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

• janesvilleseo 11y ago
  So just the managers and supervisors left then?
  • Maxels 11y ago
    I can't even tell if this is being spun as a positive or a negative. That is a radical change and if anything it seems like a low number of people to take the severance. Whether the new policy will work out in the long term remains to be seen. I believe I read that Google tried a flat hierarchy for a few months and found that it did not work quite how they wanted. Also, what will Tony Hsieh be doing in the new managerless structure?
    • 7Figures2Commas 11y ago
      > Also, what will Tony Hsieh be doing in the new managerless structure? Writing more 5,000 word emails?
    • taylorwc 11y ago
      Google did indeed try it[0]. "In 2002 they experimented with a completely flat organization, eliminating engineering managers in an effort to break down barriers to rapid idea development and to replicate the collegial environment they’d enjoyed in graduate school. That experiment lasted only a few months: They relented when too many people went directly to Page with questions about expense reports, interpersonal conflicts, and other nitty-gritty issues." [0] https://hbr.org/2013/12/how-google-sold-its-engineers-on-management https://hbr.org/2013/12/how-google-sold-its-engineers-on-man...
    • learc83 11y ago
      >I believe I read that Google tried a flat hierarchy for a few months and found that it did not work quite how they wanted. Once you grow beyond a certain size, you have to have people who function as communication hubs to deal with the n^2 connections between employees. The hubs end up consolidating power, and then you have management. There are probably ways to limit this, rotating managerial duties and such, but it's much harder than just adopting a hierarchical structure.
  • dazmax 11y ago
    If so it might be what he wanted. There was speculation that the buyout was a way to get rid of managers without having to fire them.
• dsr_ 11y ago
  I look forward to seeing what happens. It's perfectly natural for people to feel apprehension about a major change like this, and offering 3 months salary as an incentive is quite generous. My primary concern would be about the scale of the company: self-organizing over a thousand people is going to have some rough patches.
• 7Figures2Commas 11y ago
  > Hsieh sent a nearly 5,000-word company-wide memo... > To get their severance, employees had to be in good standing with the company. They were also asked to indicate by email that they had read the management book "Reinventing Organizations" and disagreed with its manager-free vision or else state that they were not reading it. Crazy. I wonder how many more employees would have left if Zappos was based in a region where workers have greater mobility.
  • grecy 11y ago
    Wow, I wish my company would do something like this - middle management is clearly slowing us down and adding very little value right now. I can't wait to read that book.
    • 7Figures2Commas 11y ago
      You're making a flawed assumption many people make: because many managers are poor managers, management is bad. Be careful what you wish for. A company without management is like a boat without a captain. You might appear to be fine for some time, but eventually you'll be hopelessly adrift at sea.
      • BillinghamJ 11y ago
        A company without management is not the same as a company without managers. Not having managers doesn't mean not having executives.
      • k__ 11y ago
        Middle management just seem to be a bad process in many companies, not more not less. They shouldn't hate the players, but the game.
      • 23david 11y ago
        In my experience, a bad manager can be far worse than having no managers. A management-less company may end up being adrift at sea, but that's a far better alternative than running into an iceberg or sailing into pirate-infested waters.
• kelukelugames 11y ago
  I just finished Tony's book "Delivering Happiness". I admire how positive and optimistic he is. And I even agree with forcing self improvement on the employees. But he also stresses running the company like a family aka cult. One of the advantages of moving to Vegas from SF was the employees were forced to spend more time together. He even said Zappos is his tribe. I wonder how these experiments would fare at a larger company.
  • eplanit 11y ago
    Henry Ford was a leader in this area. At the time he was praised for it; then as social values evolved he came to be vilified for such practices. https://www.thehenryford.org/research/englishSchool.aspx https://www.thehenryford.org/research/englishSchool.aspx
  • lojack 11y ago
    Yeah, I read this article and for whatever reason had a sense of this being very cult-like. The terminology being used is similar to how cults load the language to make everyone feel like they are part the in-crowd. And, his offer to pay severance to anyone who wanted to quit just felt like how a cult leader will say "the door is always open if you want to leave." Of course, he isn't actually building a cult, but I find the similarities of indoctrination very interesting.
    • AceJohnny2 11y ago
      They are provenly-effective techniques to make a disparate group of people work towards a common goal... Whether the techniques and the end-goal are good or bad is left as an exercise to history :)
• spacehome 11y ago
  Offering money for employees to leave is an interesting strategy. I worry about unintended consequences, though. One consequence is that the very best people (who have easy times finding jobs or striking out on their own) will be much more likely to leave than less competent people who may feel they would have a harder time on the open job market.
