

Zappos gets rid of all managers - friscofoodie
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-leadership/wp/2014/01/03/zappos-gets-rid-of-all-managers/#!

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CalRobert
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.

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oskarth
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.

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jasonwocky
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.

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ChikkaChiChi
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.

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CmonDev
No people actually fired => demagogy.

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

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usablebytes
Kudos!!

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goggles99
What no mention of Valve? from whom they borrowed this concept.

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zhte415
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](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6913879)
Link to HBR PDF:
[https://archive.harvardbusiness.org/cla/web/pl/product.seam?...](https://archive.harvardbusiness.org/cla/web/pl/product.seam?c=573&i=15715&cs=7c855bfce2fd1c3860846954978b1181)

I enjoyed the PDF.

