How I Did It: Tony Hsieh, CEO, Zappos.com (2006) | Hacker News Reader

How I Did It: Tony Hsieh, CEO, Zappos.com (2006)

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34 pointsbyrneseyeview12 comments

Zappos publishes a 'culture book' every year. It's meant for employees, but you can also order it on their website. They only ship it to the US though, so since I live in Europe I emailed the CEO (got his email address from some presentation slides) and asked if they would ship it to me.

The result was quite amusing. Two assistants practically fought it out to ask for my address and mail me the book. Then the CEO replied and offered the same. Two days later, I received the book, sent by courier, for free.

They're really not kidding about customer service, especially considering that I can't even BE a customer because of where I live (also, I buy shoes every 2 years).

Thanks fluff article... now, only if he told us how he really did it. Everyone knows zappos is obsessive about customer service!

Some things are worth repeating.

I know.. I spent a non-insignificant amount of time looking/hoping for the 'next page' link

"We interview people for culture fit. We want people who are passionate about what Zappos is about--service. I don't care if they're passionate about shoes."

I'm not entirely sure how accurate that is. Perhaps I'm used to software--in which jobs aren't [hopefully!] excessively tedious--but I'm sure lots of us participate in non-work-related forums and mailing lists, helping others for free, just because we are passionate about the subject matter.

I imagine that some jobs could be tedious there, for example working at their call center. And I am sure a lot of other people would find that job tedious. But Zappos pays new employees $1000 to quit. That has to be at least 50x to 100x their hourly wage. About 10% take it. So Zappos does a fair amount to weed out the unmotivated.

If I was looking for a job, and the offer included 100x my hourly wage not to show up, I would think about it and make sure that the job was something I was passionate about.

"A customer is the most important visitor on our premises. he is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption in our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider in our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favor by serving him. He is doing us a favor by giving us an opportunity to do so." - Gandhi

That doesn't sound right. It's a pastiche of things Gandhi might have said, except that he would surely not have used the word "customer" in this way. That comes from the language of 20th century capitalism, which Gandhi abhorred.

Capitalism happens when the factors of production (land/capital) can be private, not necesserily owned by the goverment, "business" or "customer" are really irrelevant to the economic system :)

I think you are misunderstanding Gandhi's philosophy. I was just reading that this quote fits perfectly in what he calls "Seva" or service.

I don't know what you were just reading, but I'll bet it has little to do with what Gandhi actually thought, said, or did.

Googling the quote yields no citation, just reams of quotespam of the sort that surrounds this kind of bogus attribution. It's an old trick: put the best lines into the mouths of the most famous guys and people will more likely repeat them. A Russian once told me that the funniest jokes were all attributed to Pushkin.

The most common claim is that the line comes from a speech Gandhi gave in South Africa in 1890. Hmm: in 1890 Gandhi was a 20-year old law student in England. He took a job in South Africa in 1893. Maybe the date was rounded down? But any speeches that survive from that period would surely be from the anti-racist campaign that made him infamous, not pep talks to local businessmen.

The real problem, though, is with the language of the quote. How likely was an Indian lawyer in his early 20s in South Africa to dash off homilies about customer service that sound just like inspirational American business literature of several generations later? Amusingly, the internet can't seem to make up its mind whether Gandhi said it or L.L. Bean did.

If anyone can dig up a real reference, though, I'm happy to be proven wrong.

You have some good arguments.

I couldn't find a transcription of the speech they are referencing.

But to be totally clear, referring to him as a 20-year-old law student is a bit misleading. In 1890 he joined the executive team at the Vegetarian society (a charity that had an international presence.) So the idea that he may travel and give a speech is not far-fetched. Additionally as you point out, the year may not be correctly cited.

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