This is crazy, he's a veritable legend (and so young). RIP. My condolences go out to his friends and family. Maybe related to his stepping down 3 months ago[1]?
My comment from that 3-month-old thread, regarding Hsieh: From 2015-2017, I worked at Edmunds.com which was (to put it lightly) a bit obsessed with "Delivering Happiness" and Zappos' culture. So much so, that the leadership team visited Vegas to get a tour of the Zappos HQ (this was before I joined). But Edmunds based their entire cultural approach, including hiring, interviewing, and onboarding on Zappos.
The Edmunds onboarding experience has been by far the best out of any company I worked at. Sure, it was silly games and scavenger hunts that didn't really have anything to do with "work," but I look back at the entire experience with a lot of nostalgia. I loved the onboarding so much, I've been contemplating doing a startup that literally just focuses on improving cultural onborading at companies. It made my first few months at Edmunds not only incredibly productive, but also intellectually and socially stimulating.
And they were doing something right. Over there, I had the honor of working with one of the best managers I ever had (he's now at Amazon), and with one of the best software architects I've ever worked with (he's now at Facebook). My team was made up of motivated, smart, folks from all walks of life (recent grads to data science PhD's in their 50s). I still keep in touch with my old team even though we're spread all over these days: doing our own startups, at Facebook, Uber, Amazon, and beyond.
I have the utmost respect for the cultural revolution that entrepreneurs like Tony Hsieh brought to the fore. People that call it a "cult" are missing the point. It's no more a cult than cheering for your school mascot or being in a club. We seem to forget that people are inherently social and need a sense of belonging.
What sticks out to me in your comment is that in spite of all your nice words about their culture, the nicest/best people you worked with still left for other companies. I suspect it was probably a 20% pay raise that convinced them to.
I left to do my own startup -- which will, (un)fortunately, probably always be my end-game :) and in the months following my departure, the company really did take a cultural hit (after significant layoffs), so a lot of good folks left.
A better work environment doesn't have any effect on tenure. Only the extremes make a difference. That is, lower when extremely bad and a bit longer when extremely good.
According to the BLS, median tenure is 2.x years for those 25-34. For those 35-44, it's 4.x years. Keeps going up with age, peaking at 10.x years starting in the 50s.
Not much seems to change it in a relevant way, maybe another many companies are blah in this regard: not worth the money/time/effort. Just mumble some BS to look good to the world, then repeat as the same dead company. The BS isn't even mumbled to recruit, as it also doesn't have any effect there.
The only ones in a position to be affected by such marketing are new grads, a group typically viewed as worthless and that have to take what they get. It's all just air in the winds.
I don’t doubt what you’re saying, but can you link to a source on this? Highly relevant to some work I’m considering, and I’ve been looking for additional data on this for a bit.
That's interesting. The first job I had starting in college was a 7 year stint. I started in one of the entry level jobs, but the company had lots of upward positions and they liked to hire from within. The second job I had was another 7 year stint. It wasn't until after that before my resume started to have those shorter durations at various places.
Sounds like he died some time after the house fire, due to the injuries incurred.
"Tony Hsieh, the former CEO of Zappos, died peacefully and surrounded by family on Friday, according to a statement emailed to CNN by Megan Fazio, a spokesperson for DTP Companies, a Las Vegas-based enterprise for which Hsieh served as the visionary.
Hsieh, 46, died from injuries sustained in a house fire that occurred in Connecticut while he was visiting family, according to Fazio."
When a prominent person in their 40s dies and there's no information released as to the cause of death, it's always a challenge not to make assumptions.
I've never understood or been able to relate to the seemingly common intense curiosity as to cause-of-death. Is it related to the desire to fit names we know into a narrative structure that lets us reason about them as entities? It seems like an irrelevant detail, to me personally.
I think it's likely just part of human nature. When something bad or tragic happens, we want to know what happened and why. It seems plausible that there's an evolutionary explanation for it, to do with learning how to avoid such happenings.
Two days ago, a cousin (who I only barely know because we connected on facebook, genealogically) informed me that her father - my mother's brother - had passed. My mom's first question was "any particulars?" It's natural to want to know what happened, and it's not shameful to be curious.
For some, it comes from wanting to avoid death. The desire to add it to your database of how death happens in order to know your enemy. I'm not arguing this is following a scientific principle. This is more emotional.
Very surprised and sad to hear this. I mentioned this here before but it's worth going for the self narrated audio version as his book is best told in his own voice. It's one of the only few business books and business stories Iv'e read that iv'e found truly inspiring.
