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Zenefits Software Helped Brokers Cheat On Licensing Process

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Re: Zenefits Software Helped Brokers Cheat On Licensing Process

#61

Post by dcosson »

tyre wrote: post #33
gkoberger wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without knowing much about the situation... how much was this necessary? The industries Zenefits are working with aren't exactly tech-friendly, and I just always assumed Zenefits was doing some gross things on the backend in order to make things easier for the user. (This doesn't excuse bad testing or bad code, but it's not like the insurance industry has well-documented public APIs for Zenefits to use)

ZenPayroll has an extensive API (I built it.) They did it because they wanted to. http://docs.zenpayroll.com/

Reminds me of mint.com. I used to work at Venmo and they tried to integrate with us, but then without even reaching out to us they decided they couldn't because of the 2fa on our web login. We had a documented developer API but they seemed to never even consider using it.

Re: Zenefits Software Helped Brokers Cheat On Licensing Process

#62

Post by thwarted »

uptown wrote: post #34
maxcan wrote: post #25

In this one particular instance, good for them and its a shame that they got caught. I've had to watch quite a few of these "unskippable" videos for various government mandated trainings and there are a complete waste of time so that some bureaucrat can check a box and some company's lawyers can mitigate some liability. They don't educate the captive viewers and they don't protect consumers. Lets see how any customer…

Yes, it should absolutely be up to the individual to decide whether they've met the legal requirements for their job. I hope my surgeons self-certify that they're ready to operate, and the technician that repairs the airline I'm flying on should have the last word on whether he's qualified to start tinkering with the ailerons!

There are a few tasks/requirements at issue here, 1) the legal requirement that the individuals be sufficiently trained, which then requires 2) the legal requirement that training be provided. If the individual in (1) is "phoning it in" by avoiding watching the provided video, it could also be that the individuals who are providing the training are "phoning it in" by considering a video to be sufficiently fulfilling the requirement for providing training.

As is the case with a lot of these kinds of things, one ends up without any value after taking the training compared to where they were before taking the training. If this is the case, the training is meaningless. The only way to asses the value of the training is through some kind of testing as part of or after the training occurs. This is like requiring attendance of driving school for traffic violations. It is very rarely the case that anyone in driving school actually didn't know the law, but rather they were skirting it and ended up getting caught. They are only in driving school to satisfy the requirements of getting the limits on their driving lifted (being licensed or being able to get cheaper insurance). The driving school ends up being a burden because it takes time, and doesn't necessarily end up making anyone a better driver (although, you could use the lack of further infractions as the metric that the training was successful, but there's a lot of other influences here).

If both the trainer and the trainee are phoning it in, does it matter? If the trainer is phoning it in, is the trainee really doing anything worse by also phoning it in? If the trainer fails at their job because they are providing pomp and circumstance, we end up at the same place we were without doing any training at all, even if the trainees do make a concerted effort to be trained. That is, the trainee could bust their butt watching this video, but in the end, no one has actually been trained.

This isn't meant to get the trainees off the hook for phoning it in, but let's call a rose an rose and acknowledge that there might not actually be much value in 52 hours of video watching.

Re: Zenefits Software Helped Brokers Cheat On Licensing Process

#63

Post by xkeemy »

NDizzle wrote: post #35

Can someone give me a good explanation of how the COO wasn't responsible for this kind of stuff? It's mind boggling to me how hard Sacks is throwing Conrad under the bus, despite possibly being just as guilty. I mean, I get it - power plays and all. But aren't they both responsible?

Not to say Sacks shouldn't be responsible but, to my understanding, all of these issues being reported on are coming out of the sales org (which is what Parker primarily focused on) where as Sacks primary focus as COO was on post sales customer success (product, ops, support, etc.)

Re: Zenefits Software Helped Brokers Cheat On Licensing Process

#64

Post by SilasX »

dragonwriter wrote: post #30
Analemma_ wrote: post #13

I guess this is a useful lesson to any would-be founders who want to make a business out of breaking the law: make sure you don't break laws higher than those on the municipal level. The difference between Uber and Zenefits/Theranos is that cities have limited resources and angry citizens can convince them to back down (and if you lose, hey, just ignore that city and try somewhere else), whereas state and Federal age…

> The difference between Uber and Zenefits/Theranos is that cities have limited resources and angry citizens can convince them to back down (and if you lose, hey, just ignore that city and try somewhere else), whereas state and Federal agencies can nuke you at any time and don't really have to worry about the vox populi. Aren't a substantial share of Uber's legal issues state-level employer vs. contractor issues (whi…

The employee/contractor thing probably gets a lot less attention than the legal status of call-a-ride services and whether they need a medallion and the additional hurdles taxis meet, given that they don't pick up randos off the street.

