semco

Would be interesting to see what Semco looks like today - probably nothing like what it was in 2004.

It's a real story of Semco with great business lessons.

From what I've read, Semco employees help set their own compensation and hours, something that will not be happening at Zappos (at least not in such a direct fashion).

If these slides resonate with you, you may enjoy Maverick by Ricardo Semler, an auto-biographical account of how he transformed SemCo (a brazilian company) from a rigid, process oriented organization into a business that values freedom and good judgment.

This is why I believe in a Semco type culture where every team member receives a cut of the profits and there is a peer review process of who gets to join / stay in the team.

There seem to be almost no companies ( maybe Valve, Semco and few others but I never worked in any of those ) which try to adapt to both the internal changes of their people and external changes of the market.

This philosophy is best explained in a book called "The Seven-day weekend" by Ricardo Semler of Semco fame.

The OP and the comments in this thread, remind me vaguely of the book "Maverick" by Ricardo Semmler about his company Semco.

Just a few other (older) examples - Gore-tex (WL Gore), Patagonia and Semco have had structures that could be described as self-organizing or "flat".

Ricardo Semler is the CEO of Semco, a multinational manufacturing conglomerate, who has also wrestled with the concept of "passion", especially as applied to assembly-line workers.

Instead, people prefer to hear more gentle examples, like Semco, which fit into the standard capitalist framework.

Also, I'm doing reading on Semco, but don't want to comment too much until I understand them better.

Semco is a more traditional company with a workplace democracy overlay on top.