The Future of Work: Attract New Talent, Build Better Leaders, and Create a Competitive Organization

Chapter 7The Managerless Company

Sun Hydraulics is a 900-person publicly traded company founded in 1970 that designs and makes screw-in hydraulic cartridge valves and manifolds used in fluid power systems. Over the past decade the share price of Sun Hydraulics has increased by around 1,800 percent going from $2.20 to just over $41 dollars a share. Valve, mentioned earlier, is a 400-person gaming company valued at around $4 billion and has a 98 percent employee retention rate. Their profitability per employee is higher than that of Google, Amazon, or Microsoft. Medium is a platform for content discovery and storytelling that was started by one of the co-founders of Twitter, Evan Williams, and the company has around 40 people based in San Francisco. Treehouse has around 100 people; the company helps people learn web design and development and helps people find technical jobs; and since its creation more than three years ago has lost only three people. W. L. Gore, creator of the Gore-Tex fabric, has more than 10,000 employees and is consistently ranked in Fortune's 100 Best Companies to Work For annual list. Supercell, the Finnish gaming company with more than 100 employees is valued at around $3 billion and makes $2.5 million a day and recently raised $1.5 billion (with a “B”) in funding (for a 51 percent stake in the company to SoftBank and GungHo). Morning Star is the world's largest tomato processor with around 2,500 employees headquartered in Woodland, California. GitHub is ...