, I found it just as baffling as to why so many felt compelled to explain away the strange elements of the initial story as I would if someone said something totally outlandish with no evidence as well.
  - mattm 6y ago
    It's difficult for people to reconcile the real person when all they know is the carefully crafted public persona.
filmgirlcw 6y ago
Or maybe people believed it but found it to be in poor taste and lacking any proof aside from a burner account and a smug whiff of, “trust me.” It’s really important to talk about addiction and to help loosen the stigma around it. It’s also gross to flippantly gossip without any context or details, hours after someone has died, in a forum where people who were affected by the person are grieving. Both things can be true. The gossip in the comment can be true and it can get flagged for being in poor taste.

baybal2 6y ago

Why do Americans live in houses made out of wood in 21st century?

claydavisss 6y ago
What does that have to do with anything? The house wasn't visibly damaged after the incident.
ChrisLomont 6y ago
Because they didn't cut down all their trees centuries ago like most places that don't have lots of current wooden houses. It's still cheap and durable to build wood framed houses in America.
anonAndOn 6y ago
Because they are cheaper to build, flex in an earthquake and are relatively easy to modify in a country obsessed with 'home improvement'.
- skrtskrt 6y ago
  Modern particle-board (cheap material houses) provide significantly less time to get out in case of a fire than much older, sturdier wood construction however. "Research shows that 30 years ago, you had about 17 minutes to escape a house fire. Today it's down to three or four minutes. The reason: Newer homes and the furniture inside them actually burn faster." https://www.today.com/home/newer-homes-furniture-burn-faster-giving-you-less-time-escape-t65826 https://www.today.com/home/newer-homes-furniture-burn-faster...
rmk 6y ago
Wood is abundant (in America and many other new-world countries) and well-suited for building dwellings. You build with what's cheap and robust. Even in the 21st Century, economics rules.
ed25519FUUU 6y ago
Modern, fire-resistant material can protect you from fires. But what building material can protect you from yourself? I think that's the whole point of the article.

maskaler 6y ago

I'm not sure I'd heard of fun before his death. It sounds sad, and somewhat of a loss. Nice, evenly and non-judgemental written piece.

ALee 6y ago

In my 10+ yrs in this industry, it's astounding how many founders we've lost trying to hack Maslow's hierarchy. I'm not against drugs, I'm against addiction because it is terrible, destructive, and so short-term. Founders, you're not Peter Pan, your shadow stays with you no matter how many lost boys you surround yourself with. Such a tragedy that he was taken away from us too soon

ed25519FUUU 6y ago
At the bottom you have suffering and physical pain. At the top you have drug addiction, depression, and psychological pain. There really is no escape no matter which direction you move. It's a cruel world indeed.
- JabavuAdams 6y ago
  There is escape, and there is hope. We can increase our resilience to life's trials. You're right that it is a cruel world. But there is still joy to be had. Lots of it.
  - cambalache 6y ago
    Not that I dont believe you, but why dont you share what the options are? The problem is that if you say something along the lines of "family and friends" there are millions of people who for different reasons dont get to enjoy good experiences in that front or any experience at all. Same with health, travel, food, jobs, peace, company, love, justice or hope.
    - kgin 6y ago
      I don't think there's one answer for this. Life on its own is ultimately a tragic story for everyone. So once we have our basic necessities met, it's the job of each of us to try to layer on top of that tragic story a personal story of meaning, a story explaining why the pain mattered somehow. That layered story can take many forms. The most time-tested one is having children. But there are many other ways to write the story too. There's also no law saying we have to layer any story of meaning at all, but human brains seem to really crave it and don't seem to do well without one.