"Let us prepare our minds as if we’d come to the very end of life. Let us postpone nothing. Let us balance life’s books each day. … The one who puts the finishing touches on their life each day is never short of time.” - Seneca
Seneca’s Epistles no doubt touches on his views of death through the lens of his Stoic practices. I’ve found Ward Farnsworth’s ‘The Practicing Stoic’ to be an accessible, light, introduction to some of Seneca’s works among others. William Irving, in his book ‘Guide to the Good Life’, labels the technique hinted at in the quote: negative visualization.
The concept of "eternal recurrence"––"the idea that all events in the world repeat themselves in the same sequence through an eternal series of cycles"––is central to the mature writings of Friedrich Nietzsche.
Nietzsche calls the idea "horrifying and paralyzing", [citation needed] referring to it as a burden of the "heaviest weight" ("das schwerste Gewicht") imaginable. He professes that the wish for the eternal return of all events would mark the ultimate affirmation of life:
> What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence' ... Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.' [The Gay Science, §341]
To comprehend eternal recurrence in his thought, and to not merely come to peace with it but to embrace it, requires amor fati, "love of fate":
> My formula for human greatness is amor fati: that one wants to have nothing different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely to bear the necessary, still less to conceal it—all idealism is mendaciousness before the necessary—but to love it.
"Live like you’ll never die" can be a reason to put things off because you'll do them in the future. And then the world changes and possible paths are suddenly closed to you.
Anecdata: my father died relatively young in his 50s after a decade of ill health that had forced him to give up some of the things that he loved, like sailing. This made a very big impression on me (I was in my mid-20s), specifically that you only get one life and you must make the most of your health while you have it. I am now older than he was when he died and I don't have a bucket list of things that I want to do in the future. That's because I've already done those things, rather than postpone them until I retire. That said, I'm currently in the process of seeing if I can bootstrap a totally new career for myself, in the outdoor conservation space after decades in the office in the s/w industry. I might not make it but at least I've tried.
One of the last things my mother told me before dying in her fifties was “but there’s still so much I wanted to do”. I drew a “life calendar”, crossed out all the years I had already spent, marked her age when she died and more statistically relevant life expectancies and hung it over my desk. I quit my job and started something new not long after.
I don’t see any value in being dogmatic about it one way or another. Personally I’d just shorten it to “Live your life.” It will mean different things to different people, but perhaps that is ok.
Personally, I believe the key is to reconcile the two. Operate on that fine line that optimizes best for both this being your last day or just one link in an unending chain.
Save money like you'll need it forever, work hard for more money so you can spend it on what you love, and actually spend it, all in balance.
“Zhuangzi's wife died. When Huizu went to convey his condolences, he
found Zhuangzi sitting with his legs sprawled out, pounding on a tub and
singing. "You lived with her, she brought up your children and grew
old," said Huizu. "It should be enough simply not to weep at her
death. But pounding on a tub and singing - this is going too far, isn't
it?"
Zhuangzi said, "You're wrong. When she first died, do you think I didn't
grieve like anyone else? But I looked back to her beginning and the time
before she was born. Not only the time before she was born, but the time
before she had a body. Not only the time before she had a body, but the
time before she had a spirit. In the midst of the jumble of wonder and
mystery a change took place and she had a spirit. Another change and she
had a body. Another change and she was born. Now there's been another
change and she's dead. It's just like the progression of the four
seasons, spring, summer, fall, winter.
"Now she's going to lie down peacefully in a vast room. If I were to
follow after her bawling and sobbing, it would show that I don't
understand anything about fate. So I stopped.”
I really loved his work, he was my personal hero. Great thought leader and entrepreneur, but also humble and caring human being.
I would often ask myself, what would Tony do, when I have some business challenge or problem.
Cause of death should be standard information when someone has passed away. If we're not supposed to talk about cause of death, then why should the age be mentioned? Why should the location where the person passed away be said? Why include next of kin -- surely that's completely irrelevant unless you are part of the family? Every single Wikipedia entry for a person who isn't living gives cause of death. If it's so bad to talk about causes, then why isn't Wikipedia being criticized for this? We need to get over this taboo. It is not gossip. It is relevant and important information.
Yeah every announcement keeps it a secret. I hate it. I find it disrespectful to us. We are fans and loved him but no we're not good enough to know why.
You being my “fan” is an asymmetric relationship, not one created by mutual consent. If I want you to have my medical information while I’m alive or after I’m dead I will execute the proper legal document with you to ensure that you have it.
He had developed a severe drug addiction to ketamine and nitrous oxide. He completely lost touch with reality. Ended up killing himself in an explosion/fire that he caused himself. The reason he "retired" from Zappos was due to the aforementioned drug addiction and was not voluntary.