  • bbreier 11y ago
    This sentiment is echoed a lot in relation to Zappos' policies, and I think it holds water. But it crossed my mind that the existence Dunning-Kruger effect might actually result in the inverse. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
• jedmeyers 11y ago
  Are warehouse workers considered to be 'Zappos employees'? Will they also be managing themselves?
  • jccalhoun 11y ago
    Those are the kind of things I wonder about when I hear about zappos or valve or other companies that claim to be without managers. Is the person who cleans the restrooms getting to be part of this (although in the modern world the companies probably pay another company to do their janitorial work)
    • enjo 11y ago
      That's exactly how it supposedly works at Ricardo Semler's companies. Everyone participates in self-organization.
  • a3n 11y ago
    In one of the many articles on the plight of (specifically) Amazon workers, I read that they are employed by contractors, and that the penalty for normal little things like being late because of a kid or car emergency, things we don't even think about, is termination from the contractor. And thus does Amazon (and similar companies) insulate themselves from such policies.
• basseq 11y ago
  Thought experiment: ignore the holacracy angle and offer everyone in any company 3-months severance if they quit by a certain date. What percentage would quit? I wouldn't be surprised if the average was 10-20% and a vast majority of these people are taking advantage of what they see as a good deal irregardless of their feelings on holacracy as a management style.
  • Disruptive_Dave 11y ago
    It's like cleaning your email subscriber list every few months.
    • BinaryIdiot 11y ago
      Not really; people who can't get a job elsewhere possibly because of skill wouldn't be taking the offer. But someone who gets constant job offers by other companies? Unless you're absolutely in love with Zappos why wouldn't you? I know I would have.
      • petercooper 11y ago
        Although of 1500 Zappos' employees, I doubt many are getting frequent offers or recruiters reaching out. How many are doing IT, development or high level sales stuff where well paid jobs are plentiful? I imagine the majority are customer support agents of one kind or another, packers, logistics people, etc.
      • Disruptive_Dave 11y ago
        Fair enough. Though I'd note that there's quite a few options in between "no job prospects / low skills" and "constantly getting job offers". The average complacent / comfortable employee probably does more harm to the company than most others on a daily basis. I know PLENTY of workers who stay in jobs for years while being unhappy and constantly talking of wanting to leave. That's more of the "list cleaning" to which I was referring.
  • scott_karana 11y ago
    Actually, that aspect of Zappos's strategy isn't new at all. Here's an article from 2008. tl;dr is "If you quit today, we will pay you for the amount of time you’ve worked, plus we will offer you a $1,000 bonus." https://hbr.org/2008/05/why-zappos-pays-new-employees/ https://hbr.org/2008/05/why-zappos-pays-new-employees/
• sageabilly 11y ago
  This sounds a lot like the flat structure they have at Valve, except at Valve they have had that since Day 1 and everyone is used to it. I can't imagine the headaches and the absolute confusion that would result from trying to take a traditional management tree and flatten it. It seems like by its very nature the kinds of people you hired when you had tiered management might not be able to easily transition to a flat management, nor would they want to. Having worked in both environments, I can see that there's advantages and disadvantages to each, but I personally prefer having a manager to bounce things off of and to (for lack of a better term) shield me from any unpleasant office politics. I suppose I've just had good managers when I've had them, which is of course going to make things work out well for me.
  • pp19dd 11y ago
    The valve employee manual is a great read. And well illustrated; worth a look: http://www.valvesoftware.com/company/Valve_Handbook_LowRes.pdf http://www.valvesoftware.com/company/Valve_Handbook_LowRes.p... (From an earlier discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9250527 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9250527)
  • ValentineC 11y ago
    There are articles on how Valve has "hidden management" cliques though [1]. I'm not sure if this was ever addressed by Valve itself. [1] http://www.develop-online.net/news/valve-s-perfect-hiring-hierarchy-has-hidden-management-clique-like-high-school/0115316 http://www.develop-online.net/news/valve-s-perfect-hiring-hi...
    • deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    • calinet6 11y ago
      It's very similar in holocracy: the people who are natural leaders will fill the management needs of the organization; it's just more chaotic, less predictable, and not as good. The lack of structure brings out the worst in human behavior. In my experience, it is a horrible system in which to exist. It's highly ignorant of psychology and behavior theory almost intentionally, and it creates far more drama and politics than any organizational system I've ever seen. It's not a good thing.
