Tony Hsieh, the former Zappos.com chief executive officer who died on Friday from injuries suffered in a house fire, was an unusual — and unusually humane — corporate executive.
In 2009, after he grudgingly agreed to a buyout from Amazon.com Inc., Hsieh could have walked away from the online shoe seller an incredibly wealthy man — something many CEOs would have done. Instead, he negotiated a deal that gave Zappos a high degree of autonomy and stuck with the company for 11 more years, finally departing in August after leading the company for more than two decades.