Why do you ask this question? You know he doesn't. But that doesn't mean it is false.
If his username is anything to go by, I'd say that there is probably a kernel of truth to his statement. After all, people don't just make up stories about ketamine and nitrous addictions.
Especially since dying in a house fire isn't a usual route to go. It might make sense he was on ketamine and somehow a fire started (he probably didn't intentionally start a fire), and couldn't get out. It's very hard to walk straight on ketamine. You end up walking like a robot.
Edit: but the real reason I believe these claims is because my gut says it is true. Not the best reason, of course. But not a bad reason either.
Sometimes people do make up stories about ketamine and nitrous addictions. This has been very disastrous for people accused of rape or witchcraft. This is why i don't like "where there is smoke, there is fire."
Lolwut. Please. This kind of boundless credulity, which is unfortunately quite widespread, has sent innocent people to their executions.
You are ascribing a "kernel of truth" to a completely unsubstantiated claim because the comment includes specific details and because of the username of the poster, which they themselves chose and did not have to justify.
There is absolutely no evidence that the claim by "exzappos" is true or false. Please don't imply anything else.
> the real reason I believe these claims is because my gut says it is true. Not the best reason, of course. But not a bad reason either.
It is true. A bunch of his close associates tried to have an intervention lol. He blacklisted them all and quite as CEO of zappos. He packed up and left Vegas for Park City, only invited the most simpiest of simps who wouldn't question him. Candle obsession + nitro tank = fire. But first hand accounts say it wasnt fire or smoke that killed him. Too much nitrous not enough oxygen for the brain.
Best I can do is this personal story: I, for reasons unimportant to the topic, knew personally people from all walks of Tony's life.
I've would have a drink with his personal cleaning lady when she was done for theday, and drank more than one with Tony himself late into the night at Kareoke in his personal Airstream park. Many of my friends worked in all departments at Zappos, as well.
When the drinks were mostly finished, and the clock was past 3am, the #1 rumor would be of his drug use. At first I thought it was standard rumors due to his laid back nature and stature (and maybe confated with the fact that he smoked weed legally.)
However, after an interpersonal issue, one of the people with access to his private life pulled me aside and showed me a series of photos he had taken in Tony's place prior to anyone cleaning it up.
Let's just say Ketamine and Nitrous are weak comparitively to what I saw, and there was a reason he could be "on it" for 3/4 of a day and then immediatly sleep. I don't know how to say it without speaking too ill of the dead, but I think you get the idea.
PPS, Google the Downtown Vegas Suicides for a true, fun, short read.
This is true, I don't have all the facts, but tony was obsessed with candles lately. First hand account says candles + nitrous tank caused the "fire" but it's more likely that he went too hard on the nitrous and was brain starved of oxygen, was on life support for many days braindead before his body went.
That being said, Tony was a great guy, and did so much for countless people. Myself included. He will be missed. His community of clingers and simps though... they are in finger pointing mode and eating themselves alive.
So? It goes without saying what I posted wasn't public information and that I had inside sources. It's already been confirmed by others here and it's now been reported in the press so we can put to rest the idea that I'm just making things up.
This is gross. I don’t care if this is true or not — someone is dead and people that knew that person (including many on HN) are grieving. Surely, the judgment-filled “how’s” from someone who created an account just to rip on a dead person can wait. If you’re too much of a coward to put this under your usual username or even own it under your full name, that’s a sign to me that this sort of comment doesn’t belong here.
Why is it necessary to respect someone who is dead? They are dead, after all. Seems like we should probably respect people a little more when they are alive and a little less when they are dead.
In the immediate period following someone’s death, is it too much to ask not to engage in or support rumor-mongering around the cause, for the sake of the family who is likely under tremendous stress and should not have to deal with the added stress of seeing such rumors?
It hurts no one to wait some months to reveal details of a person’s death; at that time, outsiders can contemplate that info. Have some empathy.
How about just tell the truth. Who cares if he liked drugs? Ill tell you why he died. All you motherfuckers who tried to control him, just pushed him away from the people who actually cared about him and not what they could get from him. Anyone reading this who knows what's up should have just shut the fuck up and supported him instead of trying to run his life. Just my OPINION
My intent is not to rip on him. I have a lot of respect for what he accomplished in life. Keeping Tony's problems secret and enabling them is a big part of why things ended this way though. There shouldn't be a stigma about admitting that Tony was suffering from drug addiction and mental illness. People have been using him all year instead of getting treatment for him. You should be directing your ire at those people.
If this is true, you should delete your comments and wait until an appropriate time (post grieving) to post them, backed with evidence and discussions with people who knew him in the context of such issues, under your real name. Stop pretending that being an anonymous troll spilling rumors immediately after his death is doing some kind of good.
