Upon acceptance of the Zappos Intern position, we were forced to sign, in blood, an agreement to create a culture project. It may have just been some cherry syrup, but that’s beside the point. We were forced – against our will – to…to… CREATE FUN AND A LITTLE WEIRDNESS ( Core Value #3)!!!! Ghastly, I know. But really, right between “don’t suck” and “work your little butt off” in job requirements, there is a bit about creating a company-wide project embodying the ten core values.

This project may encompass anything as long as no bodily harm is involved (cross off Zappos MMA), it doesn’t cost boatloads of cash (#8 - Do more with less, people), and wasn’t Barbara Streisand karaoke. Okay, the last part was my stipulation, but then again, who doesn’t agree with me?! We all broke into groups and worked our little butts off to come up with something equal parts fun and creative.

These were the fruits of our labor: a paper plane contest, a secret admirer initiative involving clues and gifts, and a Merch/Tech lovefest with positive affirmations. My team came up with Azzazinz. This game, like the typical Assassins or Zombies and Humans you may remember from college, involves stalking, staking out, and acting like a total sketch in order to get the target assigned by yours truly. To make it more Zapponian and to Build Open and Honest Relationships Through Communication (#6), we required the hunters to take from their target a picture of their attack and a random factoid. We had a total of 88 people sign up – way more than we had hoped! It was such a success (and still is, as the game is still going) we have been asked to make this an ongoing game. Hoo-rah!

Unfortunately, your captain this evening has been slain. Go look at the website chronicling the attacks as I nurse my wound…

--Taylor

Hey everyone!

It’s been over three weeks since the last blog post from the Zappos Interns, so here’s a quick rundown of what we’ve been up to lately:

1. Our first All-Hands meeting: On June 22, we participated in a Tech All Hands with all the other tech employees at Zappos. The afternoon included the usual briefings from top company officials, the CTO doing a ridiculous dance, and even a spoof video made right here at Zappos called “Sh*t Developers Say”. After that, we all enjoyed a Happy Hour poolside at Green Valley Ranch, which had been booked out specially for Zappos employees. Pretty sweet. But the highlight of the afternoon was definitely the surprise appearance of the legendary Steve Wozniak, who indulged us with a half-hour Q&A about his time at Apple, his thoughts on the future of technology, and some funny stories. That was surreal.

Ravi R. and Yong L. with Steve Wozniak 

2. A volunteer day at the local Animal Shelter: Zappos is really involved in the Vegas community, and it trickles down all the way to the interns. All of us spent a day learning about the great animal shelter here, as well as walking and playing with dogs. It was ridiculously hot outside, but hanging out with dogs usually makes things much more bearable!

3. General craziness around the Zappos campus: Probably the best part is the frequent table tennis sessions all around the office. Zappos even has a unique 3-on-3 version of ping-pong, aptly named “Zing-Zong”. It’s a bit ridiculous to outline all the rules (basically because when you watch it seems as if there are no rules, and when you play you learn a new rule every time). Suffice to say that it’s a cross between regular ping-pong and volleyball, with each team setting up teammates and the ball not being dead till it hits the ground. It’s sick.

4. July 4^th week(end): My superhero Christina had a July 4^th pool party, and that night we all walked to a nearby parking lot to watch fireworks. The display here in Vegas was definitely better than what I’ve seen in most other places. Then, on July 6^th, for another day outside the office, all of us hiked up the nearby Mt. Charleston. The weather was beautiful, about 20 degrees cooler than in Las Vegas, and the views were fantastic.

Left to right: Adrian T., Nick HS, Jessica C., Alex H., Kiersten S., Kim H., Michelle V., Luke Z., Ravi R., Yong L., Irene P., Tylan C., Anya E., Tony G., Taylor S.

5. A trip to the Grand Canyon: One of the best things about working in Vegas is the proximity to so much nature (e.g: California beaches, Zion, Grand Canyon, etc.). Three of us decided to make an impromptu trip to the Grand Canyon a couple weekends ago, and were there within two hours. We spent all day taking in the sights and climbing to as many treacherous places as possible. Good times.

