
Amazon's No Outlier: The Science Behind Broken Work Cultures - gpresot
http://www.fastcompany.com/3050251/what-amazon-can-teach-us-about-high-performing-work-cultures
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lwhalen
FTFA: "The reality is that few organizations have figured out how to innovate,
adapt, and create amazing things without burning their people out."

This may be an incredibly naive question, but why not implement a 2-3 day
work-week and maintain the legacy full-time salaries? Bust serious hump Monday
through Wednesday, but every week has a 4-day weekend.

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xixixao
Because most would find it an extreme hindrance to their work. It's really
difficult to get something done with such long breaks in between. I'd find it
more plausible to have a scheme like southern nations do, siesta in the middle
of the day. But any break will slow you down significantly (imo).

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collyw
You say that like it has been tried and tested. I am not aware of any company
that has.

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hodwik
He's saying that because when you work in an office, and you have a short
week, it derails your output.

I hate vacations, they screw up my output for weeks after. Even the weekend
takes a day or two to recover from.

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ThrustVectoring
I was really hoping for a microeconomics analysis of the incentive structures
Amazon implemented that caused the culture.

I mean, it's one thing to say that your company should be aiming somewhere
else. It's quite another to specify the steps that will get people there.

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xiaoma
tldr;

    
    
        While all of us could list hundreds of unique reasons
        why we do virtually anything, our research shows most of
        them can be neatly grouped into six fundamental motives:
        
        Play
        Purpose
        Potential
        Emotional pressure
        Economic pressure
        Inertia
    
        The first three boost performance, the latter destroy it.

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xiaoma
This suggests that a sales team would do better without performance bonuses!

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u02sgb
I wouldn't agree with that. I think it more suggests that money isn't the
great motivator it's generally been considered.

In my opinion a passion for something is a better motivator than a big bonus.
Although a big bonus does contribute!

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mpdehaan2
I think when sales folks get large commissions and the other people involved
in creating and marketing what gets sold do not, it can be very demotivating
for an entire company -- especially if the sales people have an easy job of
selling something, as opposed to having to work an account for a year or
something like that.

It depends how much the commisions are though.

I think they should always be capped, or rather just track % of quota and use
it as a way to compute how much of their quarterly 10% variable pay (or
whatever) people get.

Higher base also implies you trust people.

I love the idea of helping the customer first versus pushing for a sale where
something might not fit, and if you do that, people will buy things.