Then post under your actual name instead of being a troll hours after the dude has died. I’m all about having conversations about addiction. This isn’t it. This is smarmy and petty and if you had any conviction, you wouldn’t create a new account just to talk about how someone you “had a lot of respect for” died. You would do it under your own name or at least your own pseudonym.
I'm hesitating about whether I agree or disagree with you. I also do not like distasteful / disrespectful comments; and I can understand that people prefer privacy. However, this was simple factual information. I'm not sure keeping facts secret is a good thing even if done out of respect.
It is important that the public sees how many lives are destroyed by domestic abuse, suicides, addiction, and other social ills. And I fear that not talking about those details out of respect / privacy may do more harm than good.
It isn’t factual, it’s an allegation. He doesn’t have any proof other than a burner account created today.
If it is factual, I agree, have the discussion about addiction. But is it too much to ask to either have the conversation openly (and not in an anonymous comment full of judgment and borderline glee that a person is dead), and not in gossip-laden comments hours after the guy is dead? It’s gross and people defending unnamed gossip from a green rando is infuriating.
There are ppl who are in denial of the truth as if hearing the dark side of it would constitute the disrespect. At the end of the day, truth is what matters. He was an immensely kind and accomplished and so highly loved person, but he was also a tormented soul toward the end of his life.
A whole slew of reasons, but mostly because it's private, sensitive, and could have legal implications (in the cases of foul play, for example). I'm not sure what Wikipedia has to do with anything, as it's never been the arbiter of social norms, legal procedures, or even common decency -- much like reddit, its army of online sleuths often gets facts painfully wrong (sometimes with dire consequences).
Wikipedia has a cause of death section for almost every deceased person. In your opinion, should Wikipedia remove cause of death from biographies? Remove them until legal implications are resolved? Remove some of them but not all of them? (I very much doubt that you think that all entries for cause of death should be removed, like how President John F. Kennedy died for example.) So where are you drawing the line?
> As I mentioned, Wikipedia has a cause of death section for almost every deceased person.
Again, my question is "so what?" -- Wikipedia doesn't dictate social norms. I gave you a few reasons why cause of death may not be mentioned. Like mothers often say, if Wikipedia jumps off a bridge, would you?
Holacracy was developed at a software company by Brian Robertson who then took it and started another company, HolacracyOne, to refine and spread it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holacracy. Tony Hsieh brought it into Zappos which was IMO incredibly influential in increasing the visibility of Holacracy. His passing is very sad.
I saw Tony speak at YC Startup School in 2009, and his talk stuck with me far more than any other that day.
It was exciting and inspiring to hear that you could build a company that was sincere about being good to its employees and customers whilst also being large and commercially successful, and that’s influenced how I’ve gone about trying to build products and businesses ever since.
I haven’t managed a big success that accomplishes this yet, but if I ever manage to do it, it will be in no small part thanks to Tony.
Thanks and blessings to Tony, and love and strength to his family and friends.
He spoke at my backwater state university. And then had lunch with a few of us misfits. It gave me a kick in the rear to persevere, despite my perceived station, and in no small way contributed to my later start-up, exit and success. Terrifically sad news.
He talked to me for quite a while when I met him at one of his book launch events, around the same time. I asked him what he thought of my startup (at the time), and he said he didn’t like it because it relied on being able to keep certain information secret, but that the world was only going toward more and more transparency. He said it was essentially betting against the mega trend. A difficult lesson at the time, but definitely some of the best advice I’ve ever gotten, and something that’s been permanently added to my collection of mental models.
Really sad , I remember when I was setting up Myntra (Indian zappos) customer experience department, Tony and his book were a huge influence and everything that we did was measured up with the zappos way of customer experience. We were one of the few large companies having in house call centre with a five day week and training period of one month to all customer cate executives, plus a mandatory call listening session once a quarter for all senior leadership.
There are still some question marks on the ROI of trying to ensure customer delight especially via call center since discounts are such a huge factor in buying shoes and clothes online that even an NPS of 60 will not help if you don’t price lower especially for the value conscious Indian buyer however he definitely brought a new dimension of thinking for a lot of customer care folks
Honestly haven't seen a clear answer till now. We had tried multiple ways to link high satisfaction scores with purchase behavior - correlation/regression of NPS with frequency/value of purchase.
At least in myntra case, the detractors turned out to be much more valuable than the entire universe, we put it down to customers who love us enough to hate us!
10 years ago around Thanksgiving, I got my first Kindle - the keyboard one with an AT&T 3G card, one of the first few books I read was his "Delivering Happiness". Amazon was not the juggernaut it is today, the book stayed in my mind for such a long period was unprecedented.
