Racked is no longer publishing. Thank you to everyone who read our work over the years. The archives will remain available here; for new stories, head over to Vox.com, where our staff is covering consumer culture for The Goods by Vox. You can also see what we’re up to by signing up here.
Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh says any employee who isn't happy with the company's New Age-y "holacracy" management approach should quit, and he's offering three months of severance for anyone who takes him up on that. Quartz posted the text from Hsieh's incredibly long internal memo which includes the offer. It's available to Zappos employees of good standing who meet specified criteria.
The "holacracy" is something Zappos began in 2013, a structure that frees employees of job titles, traditional bosses, and corporate hierarchy. It instead creates "self-organizing and self-managing business-centric circles." This memo shows both Hsieh's all-in commitment to holacracy and as the Washington Post notes, evidence that not everyone is on board with the new system. To speed up the company's adoption of holacracy principles, Hsieh is going for what he calls a "rip the bandaid" approach: Zappos plans to effectively eliminate traditional managers as of April 30, according to the Post.