Stories. Blogs: CEO and COO Blog: Everything I Know About Business I Learned From Poker. The following email was sent to our employees today: Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2010From: Tony Hsieh (CEO - Zappos.com)To: All Zappos EmployeesSubject: Amazon & Zappos, 1 Year Later Today is the 1 year anniversary of when we announced the marriage between Zappos and Amazon. It's hard to believe it's already been a year! I thought it'd be interesting to read through the original email that I sent out a year ago (Read it HERE) and comment on it to see whether things happened as planned and promised. The original email is below, along with my comments ***[in brackets and asterisks]. Enjoy! Date: Wed, 22 Jul 2009From: Tony Hsieh (CEO - Zappos.com)To: All Zappos EmployeesSubject: Zappos and Amazon Please set aside 20 minutes to carefully read this entire email.
Today is a big day in Zappos history. Over the next few days, you will probably read headlines that say "Amazon acquires Zappos" or "Zappos sells to Amazon". ***[This has gone according to plan. We are excited about doing this for 3 main reasons: Why I feel like a fraud. “I feel like a fraud. I’ve been at this for 16 years and I still feel like a fraud. I’m just waiting for the day they see through the façade, but they keep coming back every year.” –Jason Young Ah yes, the awe-inspiring words of confidence from the seasoned entrepreneur.
I felt like a fraud every day. I would explain how my tool cuts code review time in half, but was that actually true or had I just repeated the argument so many times that I stopped questioning it? Aren’t I too young? Is Smart Bear a “real company?” Objectively, and with hindsight, my feelings were misplaced. Still, emotions don’t respond to logic. The other thing he was saying is: You’re not alone.
It turns out there’s a psycho-babble name for this: Impostor Syndrome. Although not an official psychological disorder, and generally not crippling, if you have these feelings it’s useful to know that it’s common and there’s something you can do about it. See if these sound familiar: But wait, how can this be? The Science of Motivation - Stepcase Lifehack. What motivates you? While there are thousands, millions, maybe billions of answers to that question, a growing body of research, some of it dating back 50 years, shows two things that don’t motivate us very well – the promise of rewards and the threat of punishment.
It seems counter-intuitive, since after all we take it for granted that we need incentives to do work. It’s the basis of our whole economic system, for crying out loud! And yet, the research is abundantly clear: once a reasonable standard of living is achieved, rewards and punishment not only don’t motivate us to do more, better, or faster, they often demotivate us. One classic example of this is a study involving lawyers asked to provide legal services for low-income persons. One group was asked to do so for a low fee, $10 or $20 an hour, while the other was asked to do so for free. The trick to motivation, then, is to find the intrinsic reward in our work and to enjoy it. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. You're a Bad Manager. Embrace It.
You manage developers and you'd like to think you're a good manager... but look at the evidence. Most, if not all, of your projects are late. Your team often delivers products riddled with bugs. Quite a few never ship at all. How can you be a good manager if you constantly fail? Isn't getting the job done a big part of being a good manager? Let's look at a few of your character traits.
When your team gives you an estimate for how long they think work will take, you always reduce it. Unfortunately, instead of writing code for all those hours when they were alert and rested, they're writing code when they're exhausted, tired, and burned out. And on that theme, when your team delivers what you ask for in record time, what do you remember? To be fair, you didn't realize what you were asking though. Have you invested the time to try and understand what your team does?
How about your team's desktop computers? By the way, how much did the company spend on last year's Christmas party? Agile Development: The quickstart guide to doing it right - Ruby Pond. Lots of places don't do agile right, in fact most do it wrong. There are a number of factors why, chief among them I believe is that the percentage of people who have worked somewhere that nailed it completely right is so low that there aren't enough to go around and lead by example. So here are a few of the tips I've been given or learnt over the years, credit has to be given to all the wonderful places I've worked over the years.
The ones that have done it well, and the ones that have done it poorly… you can learn just as much from reflecting on where it all went wrong. Back to basics Are you already using agile, or are you planning on implementing it in your company? Refocus on the manifesto It's worth going back and looking at the agile manifesto and then questioning each aspect of your process to ensure it is giving priority to the values on the left side. Throw out the tools you're using Scrumworks? For planning, all you need are some index cards and a pen. Planning Don't mention time.