My current Kindle Oasis is much better than my first Kindle, a lot of books have been read as well. However, I might never able to get same experience / inspiration again.
It's 2020, people talk a lot about self-driving cars and travelling to Mars, and yet such terrible preventable tragedies still happen even in successfull countries to successful people. So sad.
In 2020, our firefighters here in Toronto are bored. They go to car accident scenes to simply block traffic, they show up at 911 calls to talk with people and see if they can offer aid while waiting for paramedics/ambulance, two or three trucks will show up for our small walkups occasional false alarms. My brother and nephew are cops, they end up shooing the fire trucks away from minor accidents because they clog up traffic with their trucks and multiple firefighters just hanging around.
The reasons for this boredom are fantastic news: smoke detectors, safer vehicles, mandatory sprinklers even in small complexes, mandatory fire escapes, laws around flamability of furniture/clothing/bedding, reduced smoking, better awareness of fire hazards.
Yes, these tragedies still happen, but don't make it sound like we're not doing anything because right now one of our biggest issues is too many fireman for the drastically reduced number of vehicle and house fires we have: we paid for all of these safety programs and we still pay for the fireman they should have replaced.
The reason firefighters are often the first on the scene of an accident or 911 call is because fire stations are spread throughout the community. They’re the closest first responders and can get there faster. Not because they’re bored and have nothing better to do.
They probably do have nothing better to do, and that's a good thing. Basic queuing theory says that a system needs excess capacity in order to be able to respond to peak demand - you can't just tell a second fire to wait for an hour while fighting the first one. If three engines respond to a fender bender and a more pressing call comes in, they will leave and go there.
I had an immediate family member in the hospital when that "nurses playing cards" ignorance was going around. I wish nurses did have some time to play cards, because it would mean they'd answer when they were needed, rather than being busy with other patients for an hour and then forgetting. We truly are optimizing ourselves to death.
Another recent example was when the pandemic team of the National Security Council was disbanded, and the reason given was that the president doesn’t like to have people “just sitting around.”
A good reminder to have fire alarms installed in every part of your house. We have one in each bedroom, each common area, and the hallways too. They are ten year alarms, so if we still live here in ten years, when one of them starts going bad we will just replace them all at once. Very simple step you can take to reduce your risk without much effort.
With anything this public, such questions will inevitably arise. It was not my intention to be ghoulish or inconsiderate in asking the question.
A family member of mine died in a house fire as well, and her death prompted the development of new insulation safety standards in Germany (this being a number of decades ago). Knowing what led to this fire is of interest to me.
I've edited my grandparent comment to remove the link to his Wikipedia page, and default to the heavy.com link posted above.
Though I don't think I ever met him personally, I like many here was very moved by his ideas and his ethics and his works and am really saddened to hear this news. Like you I also have questions and would like to hear more. I always find it helpful in grief to just hear what happened. Was it a mechanical malfunction? Was it a lack of fire alarms? Was it arson or murder? Was it suicide? It's extremely sad, and only 1/1000 deaths in the US are now caused by fire, and am just wondering how it could happen to such a smart, young, generous person.
You're right — it is helpful to know what happened. It's tragic to hear of Tony's death, and it's even more disquieting to speculate about the causes. Arson/murder paints the event in a very different light from a mechanical malfunction or, god forbid, suicide. And, as you mentioned, fire deaths are exceedingly rare, so the whole matter is cloaked in mystery.
I'm pretty shocked to hear of Tony's passing, as I was also very moved by his ethos and writings. That he died in a fire is all the more shocking — a death from cancer or something similar would be easier to accept. Perhaps this is because cancer and serious illness feels almost inevitable, and this doesn't.
The Zappos website now has a Steve Jobs-like tribute on the first page (as well as a banner), which seems appropriate given how amazing Hsieh has been (not merely founding Zappos, but the renewal of DT Las Vegas, plus cool stuff he did back in SF before Zappos -- the 1000 Van Ness place was quirky and awesome.) A really amazing person.
Sorry for your loss, but there were numerous avoidable deaths associated with his VC activity, which is unacceptable.
We don’t need anymore developers ruining their lives and kidneys working shoulder to shoulder out of bars equipped with 300Mb WiFi making JS apps that create very little value for society beyond improving the real estate values around the bars themselves, even as they sink deeper into depression, bankruptcy and many times Hsiehicide. One would think after the first death, he would have formed a company that ran around hiring them all (even sending some that were too far gone upstairs back to their parents) to provide some sort of a safety net for his real estate activities, but that was never the priority. The old guard in Vegas that (once upon a time) gave Howard Hughes “the business” too was so thrilled to meet Tony Hsieh —-and his endless new supply of self-destructing laptop tourists. Just like Hughes, Hsieh started the ball rolling and I think last month Downtown Las Vegas opened the first of what will be many all-new resorts in that hell hole of lost souls in many decades.