All in all it’s amazing how quickly the time has gone – we’re already starting our eighth week here at Zappos! I’m pretty bummed that summer is over in a month. But up to this point, I couldn’t have asked for more. As interns, we’re always involved and in the middle of things here, it’s never lonely, and there’s a great work-life balance – all things that I’d heard thrown around at the beginning of the summer, but that I’d never truly understood until now. It’s a great feeling.

Till next time,

Ravi

WOW! Zappos’ culture is unparalleled. I’m still trying to take everything in while finding my place in the HR dynamic, yet I feel like I’ve been here forever. It’s a strange sense of belonging you only get after years of dedicated relationship building at a “normal” company.

On the first day of work, our trainer Kelly knew all of our names and the individuals in the class soon became a close-knit group. As we finished on-boarding and started in our respective departments, it was bittersweet not seeing my new friends all the time. However, it didn’t take long before I was fully immersed in my department and now I cannot imagine myself working anywhere else. Where else do you receive a Shakeweight™ on the first day??

Now I’m sure you are jealous and wondering “What department gives their employees amazing Shakeweights?” Well, I am the first HR intern! During the course of the next 11 weeks I will rotate through each department, starting with the P.E.A.C.E. team. Each day is filled with wish-granting adventures, decorating and event planning.

My overarching project is to pitch two charities for the fall season representing men’s and women’s cancer advocacy and resources. On the surface, the team looks fun and spirited—although this is true, working on this team showed me the hard work and dedication the team puts forth in making the best events possible for Zapponians. The biggest challenge I am currently facing is balancing the projects I am working on and all the fun activities going on in the company. For instance, I am working on developing a visual for the employees of the office to see the progress Zapponians are making in raising money for a charity project. But I’m getting distracted with things like blog posts, decorating desks, throwing Jolly Ranchers at people and sitting in on meetings. Zappos has a crazy way of making life easier and yet more challenging at the same time.

Challenge accepted!

--Michelle V.

The One and Only HR Intern

I'm in a bit of a dilemma as I write this post because we were asked to keep these blog posts brief, but we were also asked to discuss the Zappos culture, and if my two weeks here has taught me anything, it's that those are conflicting requests. Why, you ask? Because the culture is unlike that of any other company I have encountered. In our culture class yesterday–a course taken by new hires here at Zappos, we were asked to write a single word to describe the culture. My first reaction to this request was disappointment, because I knew that of all of the words in the dictionary, any single one would not be able to do the culture justice. I considered inventing a word; something like "AwesomeFunWelcomingJoytastic" may have worked, but in the spirit of the exercise, I set out to find a word that exists in real life.

Imagine a work environment where you feel like you are getting to know the people that you work with, and not just their drone-like at-work counterparts. That's Zappos, which is why the word I chose to describe the culture is "ORGANIC". Not only because the employees are encouraged to bring their personality, quirks and all, to work, but also because the culture itself evolved organically from the bottom-up. Since getting to Zappos, I have been trying to figure out how they managed to scale the start-up feel to a company of more than 5000 employees, but the answer is simple; it all comes from the employees being themselves, not being forced to conform to their environment, but rather allowing, and helping their environment to conform to them.

After onboarding last week, everyone was excited to branch off and see what they would be doing with their respective teams. I'm on the Zeta team for the summer here at Zappos. I'll spare you the details of the multi-page, diagramificated email that my superhero, Patrick sent me, but simply put, my team manages tons of code that keeps the website's gears in motion. Because continuing to write in paragraph form is frustrating me, I'll leave you with a list of totally awesome things I have experienced in my short two weeks here that I don't think I would have experienced at any other company:

1. The other tech interns and I had lunch with the CTO, Arun Rajan yesterday.

2. I have been encouraged, on multiple occasions to stop everything I am doing and play a game of Zing Zong–a super intense game that can only be described as a hybrid of ping pong, volleyball, and soccer (or fútbol, if that's your thing).

3. Every so often, in the middle of working, music begins to play and the search team, Patrick and I do push-ups.

4. As I was writing this post, Tony, the intern on the search team, turned on a laser machine he brought from home causing everyone to leap up in excitement telling him he can never turn it off.

5. We already experienced one of Tony Hsieh's legendary email messages that he talks about in Delivering Happiness.

6. Because I indicated that I like Swedish fish on a personality survey, I had 8 bags of Swedish fish waiting for me at my desk on my first day.