• UnoriginalGuy 11y ago
  Strange it isn't former CEO as you wouldn't have a CEO in a flat company. Seems hypocritical to me, but maybe it isn't and I don't get the distinction.
  • a3voices 11y ago
    Someone has to talk to the investors though, right?
    • broknbottle 11y ago
      bill in maintenance will take on that role.
  • encoderer 11y ago
    Just because you don't need management doesn't mean you don't need leadership.
    • silverbax88 11y ago
      Right, "nobody's job is essential...well except mine, of course."
    • kzhahou 11y ago
      Good managers lead.
      • zer0defex 11y ago
        Not every leader is a good manager.
  • maxxxxx 11y ago
    " "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others"
  • venomsnake 11y ago
    Depends. Someone has to sign the contracts. And to be the top dog legal wise. We don't have good legal framework that endorses flat corporations. Yet.
• cpr 11y ago
  Does anyone know how this relates to Ricardo Semler's efforts with Semco? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricardo_Semler http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricardo_Semler)
  • jasonmp85 11y ago
    From what I've read, Semco employees help set their own compensation and hours, something that will not be happening at Zappos (at least not in such a direct fashion). Semco is a workplace democracy, not a holacracy. It isn't a worker cooperative (like certain MONDRAGON group members), so there isn't shared ownership, so it has that in common with Zappos. In a nutshell, the holacracy system will have "circles" of individuals which act as semi-autonomous groups to achieve results. Each circle might function democratically. Semco is a more traditional company with a workplace democracy overlay on top. This piece goes into more detail: http://jonathangifford.com/maverick-ricardo-semler-10-key-democratic-changes-semco/ http://jonathangifford.com/maverick-ricardo-semler-10-key-de... EDIT: And oh yeah, both Zappos and Semco are privately held. The linked article discusses this in the comments, but in recent years we've had more illustrative examples of how profit incentive sucks character and morals from a company, e.g. Cook shouting down an investor questioning the need for green initiatives, or Schultz telling investors they could sell if they don't like his support for same-sex relationships. These two held on, but countless others surely sacrificed their values at the altar of shareholder value. In short, I'm not holding my breath that we'll see workplace democracy or holacracy at a public company anytime soon.
    • digikata 11y ago
      Wikipedia has Zappos down as being acquired by Amazon in 2009
      • kelukelugames 11y ago
        Yes, Amazon owns Zappos. In Tony's book, he explains that legally Zappos still gets to what Zappos wants.
      • jasonmp85 11y ago
• mgkimsal 11y ago
  Seems a bit low - I'm thinking more people would have taken the buyout but aren't very confident in the job market right now.
• logicalmind 11y ago
  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, but nearly everyone in the IT department took the deal. And I am aware of many people in other departments who took the deal as well. Rumors were that between 30 and 40 percent of staff took the deal. Once this happened, the company got rid of that CEO and had to then offer alternative packages to people to stay. Basically the same amount you would have received if you left, but paid out to you over a few years to guarantee you'd stay. It was unclear what his intentions were. To determine loyalty to the company, possibly. But what actually happened was that people who were good at their job, and could find work elsewhere, left. So they would have had all of the top talent leave the company and the remaining employees would be the people who did just enough to get by. The company is still trying to make amends with the employees.
  • exelius 11y ago
    I think the idea with Zappos is that they're supposed to be such a great place to work that you wouldn't want to leave. And in Zappos' case, I get why they offered severance deals. They were embarking on a radical experiment in organizational structure, and not everyone is going to be on board with it. Rather than having a bunch of people at the water cooler talking shit about the changes, you offer them money to leave so that people who aren't on board with the changes get out of the way. I would guess that many of the people at Zappos who took the deal were managers themselves. If you're a middle manager, you have skills around managing people but maybe not so much with doing the actual work. If your skill set doesn't align with the new job you're being asked to do (which is effectively a demotion), and the company offers you a buyout to leave, what would you do?
    • bunderbunder 11y ago
      I imagine that people in management positions have reason to take the package even if their skill set is perfectly aligned to the new job. If you're on a career path where one of the major measures of your success is how many people are under you, then you better be pretty committed to the Zappos vision if you're staying on. A long stint of not having anyone reporting through you might be a bit of a black spot on your resume if you ever end up for a position elsewhere.