floatingatoll 6y ago

I've seen several really smart people self-destruct under the stress of their lives in my lifetime to date. Each exhibited the same pattern of awesome-burnout-intoxicate-destruction as Hsieh is described as having here, but none were founders, so they had to do it more cheaply. The drugs they each used varied wildly, but every single one was trying to disassociate from burnout long enough to reach their goals — to escape, to get rich, whatever. I can understand why the list of what they fell prey to varies so wildly, because the typical top two most common drugs, alcohol and marijuana, have essentially no intoxicating effect on my brain at all — they do one time per year, but the 'addiction' curve for me is far sharper than other people, and they won't work again for months after that first time. It's always been like this for me, before and after I was diagnosed and prescribed medication for ADHD. Every one of them started with alcohol and/or marijuana, and after a very brief period of time, those had minimal or no effect whatsoever, so they escalated to a wide variety of more potent disassociative drugs. My mental list is: LSD, cocaine, nitrous, other inhalants. It isn't even a surprise anymore to see that someone with charisma and a really interesting view of the world end up failing as they try as hard as they can to get a break from their thoughts. I don't blame them. If I hadn't watched one of my friends self-destruct and die over this as a teenager, I'd probably have burned out my brain decades ago by now. So I go through my life with no known intoxicants that work on me — of the set of intoxicants that are considered 'safe', anyways — and, bluntly, I would never wish this on anyone. I have an unusual brain that can interrupt addictive cycles with willpower, but until I learned this lesson, I repeatedly found myself caught in the same Hsieh-like loop of "if I just double down, I can finally disassociate enough to get an evening's rest from my thoughts and worries", thinking that maybe if I just consumed more, it might be enough. It never was, and I am lucky beyond belief to now be able to interrupt that cycle without external intervention, before I do harm to my life and body. The pandemic has put crushing pressure on me, and strained my ability to bear reality to the limit, and I still worry that someday I'll end up like Hsieh, trapped in a cycle of addiction because I just wanted a one-day vacation away from it all and couldn't find it. I'm not a startup founder, and most of my friends weren't either. When I find myself wanting an escape from life for a day, it's not because my life is terrible, it's because my life is intense like the noon sun is bright. (Like Lantern, if you Know.) It turns out that burnout is the one thing that's guaranteed to push my ability to bear the intensity of life to my limits, and in that I think there's a critical warning for founders, for workers, for anyone in our industry with the tendency to drink caffeine to calm down and to do the entire project the night before it's due. Managing burnout is your number one priority for staying alive, after the bare minimum of bodily basics, because when your burnout level overflows, it can easily and trivially send you into severe addiction and possible death, as happened to Hsieh here. If you suffer the same kind of brain issues that I and those I knew did, if you think that ADHD may apply to you — even just if coffee slows you down - then I beg of you: Beware burnout. It is your greatest enemy, it can undermine your willpower and your defenses against escapism and futility, it can't be cured with money or intoxication or hard work towards a goal, and it can lead to you sucking your life away from a small metal canister in the blink of an eye, just trying to get a single instant away from it all. Footnote: The desire to escape can find outlets in religious and cult-like experiences as well; one friend with severe burnout fell prey to "self help" seminars trying to heal from it. I wonder sometimes if this offers a glimpse into the rise of personality "cults" in our modern world. Disclaimers: Yes, everyone has different experiences. Yes, not every ADHD brain is the same. Yes, burnout can affect normal people in this way too. But I'm not speaking to those circumstances here today. No, I don't have secret information about Hsieh, and maybe he spiraled in a familiar way for an unfamiliar reason. This is a reply to the story, not gossip about Hsieh.

pontifier 6y ago

I feel as though I closely missed out on a friendship that could have meant a lot to both of us. In September 2011 a group from Utah went to Vegas to start an entrepreneurial effort called "LaunchUp" I was going to go, but for some reason didn't. A friend met Tony there and was recruited by Tony to head the Las Vegas startup ecosystem there. I kept looking for a reason to meet him, and spent a month in Vegas back in 2017. I hung out on Fremont Street a lot, toured Zappos, and tried to contact him through every avenue I could, but couldn't meet him. I became disheartened by the business and startup ecosystem in Utah, and began moving everything from Utah to Arkansas right at the time he was moving in. It feels like we had a bunch of near misses and I can't help but think that things could have been different if we had connected.

m0netize 6y ago

Typical Forbes hit piece on an unorthodox thinker. Tony was a little to 'anarchistic' for Forbes. Key phrase: "He experimented with a revolutionary—some would say anarchistic—version of a “holacracy” management philosophy, where no one at Zappos reported to anyone nor carried any titles. (It didn’t work: One out of seven employees took a buyout.)" It didn't work? Really? Company was and is doing fine after 17% took advantage of a nice buyout. The bias in the article is obvious - some clips: "while Hsieh remained an extremely rich Peter Pan", or his "fatal trait" of "not wanting to be alone" Sure, it sounds like Tony was off the rails, and it ended in tragedy. But this hatchet job is not necessary. Just the facts please.

guiambros 6y ago

Don't miss Jewel's elegy[1]. She's the one one who sent the letter in August. What a beautiful and heartbreaking gesture. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxqeOwVl0IQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxqeOwVl0IQ

rlt 6y ago

I never met him, so take this with a grain of salt, but I always got a bit of a weird vibe from Tony’s obsession with “happiness”, like he was faking it or overcompensating or something.