I have been through this before. Losing my friends and multiple conflicting accounts about how they might have passed away. In the end, when the dust settles, it always seems ends up being the same two headed-demon that has i have lost many friends to: a silent fight with cancer or speedball.
Here’s hoping it’s neither in this case.
He really was a visionary who was able to take action.
I’m gutted to hear this news. His gentle demeanour and the awe and wonder I experienced reading his book in one sitting has left a lasting impression on me.
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[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 299 ms ] threadThe family hasn’t reveal any details, he was surely very young.
My comment from that 3-month-old thread, regarding Hsieh: From 2015-2017, I worked at Edmunds.com which was (to put it lightly) a bit obsessed with "Delivering Happiness" and Zappos' culture. So much so, that the leadership team visited Vegas to get a tour of the Zappos HQ (this was before I joined). But Edmunds based their entire cultural approach, including hiring, interviewing, and onboarding on Zappos.
The Edmunds onboarding experience has been by far the best out of any company I worked at. Sure, it was silly games and scavenger hunts that didn't really have anything to do with "work," but I look back at the entire experience with a lot of nostalgia. I loved the onboarding so much, I've been contemplating doing a startup that literally just focuses on improving cultural onborading at companies. It made my first few months at Edmunds not only incredibly productive, but also intellectually and socially stimulating.
And they were doing something right. Over there, I had the honor of working with one of the best managers I ever had (he's now at Amazon), and with one of the best software architects I've ever worked with (he's now at Facebook). My team was made up of motivated, smart, folks from all walks of life (recent grads to data science PhD's in their 50s). I still keep in touch with my old team even though we're spread all over these days: doing our own startups, at Facebook, Uber, Amazon, and beyond.
I have the utmost respect for the cultural revolution that entrepreneurs like Tony Hsieh brought to the fore. People that call it a "cult" are missing the point. It's no more a cult than cheering for your school mascot or being in a club. We seem to forget that people are inherently social and need a sense of belonging.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24268522
Although, reading that comment again, 2015-2017 was not that long ago.
According to the BLS, median tenure is 2.x years for those 25-34. For those 35-44, it's 4.x years. Keeps going up with age, peaking at 10.x years starting in the 50s.
Not much seems to change it in a relevant way, maybe another many companies are blah in this regard: not worth the money/time/effort. Just mumble some BS to look good to the world, then repeat as the same dead company. The BS isn't even mumbled to recruit, as it also doesn't have any effect there.
The only ones in a position to be affected by such marketing are new grads, a group typically viewed as worthless and that have to take what they get. It's all just air in the winds.
He died from injuries related to a house fire. So likely not.
The cause of death has been released. He died in a house fire.
Edit: Died of injuries sustained in the fire, not in the house itself.
My point was just that there seems not to be any behavioral reason that this happened.
"Tony Hsieh, the former CEO of Zappos, died peacefully and surrounded by family on Friday, according to a statement emailed to CNN by Megan Fazio, a spokesperson for DTP Companies, a Las Vegas-based enterprise for which Hsieh served as the visionary.
Hsieh, 46, died from injuries sustained in a house fire that occurred in Connecticut while he was visiting family, according to Fazio."
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/28/us/tony-hsieh-zappos-dies...
I'm sad I didn't get the chance to meet him. :(
Two days ago, a cousin (who I only barely know because we connected on facebook, genealogically) informed me that her father - my mother's brother - had passed. My mom's first question was "any particulars?" It's natural to want to know what happened, and it's not shameful to be curious.
https://mobile.twitter.com/VitalVegas/status/133256096974723...
"Let us prepare our minds as if we’d come to the very end of life. Let us postpone nothing. Let us balance life’s books each day. … The one who puts the finishing touches on their life each day is never short of time.” - Seneca
I'd love to read up more on this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_return#Friedrich_Nietz...
The concept of "eternal recurrence"––"the idea that all events in the world repeat themselves in the same sequence through an eternal series of cycles"––is central to the mature writings of Friedrich Nietzsche.