• fecklessyouth 11y ago
  >John Bunch, technical adviser at Zappos and leader of the Holacracy transition ...right
  • smacktoward 11y ago
    A.K.A. "Designated fall guy when the whole thing goes kablooey and the CEO needs someone to pin the blame on."
• sixQuarks 11y ago
  I applaud him for experimenting and trying unconventional ways of doing business.
• serve_yay 11y ago
  I stopped buying shoes from Zappos because I don't like their selection of shoes any longer. Not because I thought their management structure needed a drastic, messy public overhaul. I dunno, it just seems silly and fanciful to me but then again I'm not Tony Hsieh.
  • underyx 11y ago
    Their management structure could be the very reason that their selection doesn't fit your needs anymore.
• boulos 11y ago
  I wonder how many of these 210 people were managers that were still there. "Getting rid of managerial roles" would certainly imply that any that were around might be expected to leave the company.
• jquast 11y ago
  My experience working for one of "the big 3" automakers is that the very best employees take the buyout offer, confident that they can find a better job for better pay elsewhere. Years after the employee buyout programs began in the auto industry, they were requesting buyout packages of their own to save the company as a whole. I believe this is the beginning of the "death spiral" described by PG in his "What happened to YAHOO" essay.
  • venomsnake 11y ago
    Not that bad. Best employees not always are the best "flat structure" employees. And a lot of the great ones may want to hang on just for the fun of it.
  • ExpiredLink 11y ago
    Usually only the lower half of the stuff gets a "buyout offer" (strange name, BTW).
• wiremine 11y ago
  Previous discussion about their move to Holacracy [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9431090 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9431090 [1] http://holacracy.org/how-it-works http://holacracy.org/how-it-works Has anybody operated under Holacracy and speak to it?
  • EdwardDiego 11y ago
    We tried it, disliked it as a whole, and dropped it while retaining those ideas we found useful. But then, we're a small company, with an already (nearly) flat structure, and already built around largely self-determining teams. So what Holacracy offered above what we already had was rigid structure, and cumbersome terminology. It also has a weird religious vibe in that the Holacracy franchise holders who we turned to for input on our implementation of it refused to work with us unless we adhered to the defined process 100%. No modifying it to suit our company. The formal governance meeting process caused a severe backlash when rigidly adhered to because it only allowed one "reaction round"[1], so if someone else's reaction caused a new viewpoint to arise in your mind, but you had already spoken, too bad. Our facilitator who had attended the training rigidly enforced this process, and several people, myself included, felt silenced. So yeah, as we weren't a traditionally pyramid structured company to begin with, we had very little to gain from it - we tried it because we had started with 5 employees and no governance beyond "let's ask the boss", and we had grown to a point where we needed to get _some_ governance in place, because while intra-team decisions were fine and dandy, how we made decisions affecting everyone was really unclear. So in the end, we dropped it. We have kept some of the ideas we found useful, for example the separation between governance and tactical meetings, and the idea of the 'lead link' or their equivalent being opposed by the 'rep link' equivalent, in our case, it's our proxy product owners (PPO) and their eternal opponents are our scrum masters. It's a healthy tension between what the business wants and what the team wants. The other valuable thing we've kept was the objection and objection testing process - if someone has an idea, objecting just because you don't like it is not considered valid. You need to be able to present a coherent argument as to how the proposal, if adopted, would harm the company. It means that the "Bah humbug" curmudgeons can't stall innovation. Basically it boils down to "Would it hurt us to try this?" as a test for a new idea. So now our governance consists of a small group of 'executives' for want of a better word, and what we call "The General Circle". The "executives" is our boss and two 2ICs (to increase our bus factor to keep our business team happy) one with an HR and finance focus, the other with a businss analysis / product development focus. This group's primary focus is the relationship with our business team, but it also handles the aspects of running a company that require handling an employee's confidential information, like pay reviews and HR issues. But every other cross-company decision is made by the General Circle, a group consisting of the PPO and scrum master from each team, plus our finance and HR specialists. These discussions are totally open to anyone else who wants to attend, and our financial performance is tabled as a matter of course, with more detailed numbers and budgets available for the curious. PPOs are theoretically appointed by the General Circle (our existing PPOs were in their roles before this governance guff, so no new ones have needed to be appointed yet), while Scrum Masters are selected by the team however they like. I think all our teams rotate it every six months or so. Oh, and we also like the election process from Holacracy - write down a person's name on a piece of paper, with your name on it, and then in the discussion, you say why. After everyone has explained their reasoning, people can then change their votes if they heard a good point that persuaded them. [1]: http://wiki.holacracy.org/index.php?title=Governance_Meetings#Reactions http://wiki.holacracy.org/index.php?title=Governance_Meeting...
