210 Zappos employees – 14% of the staff – take buyouts after CEO ultimatum
I work at a company that was in bad shape during the financial crisis. A temporary CEO was put in charge. Ultimately, a number of companies were merged to create one company that could survive. In the end, one of the CEO's of the merged companies became the CEO of the final company. His first act as CEO was to offer everyone in the company a tenure-based package to leave the company. I don't know the full numbers, but nearly everyone in the IT department took the deal. And I am aware of many people in other departments who took the deal as well. Rumors were that between 30 and 40 percent of staff took the deal. Once this happened, the company got rid of that CEO and had to then offer alternative packages to people to stay. Basically the same amount you would have received if you left, but paid out to you over a few years to guarantee you'd stay.<p>It was unclear what his intentions were. To determine loyalty to the company, possibly. But what actually happened was that people who were good at their job, and could find work elsewhere, left. So they would have had all of the top talent leave the company and the remaining employees would be the people who did just enough to get by. The company is still trying to make amends with the employees.