Nietzsche calls the idea "horrifying and paralyzing", [citation needed] referring to it as a burden of the "heaviest weight" ("das schwerste Gewicht") imaginable. He professes that the wish for the eternal return of all events would mark the ultimate affirmation of life:
> What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence' ... Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.' [The Gay Science, §341]
To comprehend eternal recurrence in his thought, and to not merely come to peace with it but to embrace it, requires amor fati, "love of fate":
> My formula for human greatness is amor fati: that one wants to have nothing different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely to bear the necessary, still less to conceal it—all idealism is mendaciousness before the necessary—but to love it.
“Live like you’ll never die.”
The more I think about these two sentiments, the more I think the more popular one is bad advice, and the less popular one is good advice.
Be ready for either possibility.
Anecdata: my father died relatively young in his 50s after a decade of ill health that had forced him to give up some of the things that he loved, like sailing. This made a very big impression on me (I was in my mid-20s), specifically that you only get one life and you must make the most of your health while you have it. I am now older than he was when he died and I don't have a bucket list of things that I want to do in the future. That's because I've already done those things, rather than postpone them until I retire. That said, I'm currently in the process of seeing if I can bootstrap a totally new career for myself, in the outdoor conservation space after decades in the office in the s/w industry. I might not make it but at least I've tried.
YMMV.
Save money like you'll need it forever, work hard for more money so you can spend it on what you love, and actually spend it, all in balance.
Zhuangzi said, "You're wrong. When she first died, do you think I didn't grieve like anyone else? But I looked back to her beginning and the time before she was born. Not only the time before she was born, but the time before she had a body. Not only the time before she had a body, but the time before she had a spirit. In the midst of the jumble of wonder and mystery a change took place and she had a spirit. Another change and she had a body. Another change and she was born. Now there's been another change and she's dead. It's just like the progression of the four seasons, spring, summer, fall, winter.
"Now she's going to lie down peacefully in a vast room. If I were to follow after her bawling and sobbing, it would show that I don't understand anything about fate. So I stopped.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhuang_Zhou
Rest in peace Tony.
Disrespectful my ass. Unless you have a close, actually personal connection to him, no, you don't have any right to personal details.
Be happy he chose to make anything public, and memorialize as you see fit. Anything more is just selfish.
If his username is anything to go by, I'd say that there is probably a kernel of truth to his statement. After all, people don't just make up stories about ketamine and nitrous addictions.
Especially since dying in a house fire isn't a usual route to go. It might make sense he was on ketamine and somehow a fire started (he probably didn't intentionally start a fire), and couldn't get out. It's very hard to walk straight on ketamine. You end up walking like a robot.
Edit: but the real reason I believe these claims is because my gut says it is true. Not the best reason, of course. But not a bad reason either.
You are ascribing a "kernel of truth" to a completely unsubstantiated claim because the comment includes specific details and because of the username of the poster, which they themselves chose and did not have to justify.
There is absolutely no evidence that the claim by "exzappos" is true or false. Please don't imply anything else.
> the real reason I believe these claims is because my gut says it is true. Not the best reason, of course. But not a bad reason either.
Yes, a bad reason. A very bad reason.
I've would have a drink with his personal cleaning lady when she was done for theday, and drank more than one with Tony himself late into the night at Kareoke in his personal Airstream park. Many of my friends worked in all departments at Zappos, as well.
When the drinks were mostly finished, and the clock was past 3am, the #1 rumor would be of his drug use. At first I thought it was standard rumors due to his laid back nature and stature (and maybe confated with the fact that he smoked weed legally.)
However, after an interpersonal issue, one of the people with access to his private life pulled me aside and showed me a series of photos he had taken in Tony's place prior to anyone cleaning it up.
Let's just say Ketamine and Nitrous are weak comparitively to what I saw, and there was a reason he could be "on it" for 3/4 of a day and then immediatly sleep. I don't know how to say it without speaking too ill of the dead, but I think you get the idea.
PPS, Google the Downtown Vegas Suicides for a true, fun, short read.
https://people.com/music/jewel-wrote-to-tony-hsieh-before-hi...
It hurts no one to wait some months to reveal details of a person’s death; at that time, outsiders can contemplate that info. Have some empathy.
It is important that the public sees how many lives are destroyed by domestic abuse, suicides, addiction, and other social ills. And I fear that not talking about those details out of respect / privacy may do more harm than good.
If it is factual, I agree, have the discussion about addiction. But is it too much to ask to either have the conversation openly (and not in an anonymous comment full of judgment and borderline glee that a person is dead), and not in gossip-laden comments hours after the guy is dead? It’s gross and people defending unnamed gossip from a green rando is infuriating.
Again, my question is "so what?" -- Wikipedia doesn't dictate social norms. I gave you a few reasons why cause of death may not be mentioned. Like mothers often say, if Wikipedia jumps off a bridge, would you?
