Spotify organizes its workforce into squads and tribes. A squad is a small, cross-functional team of roughly 6 to 12 people, typically combining developers, designers, product managers, and other specialists. Tribes are collections of squads, often described as neighborhoods, that share a broader objective or business function. This setup lets squads work autonomously, ship software quickly, and avoid much of the friction and overhead of traditional structures.
Airbnb follows a flat organizational hierarchy built around small teams of about 10 people. Ownership is non-overlapping, meaning each team is responsible for a distinct segment of the user journey, which allows members to develop deep expertise in a particular set of user needs. Within these teams, designers work as equals alongside engineers and share the same authority over how a feature functions and which problem it is meant to solve. Designers and product managers generate the initial ideas for what a feature should do, and once it is built, CEO Brian Chesky personally reviews it.
Zappos operates under a distinctive system it calls Holacracy. Employees are grouped into circles, and each circle takes responsibility for a specific function. A single person can hold several roles across different circles, so they can contribute in multiple areas while remaining accountable to each one. Decisions are made by the individuals or circles best positioned to handle the task at hand, which cuts down on bureaucracy.
Of the three, I would most want to work in Zappos’s environment. I enjoy its collaborative nature, since the responsibility for building a great product rests in everyone’s hands. Because decisions are made collectively, everyone has a stake in them and is more likely to work hard to make them succeed. when something goes wrong, the responsibility is shared rather than falling on any one person.
