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"A few months ago, online shoe retailer Zappos did away with job titles for its 1,500 employees." This may come out harsh, but the above suggests to me that th
by hga 12y ago
"A few months ago, online shoe retailer Zappos did away with job titles for its 1,500 employees."
This may come out harsh, but the above suggests to me that the company at best doesn't get it, and at worst doesn't care about its employees' futures after Zappos.
Making me play "games" on an private, internal social network to get the company interested in me? Well, it might work for other fields, but I don't think the company is that special for this to work for the sort of technical types I assume they need ... and note, while this might be a failure on the part of the journlist author, it says nothing about networking, referals from current employees, etc.
This is so bizzare I reread the article, and note that I wouldn't even know if I wanted to start playing the game, i.e. do they need people with my sorts of specialities? After a rather ugly narrowing of this sort of thing, the field's wild with production quality or thereabout languages, databases, all sorts of infrastructure. If I were a front end developer I could make judgements (but not if they were planning on doing something new), but behind it all....
Well, they could make the game more interesting by letting participants poke around their backend systems ^_^.
- e15ctr0n 12y agoZappos is an unconventional company run by an unconventional CEO, Tony Hsieh. You can read an earlier interview about his hiring strategy[0], take a look at his office[1], and read about his plan to turn around downtown Las Vegas[2]. An unusual man, but unusually effective. [0] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/business/10corner.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/business/10corner.html?pag... [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/29/business/tony-hsiehs-office-welcome-to-the-rain-forest.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/29/business/tony-hsiehs-offic... [2] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/21/magazine/what-happens-in-brooklyn-moves-to-vegas.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/21/magazine/what-happens-in-b...
- hga 12y agoI understand that, although to a greater extent now, e.g. they're the only compay I'll buy unfamiliar footware from (although I wish they did a better job with their inventory). And I find nothing wrong in your [0], although I'm trying to figure out exactly how I'd demonstrate I'd “Create fun and a little weirdness.” in an interview (relating past examples would be right for me). I'm just questioning if this new and most certainly unconventional approach---as filtered through a journalist---will allow them to hire the technical help they need. Or any other field where the labor market is tight.
- cratermoon 12y agoI read it as Zappos not wanting to pay market rates for good talent, so they introduce a wildcard game element to the process that "rewards" loyal people with job offers. Offers that happen to be what the company wants to pay, not what the market rate would demand.
- e15ctr0n 12y agoMany open source projects hire in exactly the same way: they look at their pool of enthusiastic community members and hire them when positions become available. DuckDuckGo[0] comes to mind. [0] https://duck.co/help/company/hiring https://duck.co/help/company/hiring Then there are companies like Automattic[1] (the parent of Wordpress.com) and Matasano[2] that hire based on work samples. [1] http://automattic.com/work-with-us/ http://automattic.com/work-with-us/ [2] http://matasano.com/careers/ http://matasano.com/careers/ Zappos is not that far off when you consider that all they are looking for is a little prior interaction with their potential hires.