• gergles 11y ago
  Every time this comes up, I have one simple question that I have yet to have answered to any degree of satisfaction. (Someone who endorses this structure) explain to me in one sentence with fewer than 20 words how a 'lead link' is not the same role as a 'manager'.
  • jotux 11y ago
    >in one sentence with fewer than 20 words Seems like an arbitrary restriction to put on something that's probably complex.
    • libria 11y ago
      It's essentially "Explain it like I'm 5", which in this case can help discern between an interesting corporate experiment and PR bullshit. No one wants to get halfway through an article claiming the former and ending up being the latter. If Zappos has a unique take on how to replace middle management, let's all hear it.
      • jotux 11y ago
        The ability or inability to describe an idea in simple terms has no relation to the validity of the idea. >If Zappos has a unique take on how to replace middle management, let's all hear it. I think their idea is in this book, mentioned in the article, that they asked all zappos employees to read: http://www.reinventingorganizations.com/ http://www.reinventingorganizations.com/
        • tomjen3 11y ago
          >The ability or inability to describe an idea in simple terms has no relation to the validity of the idea. Maybe not in physics, but in politics and business it does - those fields like to seem more complex than they are so they fake it, which is much more difficult to do with simple language.
          • 11y ago
• ilamont 11y ago
  Original source: http://lasvegassun.com/news/2015/may/05/200-accept-buyouts-zappos-after-companys-managemen/ http://lasvegassun.com/news/2015/may/05/200-accept-buyouts-z... The Sun also has an article about Hsieh's Downtown Project: http://lasvegassun.com/news/2015/may/05/hsieh-outs-downtown-projects-successes-talks-about/ http://lasvegassun.com/news/2015/may/05/hsieh-outs-downtown-...
• ValentineC 11y ago
  Buffer's recently switched to self-management as well. Their early reflections[1] on switching is a good read. [1] https://open.bufferapp.com/early-reflections-buffers-switch-working-without-managers/ https://open.bufferapp.com/early-reflections-buffers-switch-...
• makeitsuckless 11y ago
  So 14% read Lord of the Flies instead and decided to get the hell of the island.
• harrystone 11y ago
  Absolutely the nicest way to say "join my cult or get out" that I've ever heard of.
• melvinmt 11y ago
  I thought that 'holacracy' was a made up word from Silicon Valley (the TV show) where they have a fictional company called Hooli, but apparently it's a real thing.
• deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
• fooey 11y ago
  well, Zappos had just been on the list of places I was considering applying to glad this happened first
• Yizahi 11y ago
  If it is something like on GE airplane engine plant in Durham I can understand this. But they do have managers, only less than usual. If Zappos won't have managers at all then: Who will decide how much employees will be payed, and based on what data? Who will decide exactly what customers need and exactly what will be actually done and what won't be done or deferred? Who will decide who will be hired who will be fired? Who will decide in situations when one project requires something or someone from another? The list goes on... If someone (or multiple people) does this then he is not very different from managers in my company and I bet they never even heard about Holacracy or Valve, Zappos and GE experiments in management.
• bane 11y ago
  I'm not sure how to gauge this. I think Holacracy may be one of the dumber pseudo-science management theories that's ever come out. If it works for Zappos I'll eat my hat I guess, but I have a feeling that all we'll hear about it is that "it's working great!" as the ship goes down in flames. Holacracy and other ultra-flat org structures always share two features: - It consolidates power in the people at the top (the people who do not participate in the flatness of the new structure) - as social animal, humans will always naturally self-organize into de-facto hierarchies that may or may not be aligned with the needs of the organization Prediction, the 14% that took the buyout are probably the ones that couldn't fit into the new clique driven de-facto structure and were kissing years of promotable work goodbye. These folks will likely be successful wherever they go. Meaning that the people left behind have either cemented a position in the new structure through force of personality (not competency) or are not otherwise employable elsewhere and will suffer as the assholes fight it out on the bridge. Here's an employee review http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-The-Zappos-Family-RVW6462350.htm http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-The-Zappos-...
  • iolothebard 11y ago
    That review sounds exactly like what I expected. It's more a rah-rah you're with us or against us mentality. Sounds rather cultish even. It's like places saying they're okay with flex time but you get poor reviews by butts-in-the-seat managers regardless to your actual performance. This is why I'm simply riding the clock at my current job. It's sucked the life out of me. Change is on its way fortunately.
