The Zappos Family reviews

It was heartbreaking to feel the culture and morale begin to unravel the deeper the company experimented with structural changes, the onset of the pandemic, and with the eventual loss of Tony.  There were a lot of positives to the self-organized structure, but it also came with some negative consequences over time. It blurred the lines when it came to leadership, vision, strategy, etc. There was no North Star for too long. It felt like half of the company was invested in the self-organization experiment while the other half was trying to keep the company afloat. Since everyone was not "all-in", it led to the creation of silos and duplicated work which eventually created unnecessary tension between teams. When you form a marketplace that forces teams to "break even" on their budget while other departments aren't playing along, don't have budget or simply don't want to pay for services that were once free...it starts to disintegrate the culture. Teams used to bend over backwards to help each other out and collaborate together on projects. But once teams had to add monetary value to their work (with no proper marketplace training), it really plagued the collaborative spirit that the company once had. Leadership also fell apart. There was a lack of unified vision. Some tried to insert traditional hierarchy into a system that was meant to flatten that. Every department was doing their own thing instead of working in step together. There was also a lot of favoritism/politics that I never thought would plague Zappos in the way that it did. Again, there are countless positives that outweigh the negative when it comes to working here as an individual employee. However, I worry for the company in the bigger picture if they don't start to pull together and get back to collaborating as a family.

New leadership creeped up and destroyed the "family" culture the company was once well-known for. My team leader was not effective at resolving internal team member/cross-team conflicts. He was also way too focused on pressuring junior members into progressing with unrealistic expectations instead of helping them bloom in their current positions. He favored those who sucked up to him rather than to challenge his decisions for the benefit of the team. The leader favored hiring team members that had a "bro culture" attitude, and would not listen to feedback. Other more senior members would feel intimidated by this, and felt pressured to play ball in order to keep their jobs. The other most senior team member didn't really care for the team. He would spout that things needed to change behind the team leader's back, but when it was time to act, he would back out at the very last minute and say that "oh, he's just a neutral party." When the new CEO was installed, I learned that, after me, three developers left for another company - two of them hired within the previous 12 months. At some point, there were six vacant developer positions, and a ton of work to do. Two women developers were let go in less than 30 days. Talk about a reflection of what leadership looks like. I was not a perfect employee. At first, I drank the kool-aid and bought on the "we're all a family" culture, especially because it was working somewhat - under Tony (may he rest in peace.) But when I started seeing that not everything was how they painted, I ended up seeing it as just a paycheck, and didn't buy in the false core values instigation. Therefore, I pushed back more than the rest, I enforced the policies (or the lack of them) more often than the rest, and sure, other developers were more productive than I was. I can live with that. I'm not a saint. But what made me really bitter was the way I was removed from my position. The week before, I lost a family member. Enter seven days later, a Friday afternoon, the week before the company was forced to go remote due to the pandemic. I received a phone call from said team leader saying that I was being removed from my position due to performance reasons in the last seven days. I wish I was exaggerating, but I am not. I lost a family member, and I didn't receive even a single condolences card. Instead, I was just shown the boot. I've been let go before. I understand businesses have to make tough decisions sometimes. I understand that. But the circumstances I was let go were lacking so much humanity, I cannot in good conscience recommend anyone to work for Zappos today. The Zappos from yesteryear is gone. On the bright side, the HR folks managed my exit process superbly (I'm not being sarcastic - that's why I mentioned that not all departments are the same.) Zappos or similar: Never again.