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 on

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.