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A comment on 210 Zappos employees – 14% of the staff – take buyouts after CEO ultimatum. Parent comment

Re:210 Zappos employees – 14% of the staff – take buyouts af... by ChuckMcM on Friday May 08, 2015 @02:54PM (#9513477)
This is the risk (the "wrong" people taking the buyout). It was the source of a lawsuit during one of HPs many acquisitions and then downsizes where HP tried to give "selected" individuals the option to leave early, and the folks who were not given the option sued. The courts affirmed that you could not give preferential treatment for early retirement/severance it was everyone had the same choice or no one did.

For what it is worth, managing staffing levels is one of the hardest things to do in a large organization because the visibility of contribution is so low. You have the quiet guy who gets things done everywhere but is invisible, and the useless guy who keeps up a very believable patter of what they are getting done. If you layoff people just based on the optics of the situation you screw yourself.

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Re:210 Zappos employees – 14% of the staff – take buyouts af... by danjayh on Saturday May 09, 2015 @12:38AM (#9515514)
I think that's one of the important roles of a team leader - to know who is getting how much done (among many others). I wonder how Zappos will accomplish this now that they have no team leaders.
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Re:210 Zappos employees – 14% of the staff – take buyouts af... by a3n on Saturday May 09, 2015 @12:41PM (#9516857)
Yes, and another way to look at this is that team leaders maintain teams. They're not there merely for leadership's sake, they happen to have a particular role, maintenance.

Who will maintain teams without people whose specific role is maintenance?

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Re:210 Zappos employees – 14% of the staff – take buyouts af... by a3n on Saturday May 09, 2015 @12:37PM (#9516843)
I had a team leader who had to convince me that I was getting things done. One of the best.
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Re:210 Zappos employees – 14% of the staff – take buyouts af... by yuhong on Friday May 08, 2015 @10:17PM (#9515186)
Personally I think this idea is probably flawed in the first place.
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Re:210 Zappos employees – 14% of the staff – take buyouts af... by rahimnathwani on Friday May 08, 2015 @07:24PM (#9514696)
a la 'Office Space'
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