Zappos gets rid of all managers

Zappos gets rid of all managers(washingtonpost.com)

43 points by friscofoodie 12 years ago | 13 comments

CalRobert 12 years ago |

Pretty sure this is all going to amount to BS. Humans like hierarchies and power. When someone realizes they can make themselves more important than others and as such curry favor with "lead links" they won't hesitate to do so.

Of course, I used to have a former Zappos manager as a boss and found him wanting, so maybe I am just bitter.

oskarth 12 years ago |

This seems like a great pr story. Could someone with relevant experience explain how a story like this is planted in a reputable newspaper like WSJ or NYT? I don't quite understand the m.o.

jasonwocky 12 years ago | |

I don't do PR, but I've managed our relationships with PR firms. Rule #1 about dealing with the media: do their work for them.

The practice of getting PR pieces presented as news can be quite simplistic. One way to go: A company hires its own press agent or uses a PR firm (typically the latter for smaller companies). PR firms' specialty is in cultivating relationships with reporters, editors, and the like. It's no big trick; mostly just human relationships and the ability to provide the newspeople with stuff they can use to get their job done. In other words, they understand the "domain" of news.

Then the original company funnels information about stuff its doing to their PR firm on a regular basis. The PR firm takes the stuff it thinks might be interesting to the outside world, helps put some spin on it, and shops it around to the contacts they think might be interested in the stories.

If the newspeople bite, what happens next can depend on a variety of factors. But the hard work's been done at this point.

It should be noted that this isn't the only path things can take. This story has been making the rounds for a week or so now. It's quite possible that the WaPo was never contacted by any PR folks; instead they just saw it on other news outlets and wanted to follow up for themselves.

smackfu 12 years ago | |

This isn't just the NYT or WSJ in general, it's a specialized blog on "leadership" that has a separate email for story suggestions. So it can be specifically targeted by PR.

ChikkaChiChi 12 years ago |

This may work for some aspects of their company, but there are still traditional roles at a company like Zappos that are going to require structure.

I can't imagine that their order fulfillment chain is going to just let the pickers and packers decide what circle they want to be in today.

CmonDev 12 years ago |

No people actually fired => demagogy.

poobrains 12 years ago |

As a worker at a telcom company with a lot of useless (and worse) managers, I hope this is part of a growing trend...

usablebytes 12 years ago |

Kudos!!

goggles99 12 years ago |

What no mention of Valve? from whom they borrowed this concept.

zhte415 12 years ago | |

There are quite a few companies that run with an 'unconventional' management structure. A recent link on HN was to a HBR study about Morning Star, a mature company that has run with a 'no managers' strategy for years.

Link to HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6913879 Link to HBR PDF: https://archive.harvardbusiness.org/cla/web/pl/product.seam?...

I enjoyed the PDF.

vellum 12 years ago | |

Valve is run more like a FOSS project with no official hierarchy. Holocracy is about refactoring the traditional org chart into a more task-based model. Brian Robertson, one of the guys who started the concept, explains the differences here: http://holacracy.org/blog/whats-wrong-with-your-organization...

Luc 12 years ago | |

'Maverick', by Ricardo Semler, was written in 1988 and is well known among business types:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0446670553/

Tohhou 12 years ago | |

Valve didn't invent this concept.