Shallow one sided reporting by an apathetic reporter just desperately searching for any data point to confirm preexisting bias. Gives podcasting a bad name. Tony Hsieh’s story is an important story to tell and this is a lazy and sad disgrace. Totally misses the mark.

You’d think someone with such a posh accent wouldn’t continually mispronounce so many workaday words. Yeesh It became quite distracting and annoying, had to quit

I am fascinated by Tony Hsieh and this story, but the music put under so much of the narration and interviews was so distracting, it made for an unnecessarily difficult listening experience. NATs, transitional elements I can get behind but the elements used did not make sense with what else we were hearing. I really wanted to like this!

So shallow. Very interesting story, but there is literally no investigation. Feels like an English person who has no idea of general pronunciations etc is reading a Wikipedia page. With she would have studied up a bit more.

Grating music plays the entire time while the narrator and guests speak. WHY!?

This shallow series is not it

This was a riveting series that managed to capture the multiple facets of a brilliant mind. The Bonus Q&A was great, too, allowing a higher level analysis of what the Zappo’s work culture was a part of. Well done.

I understand the desire to create an environment of “happiness” - but over and over I was reminded that happiness is a by-product of a deeper life - one that is centered around faith; something bigger than self. It made me understand why millennials can be hopeless and disenfranchised. They keep being told they can be their own gods. liked this podcast and thought it was fascinating. It’s a good one!

Talk about a witch hunt with an agenda. Couldn’t make it through the first episode. Some real “expose” like the head of education asked a VFA fellow for his opinion on charters vs public schools.

Overall the story is quite entertaining and interesting, trying to give a glimpse of who Tony was, his vision and goals were. However, in my opinion there are too many gaps in the story. Not enough is said about Tony, only brief childhood achievements. No real friends or family members to interview and add more value to the story. We don’t get to know what’s the breaking point for the guy interviewed and given the time of the entire first episode. Nothing is mentioned about the exact cause of Tony’s death. On a positive note: the voice and accent of the narrator is excellent for an (I presume Iranian). Who purposely and awkwardly mis pronounces her name.

I’m an artist with Anthropologie and this hit really close to home. Thank you!! I feel validated in my struggles. They wrote me up for saying I was “over spring already lol” when asked how I was feeling about spring display sketches on December 20th….hah!! It was unacceptable yet I’m supposed to be in love with everything I make…..

Fascinating story made boring and simplistic.

Love

Excellent take down and dissection of the happiness bubble so many companies feel forced to try to emulate. The most insightful quote, “…there is no code for contentment”. A must listen for those who came to work, enticed by the free craft espresso latte beer machine on every floor, bean bags and barstools instead of desks, but left feeling vacant and disillusioned. As Nastaran explains, this is a recipe for despair and an insult to our intelligence.

I will second the other reviewer who said it is a little unbalanced. They really spend a lot of time with people who have an axe to grind against Tony Hsieh. The most notable example was the episode about the young man, an employee, who took his own life. It was a tragedy, but there isn’t much to connect it to Zappos or the Downtown Project. The podcast spends a full hour on his death, interviewing his family— and of course his family needs someone to blame. Apparently Hsieh gave a lot of financial support to the family (paying to have all of the deceased’s items shipped home, and for the family to travel), and also brought in a trauma counselor for the employees. But the podcast briefly mentions those facts, and then focuses instead on the reality that at the funeral, Tony seemed a little out of his depth, didn’t really cry, didn’t have the perfect words of support. I’m sorry, but that is not a reasonable expectation for a CEO. How well would I measure up if I were expected to somehow guide dozens of people through the grief of a suicide? I enjoyed the podcast but it has an agenda. I would like to have heard more from Tony’s friends and family, who must have been devastated by his death and might have been able to give more insight into his life and his motivations.

I’m sorry but four episodes in I’m still wondering what is interesting about this story… am I supposed to care because I am hearing about how Zappos came to be? Am I supposed to care because I am hearing about Las Vegas being developed? What is the point of this story? Where is the scandal? Why am I supposed to find this interesting?

Sorry if there are any typos, this was dictated This is a really good podcast, it does a great job of investigating a very interesting situation. In the beginning it is quite nuanced and looks at things from all sides. But, toward the end, it becomes fairly unbalanced. To be clear, when I say balance, I don’t mean that the podcast should have presented a positive version of the story regardless of what happened. They should tell the truth, no matter how harsh it is. But, my issue with it, is that they give a ton of time to the critics while barely giving any time to the defenders of Zappos and the project. For example, she gives a ton of time to three people with extremely personal grievances with the downtown project, but does not interview any actual urban planners or experts about the impact that the project had. I don’t have an issue with her asking the opinions of locals, but I’d be really curious to know what actual academics have to say about whether the downtown project had any positives. And frankly, the same criticism goes for the individuals who spoke positively about the experience they had with the downtown project. Individual people who did (or didn’t) receive grants are useful. But it would be nice to hear from an expert who can talk about the overall impact on Vegas. Similarly, with the happiness stuff, she basically creates a strawman argument that says that Tony Hsieh’s happiness philosophy is basically just telling people to be happy and punishing them if they’re not or cutting them out if they’re not. And I get that sometimes that did happen in the day downtown project toward the end of his life when he was spiraling. But, Zappos was really highly regarded as a happy times. So I would’ve like to hear about her asking people who would defend him about what his process was for creating happiness there. Again, it’s not about the conclusions, it’s about presenting a nuanced perspective of what happened.

I would love to hear this story but the background music is so distracting. I couldn’t listen for even 5 minutes.

The story is fascinating but the narrator does a terrible job of pronouncing words correctly. It becomes very distracting to listen to the story as she continues to mispronounce words.

Nastaran Tavakoli-Far’s way of diving right in and getting to the point is a really exciting way of looking into this weird tech titan as a savior thing that keeps popping up lately. I’m super excited for the rest of the series. Tony Tsieh is really interesting and Vegas is such a surreal backdrop for something like this to happen.