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Zenefits Was the Perfect Startup, Then It Self-Disrupted

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Re: Zenefits Was the Perfect Startup, Then It Self-Disrupted

#101

Post by ci5er »

carsongross wrote: post #79
GavinB wrote: post #3

So a company that blatantly cheated will pay some fines and still be worth billions. The founders and early employees will all be rich, or richer than they were when they started. The investors will get a very healthy return. The lesson: break the rules and grow so fast that by the time regulators catch up, you can put on a show of reforming and still keep most of the value that you created. Admirable disruption or h…

You know how to feel about it. But you rightly recognize that there is a prisoners dilemma when it comes to moral behavior. Your stomach is tempting you to defect. Your heart is telling you not to. And your head is wondering how the game could be structured to favor your heart over your stomach.

That's really good.

I'd normally just up-vote and move on, but I've gotta ask: Is that original or did that come from somewhere? If the latter -- I'd appreciate a reference because I'd like to read more.

Re: Zenefits Was the Perfect Startup, Then It Self-Disrupted

#102

Post by econner »

tyre wrote: post #97

They are anything but the perfect startup. As an early ZenPayroll engineer, I'm biased but also informed. That company was a shitshow from day one. Their recklessness caused a few sleepless nights for our team including one time they overwrote every bank account number (by scripting our front end, after asking SMB users for their passwords and storing them in spreadsheets.) This caused tens of millions of dollars in…

> The Valley has yet to prove that it can build sustainable companies.

I was with you until this line. The valley has been producing sustainable companies for decades. Some companies fail. This is the way things go.

Re: Zenefits Was the Perfect Startup, Then It Self-Disrupted

#103

Post by tedmiston »

drostie wrote: post #12

So, the difference between a "hacker" and an "engineer" has always been this idea that the engineer is designing something which is principled at all levels, whereas the hacker is putting together something which works in the most obvious cases but doesn't necessarily cover all of their bases. In practice, I think we all know that a little of both is best; ideally you can throw something together with copy-paste prog…

With the Series B round, my startup began actively managing tech debt. When an engineer finds something major we create a Jira issue, user story style. The head of product (a technical person) prioritizes a blend of product features vs tech debt for each sprint. Usually that's 10-25% tech debt, which includes mostly non-critical but beneficial refactoring as you described. It's worked well for us.

Re: Zenefits Was the Perfect Startup, Then It Self-Disrupted

#104

Post by calcsam »

robbiemitchell wrote: post #68

> There wasn’t even an IT person to fix the printers. Conrad hadn’t forgotten to fill these positions. The way he saw it, Zenefits was full of gifted engineers; if their computers weren’t working, they should be able to fix them. Of course, time spent futzing with the Wi-Fi was time not spent building the product or dealing with customers. To Conrad, that just meant the engineers needed to work harder. > Zenefits use…

It also isn't true.

Parker didn't approve every single vacation request. He also wasn't the only admin -- his personal assistant, his co-founder, and a couple others had access.

And starting in about Jan 2015, line managers had admin access for their employees -- the feature was shipped publicly in May:

https://www.zenefits.com/blog/zenefits-for-managers/

Re: Zenefits Was the Perfect Startup, Then It Self-Disrupted

#105

Post by carsongross »

ci5er wrote: post #101
carsongross wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know how to feel about it. But you rightly recognize that there is a prisoners dilemma when it comes to moral behavior. Your stomach is tempting you to defect. Your heart is telling you not to. And your head is wondering how the game could be structured to favor your heart over your stomach.

That's really good. I'd normally just up-vote and move on, but I've gotta ask: Is that original or did that come from somewhere? If the latter -- I'd appreciate a reference because I'd like to read more.

I was thinking of the C.S. Lewis quote from The Abolition of Man: "The head rules the belly through the chest."

Re: Zenefits Was the Perfect Startup, Then It Self-Disrupted

#106

Post by pimlottc »

RubyPinch wrote: post #4
MattBearman wrote: post #2

Having just read The Website Obesity Crisis[0] I was instantly intrigued by the video loop at the top of this article, so fired up Chrome's network inspector. Not only is it 6.7Mb, but it's sent using streaming (Status: 206 Partial Content), and for me at least, every time the video reaches the end, it's loaded again, and not from cache. I didn't actually read the article, but according to Read-o-meter[1] it would ta…

did you have caching disabled in your dev tools?

By default, caching is disabled whenever you have dev tools open.

Re: Zenefits Was the Perfect Startup, Then It Self-Disrupted

#107

Post by pc86 »

maxerickson wrote: post #39
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You sir are correct. I'm curious though; are there any really good solutions to this type of problem? You can't rewind time and go back and taking away all assets gained in such a manner, while doable, would pretty much put the company out of business even if they're willing to comply. Seems like there isn't really a good way to prevent companies from breaking the law. Well unless you do some sort of regular inspecti…

What's wrong with putting companies out of business? I understand that it ends up having impacts on people that aren't necessarily involved in the misbehavior, but it provides officers and investors a significant incentive to avoid wrongdoing.

> I understand that it ends up having impacts on people that aren't necessarily involved in the misbehavior, but ...

The fact that you understand this could bankrupt and destroy people's lives simply because they worked at the wrong company at the wrong time, but still seek to rationalize it, is more than a little disturbing.

Having draconian penalties for line employees is not going to do anything to dissuade a C-level executive who wants to commit fraud from committing fraud.

Re: Zenefits Was the Perfect Startup, Then It Self-Disrupted

#108

Post by icebraining »

dragonwriter wrote: post #82
icebraining wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being a federal issue doesn't preclude it being a state issue as well, as far as I know.

Interstate commerce being a federal power under the Constitution prohibits states acting to regulate interstate commerce where the federal government has acted, without the permission of Congress, and prohibits the States from discriminating against out-of-state commerce generally. That doesn't mean that all State regulation of interstate commerce is prohibited, but the State's power is sharply circumscribed by the m…

Are you making a general point, or is this particular rule affected by such restrictions?

Re: Zenefits Was the Perfect Startup, Then It Self-Disrupted

#110

Post by jpm_sd »

drostie wrote: post #59
beamatronic wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I applaud you for taking the initiative to continuously improve the system you're responsible for. These kind of values seem to be hard to find these days. Serious question, do you also enjoy working on/tinkering with old cars? I have a few data points where I've found that people who do enjoy working on/messing with cars are also the same kind of people who do what you do. If this is true, it's something you can loo…

I would love to work on old cars if I were not living paycheck-to-paycheck. However if I had the free money, well before I started tinkering with old cars, I would probably start scheduling vacations in eastern Africa. I'm not sure what exactly I'd be doing there, but I figure someone's got to have wiring issues or plumbing problems or a broken tractor or something -- anything that I could put my Applied Physics degr…

Off-topic, but you would probably enjoy volunteering for Engineers Without Borders (http://www.ewb-usa.org/).
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