Zappos Gives Job Titles the Boot; Reuters, 12/30/13

Reuters; Zappos Gives Job Titles the Boot: "Like most companies, Zappos has a vernacular all its own. And the online shoe and apparel retailer will soon have a corporate structure to match its distinctive vocabulary. The Amazon-owned company, which refers to its executives as "monkeys" and executive assistants as "Time Ninjas," will likely be doing away with job titles altogether over the course of the next year as it transitions from a hierarchy to a "Holacracy." Developed by serial entrepreneur Brian Robertson, a Holacracy is a system of governance that takes things like managers, job titles and bureaucratic red tape out of the equation, distributing leadership and power evenly across an organization. Instead of a standard hierarchy, companies in a Holacracy are comprised of different "circles" and employees can have any range of roles and responsibilities within those circles, according to a report in Quartz."