That said, now isn't the time. Let people grieve. There will be time for questions later.
https://www.reviewjournal.com/business/tony-hsieh-key-figure...
I saw Tony speak at YC Startup School in 2009, and his talk stuck with me far more than any other that day.
It was exciting and inspiring to hear that you could build a company that was sincere about being good to its employees and customers whilst also being large and commercially successful, and that’s influenced how I’ve gone about trying to build products and businesses ever since.
I haven’t managed a big success that accomplishes this yet, but if I ever manage to do it, it will be in no small part thanks to Tony.
Thanks and blessings to Tony, and love and strength to his family and friends.
https://youtu.be/n_qon5rAElg
There are still some question marks on the ROI of trying to ensure customer delight especially via call center since discounts are such a huge factor in buying shoes and clothes online that even an NPS of 60 will not help if you don’t price lower especially for the value conscious Indian buyer however he definitely brought a new dimension of thinking for a lot of customer care folks
How did you solve this in practice?
At least in myntra case, the detractors turned out to be much more valuable than the entire universe, we put it down to customers who love us enough to hate us!
10 years ago around Thanksgiving, I got my first Kindle - the keyboard one with an AT&T 3G card, one of the first few books I read was his "Delivering Happiness". Amazon was not the juggernaut it is today, the book stayed in my mind for such a long period was unprecedented.
My current Kindle Oasis is much better than my first Kindle, a lot of books have been read as well. However, I might never able to get same experience / inspiration again.
RIP.
Source: https://www.reviewjournal.com/business/tony-hsieh-key-figure...
Wow, I don't want to think about how painful it must have been :(
The reasons for this boredom are fantastic news: smoke detectors, safer vehicles, mandatory sprinklers even in small complexes, mandatory fire escapes, laws around flamability of furniture/clothing/bedding, reduced smoking, better awareness of fire hazards.
Yes, these tragedies still happen, but don't make it sound like we're not doing anything because right now one of our biggest issues is too many fireman for the drastically reduced number of vehicle and house fires we have: we paid for all of these safety programs and we still pay for the fireman they should have replaced.
I had an immediate family member in the hospital when that "nurses playing cards" ignorance was going around. I wish nurses did have some time to play cards, because it would mean they'd answer when they were needed, rather than being busy with other patients for an hour and then forgetting. We truly are optimizing ourselves to death.
Very sad news. Downtown Las Vegas is the place it is today thanks to him. Rest in peace.
https://www.courant.com/breaking-news/hc-br-tony-hsieh-zappo...
https://www.reviewjournal.com/business/tony-hsieh-key-figure...
Sounds like a very painful way to go... I wonder if we'll get any more details in the coming days.
EDIT: He passed away in Connecticut, see child comments.
https://heavy.com/news/tony-hsieh-dead/
A family member of mine died in a house fire as well, and her death prompted the development of new insulation safety standards in Germany (this being a number of decades ago). Knowing what led to this fire is of interest to me.
I've edited my grandparent comment to remove the link to his Wikipedia page, and default to the heavy.com link posted above.
You're right — it is helpful to know what happened. It's tragic to hear of Tony's death, and it's even more disquieting to speculate about the causes. Arson/murder paints the event in a very different light from a mechanical malfunction or, god forbid, suicide. And, as you mentioned, fire deaths are exceedingly rare, so the whole matter is cloaked in mystery.
I'm pretty shocked to hear of Tony's passing, as I was also very moved by his ethos and writings. That he died in a fire is all the more shocking — a death from cancer or something similar would be easier to accept. Perhaps this is because cancer and serious illness feels almost inevitable, and this doesn't.
Very sad. Feel really sorry for his family and friends. Sounds like he was a really incredible individual.
We don’t need anymore developers ruining their lives and kidneys working shoulder to shoulder out of bars equipped with 300Mb WiFi making JS apps that create very little value for society beyond improving the real estate values around the bars themselves, even as they sink deeper into depression, bankruptcy and many times Hsiehicide. One would think after the first death, he would have formed a company that ran around hiring them all (even sending some that were too far gone upstairs back to their parents) to provide some sort of a safety net for his real estate activities, but that was never the priority. The old guard in Vegas that (once upon a time) gave Howard Hughes “the business” too was so thrilled to meet Tony Hsieh —-and his endless new supply of self-destructing laptop tourists. Just like Hughes, Hsieh started the ball rolling and I think last month Downtown Las Vegas opened the first of what will be many all-new resorts in that hell hole of lost souls in many decades.
Another visionary lost. RIP Tony.
I’m gutted to hear this news. His gentle demeanour and the awe and wonder I experienced reading his book in one sitting has left a lasting impression on me.
Rest In Peace