Zenefits confirms 250 layoffs, 17% of company workforce • Hacker News Board

Re: Zenefits confirms 250 layoffs, 17% of company workforce

#51

Post by jpeg_hero » Fri, Feb 26, 2016, 6:57 PM UTC

w1ntermute wrote: post #36

braythwayt wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without commenting on the possibility that 10x engineers exist, I can tell you from experience in sales that 10x salespeople are extraordinarily easy to identify, but nearly impossible to hire. The problem is that the market for salespeople is very efficient. So your 10x salesperson is nearly always already earning an outstanding amount of money working for an excellent company. They are already selling a product wit…

> 10x salespeople are extraordinarily easy to identify, but nearly impossible to hire Doesn't that just mean you need to offer a higher percent commission, more equity, or whatever it takes to sweeten the deal?

i've known enterprise sales guys making $1m+ per year, cash comp.

a YP seed would get you 30 work days...

Re: Zenefits confirms 250 layoffs, 17% of company workforce

#52

Post by w1ntermute » Fri, Feb 26, 2016, 6:59 PM UTC

jordanb wrote: post #40

trjordan wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zenefits is a classic enterprise sale, meaning you staff the sales team at: # of reps X average quota = expected sales. The recent problems will hit their sales hard, and leadership knows it. With the growth they've had, there's a chunk of their sales team that's not fully ramped (meaning not producing revenue). Laying off reps + recruiting says they think they can't grow as fast as they previously could. Not laying…

> Not laying off engineers is probably more about how hard it is to hire engineers today, and knowing that when they get past these problems, it'll be easier to re-hire reps than re-hire engineers. I don't think labor hoarding is a good theory for why they're keeping their product team. If they don't have work for them now and are winding down they would be getting rid of them. Rather, I think they believe they don't…

From what other articles have said, they've actually been doing a ton of paper shuffling on the backend using human labor (by hiring a ton of people with all that VC cash), which means that engineering has a lot of work to do if Zenefits is going to be profitable at scale in the long run.

Re: Zenefits confirms 250 layoffs, 17% of company workforce

#53

Post by nostrademons » Fri, Feb 26, 2016, 7:12 PM UTC

trjordan wrote: post #21

kylestlb wrote: post #8

Layoffs are never fun... sad :( For the more biz-minded commenters out there: does laying off sales + recruiting signal a specific scenario (other than the obvious recent legal woes)? Rather than laying off engineers?

Zenefits is a classic enterprise sale, meaning you staff the sales team at: # of reps X average quota = expected sales. The recent problems will hit their sales hard, and leadership knows it. With the growth they've had, there's a chunk of their sales team that's not fully ramped (meaning not producing revenue). Laying off reps + recruiting says they think they can't grow as fast as they previously could. Not laying…

This may also be an easy way of firing people for culture fit.

David Sacks's original letter was heavy on the need to change the culture at Zenefits, and there's usually some degree of culture change at a company whenever a new CEO takes over. It could be that this is a convenient way to fire the ringleaders of the party culture, the people having sex in the stairwell, the most egregious rulebreakers or those who're disgruntled about having to go through all the regulated training, all without needing to build the paper trail that safely firing for cause would require.

Re: Zenefits confirms 250 layoffs, 17% of company workforce

#54

Post by SilasX » Fri, Feb 26, 2016, 7:13 PM UTC

braythwayt wrote: post #10

> Human resources and insurance software startup Zenefits > has announced that 250 employees are being made redundant, > representing 17 percent of the company’s workforce. Before "being made redundant' became empty buzzspeak, it had a very specific meaning: When things are restructured in such a way that two people end up doing the same job, one becomes redundant. For example, if you have an in-house recruiting team…

Yep. It's a general pattern: any term for "termination of employment" goes through the euphemism treadmill much, much faster than any other word or than we expect it to.

It used to feel like there was a distinction between being laid off (can't afford you anymore, have to scale down) vs being fired (you messed up and they don't want you anymore at any positive price). But gradually I heard "laid off" get used to mean any firing for any reason.

And it makes sense: anyone is going to want to make their termination reason sound better for them, while retaining plausible deniability -- "well, the word is ambiguous anyway". Plus, it's a sensitive topic where people don't want to reveal details of the reasons about third parties. So, expect any term for any termination reason get applied to broader and broader cases, to the point of absurdity.

"He was made redundant after groping the secretary."

"He was retired after they lost their major customer." But he's 35! "So?"

"She was downsized after using illegal accounting practices for the 15th time."

"The junior partner was let go after appearing drunk at a client presentation." (Note:"let go" can be a meaningful distinction in a case where leaving might have major penalties for the leaving employee but the managing partners waive those penalties.)

Re: Zenefits confirms 250 layoffs, 17% of company workforce

#55

Post by mwnz » Fri, Feb 26, 2016, 7:20 PM UTC

eldavido wrote: post #20

It irritates me that engineers never get laid off. This means companies still view their engineering workforces as "scarce" and hard to get, because they aren't paying market wages. Why is it only sales that gets the ax?

Why do you assume they aren't getting paid market wages? Your statement, in a way, is contradictory. Engineers are perceived as scarce, but they aren't paid market wages.

Re: Zenefits confirms 250 layoffs, 17% of company workforce

#56

Post by TheCoelacanth » Fri, Feb 26, 2016, 9:00 PM UTC

w1ntermute wrote: post #47

braythwayt wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, now you're into a different problem: If the market is efficient, what makes you think you can afford to pay them that much? Your equity isn't magically worth more than the equity of the company that already employs them. And if you give them a tremendous chunk of every sale they make, your COS is through the roof and you aren't making any money. You might go raise a ton of cash and spend it buying great salespe…

Presumably, you're targeting an opportunity that is very lucrative with a product that is very compelling, such that a sales person can generate more value per unit effort than at their current position. Or perhaps the issue is that, in sales, there isn't the same multiplier phenomenon you see in engineering from massive scale/market opportunity. And this nonlinear effort-to-output relationship is what enables the ma…

Presumably, so is anyone else who can afford to hire a 10x salesperson.

Re: Zenefits confirms 250 layoffs, 17% of company workforce

#57

Post by rdl » Fri, Feb 26, 2016, 10:38 PM UTC

tomjen3 wrote: post #49

w1ntermute wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why exactly is it so hard to hire engineers as opposed to sales people? Isn't it just as hard to find a 10x sales person as a 10x engineer?

A 10x salesperson will make ten times as many sales, but I doubt they will close sales that no amount of normal sales people can close.

They will close specific sales, and at a higher price, than other salespeople.

If you are limited by number of solid leads, putting great salespeople on the leads will get a greater amount of value than putting a larger number of weaker salespeople on it.

Great salespeople aren't just taking orders. They are finding and closing opportunities which others would miss, and making those opportunities far more valuable. You can have 10x the value on a single sale in enterprise by having the right team on the deal.