The two should go together, IMHO. I would much rather be fired by the cool boss that I could relate to and shoot the shit with than a cold, by the book boss. The problem with that is a lot of bosses find it hard to fire their "friends" and maintain their appeal.
My last boss was like that, which is why he delegated the hiring and firing to a "hired gun". He was a good guy for the most part, but that was the most difficult thing to watch as I got up into management and saw what was going on. He would make the calls to have someone canned, delegate down to the "gun" and then put on a face of disbelief and contempt in front of everyone as though it wasn't his choice to fire the person.
You may question, as did I, how people could buy this circus act, but it worked quite well. When anyway would question the CEO as to why he doesn't fire the "gun" if he doesn't agree with what he's doing, he would always comment that when you put someone in a position like that you can't undermine what they do. For better or for worse, you have to back them and their decisions. Which is true, but was also just a smoke screen for what was really going on to those none the wiser.
i may have taken the original comment out of context. i've seen a couple CEOs being cool (hip, funny, etc.) when they needed a leader. i think that's dangerous, and that's the point i meant to make.
specifically to yours, no, its not cool to fire people, but i would rather hear well rationalized case for deciding to let me go (assuming it wasn't performance related) instead of a cleverly written kthxbai. still, that even that wouldn't be cool.
I agree that the ideal leader is cool all the time, but not every human being worthy of a leader can manage to stay everyone's favorite dude while terminating careers out of necessity. In those cases, I'd rather the leader be a hard-ass than have him be Michael Scott.
epic acquisition email. The density of so many cultural references and sarcastic reflections made by the leader of an organization sent me into a fan-boyish world wind.
"After spending a lot of time falling asleep at the library while facing the philosophy books, I determined that the concept of destiny is a construct that allows man a gentle release from facing the terror of his existence, and that a Hyundai full of twenties would pretty much offer the same benefits. And so, I ultimately said YES!"
All cash is great, but man the MAA market must still be soft if a company like WOOT (which at least seems to have a ton of mindshare) would only fetch $110M. Makes you long for the days when a Photobucket or a Bebo would go for 3-8x that.
"Several months ago, when we were all sitting on Jeff Bezos’s bumper drinking orange Mad Dog and trying not to be noticed, we heard a voice in the distance yelling "You kids better not scratch my Mercedes or I’m calling the cops!"
We ran. It was later that night when Amazon came by the house and said they liked our style and also wanted to get that money we owed them for messing up the chrome. We like to think that our relationship with Amazon will continue at this level for many, many, many years to come."
I just thought this deserved a special space on the HN thread.
Yeah, I can't really think of many other companies that acquire smaller companies, and then let them operate with their money as autonomous entities. (No sarcasm.)
Man I love how this guy wrote this letter. Tongue in cheek works perfectly for Woot, and I hope Amazon knows better to keep in the background and let Woot do what Woot does best.
Other than that, we plan to continue to run Woot the way we have always run Woot, with a wall of ideas and a dartboard. From a practical point of view, it will be as if we are simply adding one person to the organizational hierarchy, except that one person will just happen to be a billion-dollar company that could buy and sell each and every one of you like you were office furniture.
Great purchase on the part of Amazon. Woot! has been an amazing pioneer in impulse purchasing on the web and was the first of many companies that got me excited about starting my own.
The funny thing for me about Woot's status as an impulse-purchase store is that my impulse control has always been just strong enough to allow the simple step of creating an account to stop me from ever committing to a purchase.
As completely ridiculous as it may sound, being able to log in with my Amazon account and one-click™ that amazingly cheap recertified Roomba is probably going to work on me.
I have a Woot account but they take forever to ship (I think I waited 3 weeks for three sets of earbuds), so that itself sometimes deters me from buying. Combine the awesome deal on a Roomba with free 2 day shipping and I'm screwed :-)
Bah! Not only is slow shipping disturbingly cheap, but it's like Christmas when it finally shows up because you completely forgot that you'd bought anything!
To me, part of the appeal of Woot! is its nonchalance and small, independent aesthetic. I hope it doesn't lose this in the process of becoming an Amazon company.
My hunch is they can feel or see stagnation on the horizon, and are trying to mix things up a bit. Sort of the same as drinking the blood of young virgins (hot new startups) so that the old witch (Amazon) can reclaim some of her youth. I think the chances of success are a bit better than the blood route though!
