Zappos’ experiment to end the office workplace

No, I think people just hate change. We're always scared of the unknown, hence why historically humans have preferred dictatorships vs. anarchy.

I do not want to be managed.

> People want to be managed!

I would interpret that somewhat differently, I'd take the offer, for example.

A long time ago as a high school student I stacked bags of sidewalk salt on pallets. The only thing keeping me out of toilet plunging, manual labor, and being yelled at by customers over the phone is my job title / position so eliminating them has very little appeal to me. If I was at the bottom of the hierarchy, sure, elimination of the hierarchy sounds great; but in the middle/top of a technical hierarchy... elimination doesn't sound so great.

I also expect to live a couple more years, and I have children relying on me to put food on the table, pay for schooling and health care, etc. Plus lets face it, I have no great desire to live under a freeway overpass myself. How do I explain at my next job interview that two jobs ago I was more or less a software dev but my most recent job title was ninja, but I'm just as good as the other 9 out of 10 applicants you have who were software devs in their most recent job. Sure you were, sure you were (insert sound of resume hitting trash can)

Another interesting interpretation is its like joining a cult. Self depreciation of myself and my career combined with permanently removing myself from the greater employable economy... So they're passing around the kool aide, smells kinda like almonds, eh, I think I'll pass, this is finally one step too far.

I'm not having meetings at 10pm at night either.

If you read the book mentioned in the article it is not quite so brainwashy. I expect it doesn't make sense for a majority of workplaces as is, but it didn't sound like teal workplaces where bad places to work. In fact, it sounded like the sort of place I would love to work, but at the same time I knew that the majority of my coworkers would not fit in. The basic tenet as I understood it is that you can replace the structure of management with a structure of decision-making processes where decisions are taken at the lowest possible rung (where lowest means as close as possible to the work the decision impacts). It's not democracy, but it is self organized. It's a book worth reading if you want to reset your expectations on what corporate hierarchy must look like.

From the article I didn't get the sense zappos is doing it right though. People aren't supposed to be afraid to speak up.

I think introverts will be just fine. It seems that the job is all about "have fun while getting the job done" and if my fun is "let's sit over here, drink tea, pet my cat, and review these quarterly reports" then I'm pretty sure they're going to support that.

> workplace for introverts

Zappos strikes me as one of the last places to apply if I were an introvert. I'm not sure you can get there without being somewhat of an introvert as even the article mentions putting you on the phone with customers regardless of your role.

I don't know if is related, but it remembers Valve to me.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valve_Corporation#Organization...

I loved "Reinventing Organizations" as well. It's interesting because some of the Teal ways of doing things rubbed me the wrong way because they felt too "touchy-feely" and I thought that my coworker would never go for this. I tried to have enough self-awareness to realize that maybe that's how people stuck in the Orange way of doing things feel about Green practices. Like you, I would love to hear from people who are working in a Teal environment.

If you're interested in other books that talk about the future of work I would recommend Creativity, Inc by Ed Catmull (about how Pixar works) and Work Rules! by Laszlo Bock (about how Google HR works). They're both fascinating insights into how two modern companies try to do their best work.

Would love some recommendations if you have any as well.

There's a different between working hard and working smart.

Zappos sounds like a dystopia to me. It's well-off white-collar workers (i.e., leisure class) who depressingly keep trying to optimise their workflow/happiness--like an addict chasing the next high. It's the top part of the Maslow's Hierarchy of Need.

This experiment is only possible because Zappos is a stable money-making business and the CEO can afford the "risk" of failure due to personal financial security. How about experiment on improving the lives of the lower class, instead of the upper class? If this philosophy is the pinnacle of working human society, then why limit it to only a select few? I guess the warehouse workers will all be replaced by robots anyway, so they'll be someone else's problem after that.

The little trailer park for employees sounds like it would make a great set for a TV sitcom. Instead of meeting up at Central Perk they can sit on their individual tiny house porches and talk to each other.

Based on my experience working in both Norway and Sweden, bosses here are far more hands off and egalitarian than most of the horror stories I hear from the US. There just doesn't seem to be the same Us vs. Them feeling, so there doesn't seem to a big anti-boss anti-management movement here to begin with (although I'm sure lots of people will pipe up with personal counter examples).

In fact the only really annoying micro-managing boss I ever had was a guy from California.

Complete guess on possible engineering teams that could make up that 250-350 people: SEO/acquisition, various "admin"/marketplace functionalities (adding, removing, updating products), analytics, financial reporting, marketing reporting, payment processing, probably some kind of "core" team, general bugs/RTB, etc etc etc etc.

As long as you write good unit tests I'm sure you'll be fine ;)

Without a large tattoo, you'll never get anywhere.

How are you going to avoid the yak-shaving in a suit made out of yak fur?