Re: Zenefits Software Helped Brokers Cheat On Licensing Process

#65

Post by stordoff »

run4yourlives2 wrote: post #50

Let's just forget about the entire ethical argument around breaking an existing policy/legal condition of doing business, as important as that is wrt health insurance. Who in their right mind thinks taking the time to design, then publish, a way to defeat a relatively straightforward education requirement is in any way a worthwhile thing to do? There is a level of ego there that goes beyond rational decision making:…

> Did Zenefits employees really gain anything from not having to complete the required 52 hours? Was it really that big of an ordeal?

That was my first thought as well. I can see the appeal in streamlining (what at first glance seems like) an arbitrary process if the final exam is passed legitimately, but a one-time commitment of 52 hours at the start of employment (a good chunk of which you'd probably need to do anyway for the exam) barely seems worth bothering with. As you say, the risks are disproportionate - it certainly makes me wonder what other corners are being cut.

Re: Zenefits Software Helped Brokers Cheat On Licensing Process

#66

Post by 1stbubblevet »

I think the focus on "TheMacro" is a bit overblown. "TheMacro" sounds sinister, but AFAICS it just keeps a web session from expiring. Depending on Session timeout length, the 52 hour requirement can still be gamed by having multiple browser windows open.

Re: Zenefits Software Helped Brokers Cheat On Licensing Process

#67

Post by run4yourlives2 »

stordoff wrote: post #65
run4yourlives2 wrote: post #50

Let's just forget about the entire ethical argument around breaking an existing policy/legal condition of doing business, as important as that is wrt health insurance. Who in their right mind thinks taking the time to design, then publish, a way to defeat a relatively straightforward education requirement is in any way a worthwhile thing to do? There is a level of ego there that goes beyond rational decision making:…

> Did Zenefits employees really gain anything from not having to complete the required 52 hours? Was it really that big of an ordeal? That was my first thought as well. I can see the appeal in streamlining (what at first glance seems like) an arbitrary process if the final exam is passed legitimately, but a one-time commitment of 52 hours at the start of employment (a good chunk of which you'd probably need to do any…

Well, based on what I read elsewhere it seems like they didn't think licencing was that big of a deal at all really, which is an even larger demonstration of hubris than this.

I do feel bad for their employees who may end up being blacklisted from insurance period for practicing without a licence.

Re: Zenefits Software Helped Brokers Cheat On Licensing Process

#68

Post by trevmckendrick »

This is being way overblown IMO.

If you've worked at a big, regulated company, you know there are tons of trainings that you have to do.

Often said training provide little to no value, other than covering the ass (CYA'ing) of the employer.

But what's worse: these programs will sometimes log you out if you're not paying 100% attention.

Everyone I knew working at our Big 4 accounting firm would do our real work while these "training" videos played in the background.

Some engineer likely thought s/he was helping everyone out. And rightly so...their time was likely much better spent in other places given their incredible growth.

Re: Zenefits Software Helped Brokers Cheat On Licensing Process

#69

Post by GauntletWizard »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #22
tyre wrote: post #16

I used to work at Gusto (ZenPayroll back in my day) and dealing with Zenefits was always a pain for this reason. They were the consummate hackers, using screen scraping and automation to do whatever the hell they wanted. One nightmare example was when a bug in their "automated" system rewrote bank account information for tons of employees to just be the last 4 digits of their account number. Such a mess. Even if this…

> uncovering some frightening immaturity pervasive in Valley companies. This is one of the dark sides to having an entire engineering team in the 25-30 age range. They can sling http just fine, but sometimes don't fully grasp the consequences of their work.

The guy on my team who's a 'hacker' is in his mid 30s. Some people just never grow up. I'm 27, and I'm the guy always arguing with my near-40 boss about trying to do things the right way, not the way that's easiest today. Age is probably the generalization to make, but cargo-cult mentality isn't in any way limited to then young.

Re: Zenefits Software Helped Brokers Cheat On Licensing Process

#70

Post by jacques_chester »

dang wrote: post #53
brown9-2 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN seems to have what amounts to a systematic ban on buzzfeed, even though their news org helped break this story (and many others).

Of course we don't: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=buzzfeed.com . Two of the biggest HN stories from the past two days alone were from Buzzfeed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11075336 , https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11061992 . Usually the complaint I hear is "why is Buzzfeed on HN". Buzzfeed is one of a class of sites that produce a lot of dreck as well as the occasional high-quality article. Th…

We had a techtalk from the head of Buzzfeed's quizzes -- those annoying ones that overran Facebook about a year ago.

One of the things he said is that internally, Buzzfeed is actually three different groups.

One of them is a team of straight-up, legitimate investigative reports.

That's why every once in a while Buzzfeed break a big story and everyone sits around saying "Buzzfeed?"

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