  • ryoshu 11y ago
    Seems to work for Valve, with a few obvious problems: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valve_Corporation#Organizational_structure http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valve_Corporation#Organizationa...
    • larzang 11y ago
      Valve is the exception that proves the rule, i.e. you need a stable cash cow so large that your frequently-aimless often-delayed progress on anything else doesn't break the company.
• zxcvvcxz 11y ago
  Say what you want about the particular policy, but I'm glad Tony has the opportunity and authority to implement it. "Management by committee" is the best way of reverting to a non-spectacular mean. It's much better to have companies that have variance, i.e. larger organizations actually define a direction and do it, thereby taking risk. Plus as an employee I'd be more inspired working with an actual leader, rather than a faceless bureaucracy. We got big co's for that.
• tempestn 11y ago
  Has anyone read the book they reference, and do you want to give us a synopsis? I'm hoping it answers some of the practical questions surrounding how this Holacracy would actually work. http://www.reinventingorganizations.com/ http://www.reinventingorganizations.com/
• varunjuice 11y ago
  Given 3-5 year tenure of a typical employee at a typical tech company, this is less than expected attrition at a company. It is not inconceivable that anyone who wanted to leave the company between now and the end of the year took this.
• stove 11y ago
  I wonder what percentage of the 14% are existing managers that perhaps can't or don't want to move on to different roles?
• jmount 11y ago
  Isn't this just what companies like to call "a voluntary layoff?"
• keatonk 11y ago
  No managers, who knows could work!?
• mathattack 11y ago
  I love the idea, but can a company that big really survive without management? Didn't Google backtrack on a similar idea?
  • EdwardDiego 11y ago
    There's still management in Holacracy, but it's not a full-time paid role, it's devolved into groups.
  • jevanish 11y ago
    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 http://youtu.be/l6ISTjupi5g
• jakejake 11y ago
  "I don't clean toilets anymore, I'm in charge of strategic marketing now. I'll be taking this office" On the one hand, I can see this being the ultimate meritocracy. Perhaps the person cleaning toilets is actually a marketing genius? On the other hand, it could be like an episode of Hell's Kitchen where nobody is in charge and the whole operation goes to shit.
• sytelus 11y ago
  Lot of people seems to be thinking that these 14% are leaving because they miss having a manager. Employees who take buyout in this situation are usually the ones in people manager roles. Many of them might also believe that they probably would not do as great in "individual contributor" roles as they did in management role. Some of these may be good managers and some may be just great politics player. However rarely would be the individual contributor who would want to take ultimate step of leaving because of the fear of not having a manager. If Zappos had 1:5 managers to people ratio then 14% makes sense using this theory. Beside, in any large enough company, I think offer of fat severance is likely to be taken up by 5% or more of its employees at any point in time who were thinking about leaving anyway. Management-less company needs to hire employees with specific cultural and social mindset. So this needs to happen at the birth time. Trying to do this at later date can feel like circumcision at 18.
• jonsterling 11y ago
  Called it.
• drivingmenuts 11y ago
  I just hope there's a budding writer at Zappo's who can fill in the details on day to day life in a holacracy. I keep trying to wrap my head around it and coming up blank.
  • DanBC 11y ago
    I woder if it will all end up like "Lord of the Flies"?
• deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
• n_time 11y ago
  so was the ladder to power and ownership at zappos just knocked down? is this just a bigger gap between the real power holders and "the rest"?
• cateye 11y ago
  Exactly the same things happen in very traditional companies but they give it an other name. People are becoming "redundant" because of organizational changes. It can be operational changes like outsourcing a department or strategically like changing the span of control. It is weird that Zappos create a hype by suggesting that they are "radically inventing" something. That's really bullshit. I don't understand people that are really enthusiastic about Zappos.
• netcan 11y ago
  I don’t have the tiniest hair of a dog in this race. But, I like the idea of a company trying radical things. It’s very easy to declare radical change. A 14% voluntary acceptance of a severance package (I would be more impressed if it was 6 months) is a sign of actually going for radical, I think. A company of that size is an interesting proving ground and if this succeeds, good.
• dmgbrn 11y ago
  I'm curious as to why? It sounds like an exciting experiment! Incidentally, when the startup I work for reached a size where most companies would have started hiring managers, we reached a consensus as a company to give the holocracy thing a try. It's been working very well for us, but we're still < 100 people, so we'll see if it sticks as we grow. Me, I might bail if we turn into a big boring manager having company.