Zappos gives job titles the boot

Zappos, the online shoe store, plans to change its corporate culture, according to a new report.
During a four-hour company meeting last month, Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh announced that his company, by the end of next year, will have fully moved over to a "self-governing" system aimed at making employees more productive and entrepreneurial, according to Quartz.

The system, known as Holacracy, removes all job titles and managers in a corporate structure, leaving nearly every employee on equal footing. According to Quartz, Zappos is going all-in on the system and will create approximately 400 "circles" made up of a group of employees that will be tasked with projects. The group must work together -- sans hierarchy -- to do their jobs.
Holacracy is a growing, but still relatively unknown corporate structure. With its 1,500 employees, Zappos will be one of the biggest companies to adopt the structure, said Quartz. Medium, the publishing platform created by Twitter co-founder Ev Williams, also uses holacracy.
According to Quartz, who spoke with a consultant specializing in the corporate structure, it's designed to focus on work, rather than individuals. By doing so, supporters believe the best people will automatically find their way to the right part of the job, and it'll be done most efficiently.
So far, no other firms have announced plans to go after holacracy.

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Apple's Mac Pro fairly easy to repair, says iFixit

Yearning to take apart your new $3,000 Mac Pro? The journey through its innards shouldn't be too taxing, according to a teardown from the folks at iFixit.
Hiking and hacking through the interior of the entry-level late 2013 Mac Pro, iFixit found its design closer to that of an aluminum soda can than a trash can, to which it's been ignominiously compared. Opening the cylindrical casing requires but a snap of the lock switch, thereby exposing the first layer of cards and components.
The RAM modules are easily accessible and replaceable, says iFixit, so users can max out the memory to 64GB without too much sweat. Removing the solid-state drive entails just a turn of a screwdriver, revealing the flash storage and flash controller. But coaxing off the data connectors for the graphics card pulls iFixit's special spudger tool into duty.
The dual AMD FirePro D300 graphics cards are held in place by a clamp and four screws. The iFixit team did note: "While this stacks up fairly well for current Apple GPU offerings, the proprietary nature, and lack of an elegant external GPU option, may age this device before its time."

Diving deeper, iFixit discovers that the logic board, the dual graphics cards, and the I/O port board all connect to a single disc-shaped "daughterboard." Placed between the logic board and I/O board, the power supply proves a bit tough to remove but comes off with help from a Torx screwdriver. Finally, users who want to upgrade from the entry-level processor can dig through the components to swap out the CPU.
Despite a few small obstacles, the quest to take apart the new Mac Pro proved relatively carefree. The computer's design is "surprisingly modular and easy to disassemble," according to iFixit. But the site does have one bit of advice: "With some proprietary new connectors and tight cable routing, working on this $3,000 device without a repair manual could be risky."

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