210 Zappos employees take buyouts after CEO ultimatum to embrace self-management or leave

[KamaAina]

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/210-zappos-employees-14-staff-155236260.html

Zappos, the Amazon-owned online retailer, confirmed with the Las Vegas Sun that 210 of its 1,503 employees — nearly 14% of the company — took a buyout deal after CEO Tony Hsieh announced the company was completely ridding itself of manager roles and job titles.

The company, well known for its experiments involving corporate culture, has been transitioning to a self-management organizational structure known as Holacracy since the beginning of 2013. Entering this year, about 85% of the company had made the transition.

Hsieh sent a nearly 5,000-word company-wide memo in late March that explained that any employee who was not satisfied with the transformation by April 30 could leave with three months' severance. The memo was leaked by Quartz and later published by Zappos on its Insights blog....

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. According to the book's author, Frederic Laloux, about 600 to 700 employees downloaded a free e-book version that was linked in Hsieh's email.

Amazon-owned? So Bezos is cool with this?

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

1. It was probably all the management. nt

[yeoman6987]

2. Yep when a company decides to treat all employees like adults

who do not need babysitters, the babysitters get angry and leave. I find this interesting and would hope they do case studies to see how well or not well it works. I applaud them for going away from status quo.

[Major Nikon]

4. I've always said my primary job as a manager is to make myself irrelevant

Most managers believe the exact opposite in that they strive to make themselves indispensable (at least in their own minds). The entire culture of management is completely opposed to people managing themselves, yet clearly this is the most efficient way to run just about any business.

[yeoman6987]

5. And that is why you are a success. I bet many say the company would fall apart without you.

[GP6971]

3. I don't consider

3 months severance pay a buy out package. My guess is the ones that took it were close to retirement.

[KamaAina]

7. Close to retirement?

In the tech industry? 40 is the new 65 in tech!

[DawgHouse]

6. I am interested in seeing how this works out.

I find many managers get in the way of employee success. Not all but quite a few.

[Katashi_itto]

8. I did the same with my company. We lost about seven people of forty.

I wanted an organization that was built to learn and respond rapidly by optimizing for the open flow of information. So we have been shifting over to that model.

[KamaAina]

9. You have a company? Tell me more!

And your profile contains the magic words "New Orleans". I lived there all too briefly in the early '90s.

[Katashi_itto]

10. We are very small. We did commercials now working on our first feature length indie movie

[KamaAina]

13. Sweet! NOLA is a great place to film

as you doubtless know.

I have a friend down there who's a writer (imagine that! ) if you need one.

[Katashi_itto]

15. Sure PM me with the writers email. I will contact him

[Katashi_itto]

16. Yes its a great place to film.

We are incredibly small, but we are hoping for a a return of 4-6 million on this project.

This is due to the fact of amazon and all the digital venues we can market thru.

[True Blue Door]

11. Everything Bezos touches is shady.

The man's got a talent for finding other people's shady shit and associating with it.

Maybe this "Holacracy" is legitimate, or maybe it's just a forward-looking attempt to forestall labor organizing in tech-related business.

If Bezos is indeed on board with it, that makes me intensely suspicious.

[TBF]

14. Bezos may own Zappos now but I wonder

if they are still run by whomever founded them. It doesn't sound like something he would come up with. Of course, I will say that despite his flaws (obviously thinking of the warehouses) Amazon kindle at least has amazing service. I've had to call a couple times & they can walk you through resetting devices over the phone (and you get actual friendly people).

I can of course imagine Bezos saying something like "sure, as long as share price doesn't slip" if the current director of the company came up with this & told him about the plan. That is really all Bezos will care about - the bottom line.

[True Blue Door]

18. Yeah, I don't loathe Amazon enough not to use it.

The guy's not a Koch, but he is a shady character. I follow developments in the space industry, and he's the same there - patent-trolling SpaceX over barge-landing rocket stages, making strategic partnerships with an MIC monopoly notorious for hindering innovation (ULA), all while making barely any tangible progress toward his stated goals in 15 years of having a space company, etc.

[1939]

12. I worked for a number of managers.

The "people types" with their smooth talk and friendly "counseling" were the worst. All nice up front, but would slip in the knife. The true "assholes" were generally great because you knew where you stood with them and you could go toe to toe and work problems out.

[PowerToThePeople]

17. Hmmm, interesting.