'First, Let's Get Rid of All the Bosses' -- the Zappos Management Experiment

schnell writes: The New Republic is running an in-depth look at online shoe retailer Zappos.com's experiment in a new "boss-less" corporate structure. Three years ago the company introduced a management philosophy that came from the software development world called "Holacracy," in which there are no "people managers" and groups self-organize based on individual creativity and talents. (When the change was announced, 14% of the company's employees chose to leave; middle management openly rebelled, but perhaps surprisingly the tech organization was slowest to embrace the new idea). The article shows that in this radically employee-centric environment, many if not most employees are thrilled and fulfilled, while others worry that self-organization in practical terms means chaos and a Maoist culture of "coercive positivity." Is Zappos the future of the American workplace, a fringe experiment, or something in between?

Comments

Just like Microsoft

[lgw]

Microsoft though this was a clever idea once as well, firing all the low-mid level managers in engineering (senior management was safe of course) and keeping just the engineering team leads. Today, first-level managers have the job title "Lead", and nothing else has changed. "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."

Zappos is part of Amazon, of course, so this could be a contained experiment to see how it goes before a larger scale move. I suspect it will go the same way as MS. First level people managers serve a vital role (whether the individuals in that role are competent is a different question) in preventing "drama", and hiring, training, and retaining the best. Mid-level managers may be mostly useless overhead promoted out of harm's way, but someone needs to decide what projects are worth funding, and what projects aren't worth continuing, from a business perspective. Those roles will be filled again eventually. "And their beards have all grown longer overnight."

Re:Give me a raise

[Anonymous Coward]

My wife works at Zappos. Compensation is based on "badges", designed by the employees themselves and reviewed through a compensation "circle" (committee). It's not super well defined or understood yet, and my informal conversations with her friends/coworkers indicate to me it isn't well like.

The overall mood at the organization isn't fantastic, the've lost a lot of top talent, a significant percentage the IT department is contractors now, and some very large on-going IT infrastructure projects halted or failed outright.

Google tried this...it failed

[businessnerd]

Google attempted something similar back in 2001. Larry Page up and fired all of his project manager (in front of all of the employees!) and left it to the engineers to form their own teams, and pretty much just manage themselves. It didn't last long. Per this article:

Page’s reorganization didn’t last long either. While some engineers thrived without supervision, problems arose. Projects that needed resources didn’t get them. Redundancy became an issue. Engineers craved feedback and wondered where their careers were headed. Eventually, Google started hiring project managers again.

This was also a big contributing factor to Page and Brin being relegated to the kids table for a while until they were mature enough to run the company on their own.

Re:Give me a raise

[Actually, I do RTFA]

So how do I get a raise in such an environment?

I know, RTFA is anathema, but there is a real (and stupid) answer for that:

One thing Zapponians now have to do is their own research about salaries, to find out the market rate for jobs at other companies that correspond to their roles. In a normal corporation, such things are taken care of by the human resources department. Not at Zappos, not anymore. Instead, if Murch wants a raise, she has to do all the research into what she's worth, create a badge, come up with qualifications for receiving the badge, and then design the actual look of the badge. Then it all has to be approved by the People Pool & Comp circle. And who happens to be the lead link of that circle? "Now, instead of trying to convince your boss that you deserve more money," said Murch, incredulously, "you have to convince Tony Hsieh [Zappo`s CEO]."

Re:Give me a raise

[LWATCDR]

I got a better idea of what a good manager was from reading the book "The Soul of a New Machine".
The problem with good managers is they look like they are doing nothing.
A good manager fixes problems before they happen. You are going to need a logic analyzer next week and it shows up on your desk on Friday of this week.
It is just transparent.