7. Last but not least....this:

Until next time,

-Luke

Las Vegas, Nevada.

That’s where we, the first ever class of summer interns at the Zappos Family of Companies, find ourselves from now until the middle of August. And if the first 10 days are any indication, it’s going to be an incredible time.

Back Row: Yong L., Jessica C., Tony G.., Nick HS, Luke Z., Tylan C., Kim H., Lauren A., Ravi R., Alex H., Melodi E., Neil G.

Front Row: Michelle V. , Adrian T., Allison H., Irene P., Anya E., Taylor S.

I’ll be working with the Web Analytics team here at Zappos, so I figured it would be appropriate to start off with a quick numerical summary of the sweet setup we have.

By the Numbers:

• 18 = # of summer interns
• 12 = # of weeks in the internship
• 10 = # of universities we represent
• 8 = # of hours in our typical work day
• 3 = # of buildings that comprise the Zappos campus in Henderson, NV
• 0 = # of dollars we pay for food, drink, transportation, gym membership, etc.

And perhaps the most telling number of all:

Zappos has been ranked in the top 15 on Fortune’s list of “100 Best Companies to Work For” for three years straight, reaching as high as #6.

Even before the internship, our awesome campus recruiters Mike and Kiersten sent us welcome packages, filled with flip-flops, energy drinks, t-shirts, snazzy toilet kits, and more, all adorned with the Zappos logo. Then, as all of us filtered in to our gorgeous corporate housing at the Marriott Towne Place Suites less than ten minutes from Zappos headquarters, we were greeted by more goodies, as well as personal messages from our Superheroes. Here at Zappos, the terms “mentor” and “intern” were a bit too plain vanilla, so from day 1, we were known as Sidekicks learning from and working with Superheroes.

On Memorial Day, Mike and Kiersten, organized a great poolside welcome barbecue at our suites, where we all met each other and spent a few hours hanging out. Each of us shares a 2-bedroom suite, including a fully-equipped kitchen, bathroom, and extremely spacious living room, with one other intern. We even have a gracious hotel staff that makes our beds, does our dishes, and tidies our rooms each day. It’s slightly ridiculous in the best way possible.

Early Tuesday morning, 2 shuttles decked out in Zappos decals picked us up for our first day at the office. We spent our first three days in onboarding: a series of training workshops, lectures, and team-building activities led by Kelly, capped off by a famous tour of the Zappos buildings. I can now affirm that the office is just as awesome as it looks in all the YouTube videos.

Last Friday, we took a field trip to downtown Las Vegas, the highlight of which was a full-blown tour of Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh’s breathtaking house! A scavenger hunt and evening free time saw us wander through some of downtown Vegas’s hotspots, including the new Zappos headquarters-to-be in the old City Hall building, the Fremont St. Experience, and First Friday. All in all, our first week was a perfect introduction to our Superheroes and teams, the 10 core values by which the company and its employees live and breathe and the unique company culture at Zappos.

Then, last week, we were thrown into the deep end with our teams. My Superhero for the summer is Christina Kim, the senior web analyst at Zappos. Ronn Shaw, my other primary mentor and the second half of the Zappos web analytics team, changed my official job title today to “Porous Sponge” in an attempt to encourage me to soak up as much as possible throughout my twelve weeks.

I’ll be slicing and dicing data, analyzing what customers are doing on the Zappos website and where they’re coming from, and utilizing our conclusions to drive improvements to our website design, marketing strategy, etc. to benefit the business. For the first few weeks at least, rather than being at a desk, I’m working alongside Zappos employees from Marketing, Search, Development, and more from a conference room playfully (or painfully) dubbed “The War Room.”

Christina has had me reading, attending meetings, and playing around with the Zappos analytics software from day 1, and I’m grateful for the opportunity so far to see how all the arms of the business come together and function as a whole.

I know all of us Zinterns are thrilled to be here, so please follow us throughout the summer right here on blogs.zappos.com. A couple of times a week, one of us will post about our projects, experiences, and insights to give everyone an inside look at the first ever internship program from a company that’s created a buzz around the country.

Thanks for reading, and trust me, at Zappos, we’re committed to Delivering Happiness from the CEO all the way down to the summer interns, so it’ll be worth 5 of your minutes each day to check in. But no other promises ;)

--Ravi