three years ago i decided to come work at zappos after reading tony hseih's book "delivering happiness: a path to profits, passion and purpose" with my wife. we had a couple of job offers at that time and the book convinced me that zappos is where i should go. the focus on customer and employee happiness seemed almost too good to be true and something that was not even approached at any other company i've been with in ~20 years.
i have to admit that for the first year i experienced all the awesomeness that i had read about, but i was also waiting for the other shoe to drop. i really didn't believe it could be as good as i was experiencing.
then i finally realized there was no other shoe. the thing that really drove the point home to me was when i overheard a tech VP and the CTO talking about the valve entertainment employee handbook that was posted online. the handbook explained a corporate structure that was so flat that people had no direct reports and there was no managers telling people what to do.
any other leadership in any other company i had been with would have just scoffed at the idea and dismissed it as internet fluff. these guys were talking about it and asking questions like "how do you think they make something like that work?"
just the fact that they were having a discussion about it made me realize they are different, but i really didn't expect anything to be done about it. it IS a radical idea after all and would likely only work with very specific organizations (or so i thought). now, 1.5 years later we are instituting a new radical management structure focused around self organization and a flat management model.
this tells me that the focus on constant improvement and intrepid company building goes all the way to the top.
and that's just part of the awesome experience here. i could go on and on and on.
three years ago i decided to come work at zappos after reading tony hseih's book "delivering happiness: a path to profits, passion and purpose" with my wife. we had a couple of job offers at that time and the book convinced me that zappos is where i should go. the focus on customer and employee happiness seemed almost too good to be true and something that was not even approached at any other company i've been with in ~20 years.
i have to admit that for the first year i experienced all the awesomeness that i had read about, but i was also waiting for the other shoe to drop. i really didn't believe it could be as good as i was experiencing.
then i finally realized there was no other shoe. the thing that really drove the point home to me was when i overheard a tech VP and the CTO talking about the valve entertainment employee handbook that was posted online. the handbook explained a corporate structure that was so flat that people had no direct reports and there was no managers telling people what to do.
any other leadership in any other company i had been with would have just scoffed at the idea and dismissed it as internet fluff. these guys were talking about it and asking questions like "how do you think they make something like that work?"
just the fact that they were having a discussion about it made me realize they are different, but i really didn't expect anything to be done about it. it IS a radical idea after all and would likely only work with very specific organizations (or so i thought). now, 1.5 years later we are instituting a new radical management structure focused around self organization and a flat management model.
this tells me that the focus on constant improvement and intrepid company building goes all the way to the top.
and that's just part of the awesome experience here. i could go on and on and on.