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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

#151

Post by jacalata »

outericky wrote: post #95
csours wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's one step more complicated than that. GM has 5 year renewable franchises, so theoretically they could just wait 5 years and not renew. The issue is that many states have laws preventing OEMs from selling directly. There are similar laws for unions.

I feel the laws preventing OEMS selling directly are antiquated. Dealerships are a scam. It's a game of "how much can i squeeze out of the other party" - which generally is bad for consumers. Since most aren't trained to take advantage. OEM's don't need to sell directly, but allowing a "store" model where prices are fixed, non negotiable would likely be best for everyone in the long run. Well, except for the dealers.…

The laws are intended to protect the consumer by making sure there are physical places that can repair your car in the state. The question is whether that's necessary any more.

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

#152

Post by jacalata »

pbreit wrote: post #139
tsunamifury wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is a stage where a genuine innovation is in a regulatory grey state because society simply hasn't processed its effects yet. That wasn't the case here... but it is in many other situations. Sometimes ex-post-facto the innovation is ruled against regulation and sometimes not. Take Tesla as an example -- a company who has tried to sell cars online. Since many states hadn't seen that before, they tried to…

AirBnB, PayPal & Uber are better examples. The "follow the rules period crowd" would never have let them succeed. Is that really what we want?

Why PayPal?

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

#153

Post by mbesto »

stale2002 wrote: post #141
mbesto wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How precisely do you determine which rules are breakable for a product/service that is "better than the alternative"? I'd love to stay in a hotel and not pay hotel taxes, as would Marriott, so I use AirBnb instead. I'd also like to present fake receipts for reimbursement to my employer so I can make more money. Both are "alternative products" that are better for me, but someone else suffers. EDIT: Grammar.

You determine it on a case by case basis. There is no need to have a perfect system for handling all situations with bad laws and which should be broken. Humans have brains, we should use them to determine that question for ourselves.

> There is no need to have a perfect system for handling all situations with bad laws and which should be broken.

If it was that easy, wouldn't we have made and edited the laws already to align to that?

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

#154

Post by mindcrime »

st3v3r wrote: post #99
mindcrime wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because sometimes you're dealing with a bad law.

If that's the case, then the company should have been lobbying to have the law changed, instead of brazenly disregarding it and making money from having an unfair competitive advantage.

Personally I don't have any problem with disregarding a bad law. YMMV.

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

#155

Post by jacalata »

pc86 wrote: post #107
maxerickson wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-le…

If you will go bankrupt and have your life destroyed because the place you work at goes out of business, then that's a different problem.

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

#156

Post by JoshTriplett »

cookiecaper wrote: post #148
smokeyj wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some rules are victimless. Or downright nonsensical. I don't like this tone of moralizing regulation. As if being non-compliant is inherently unjust.

Being non-compliant with the law is unjust in a society where people value rule of law. You can't just ignore laws that you disagree with. If you don't like a law, you should write your representative and try to fix it. That's a farce now of course, but we should fix the process so that it's not any more.

It's a lot harder to change a regulation when nobody has any idea what the landscape looks like without it, or how people could function without the incumbents that benefit from that regulation. Someone building a service people genuinely want, creating something useful that didn't exist before, and not doing any harm to people by doing so, may choose to go ahead and build it to prove that it's possible and sensible to do so. Sometimes that's the right thing to do; sometimes it's the wrong thing to do. But I'm not going to automatically assume that because there's a regulation on the books that that has anything to do with morality; there's far too many bought-and-paid-for regulations to believe that.

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

#157

Post by stale2002 »

mbesto wrote: post #153
stale2002 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You determine it on a case by case basis. There is no need to have a perfect system for handling all situations with bad laws and which should be broken. Humans have brains, we should use them to determine that question for ourselves.

> There is no need to have a perfect system for handling all situations with bad laws and which should be broken. If it was that easy, wouldn't we have made and edited the laws already to align to that?

What I'm saying is is that the existing system is working pretty well, IMO.

Using Uber as an example, what they do is they just move into a new markets regardless of the current regulations.

Most of the time, the regulators are extremely slow to act, and by the time they get around to acting, Uber has already won the hearts and minds of consumers.

And then the regulators try to act against Uber, until there is massive push back from consumers. This massive push back ends up scaring the regulators into changing the law in Uber's favor, and Uber never ends up being regulated, even though they blatantly broke the law in the first place.

And BAM, Uber wins in the vast majority of situations.

This strategy only works though because the laws are bad in the first place, and Uber is making the industry a much better place for consumers.

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

#158

Post by untilHellbanned »

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…

Zenpayroll's hands aren't clean either. I have a friend who helped build out one of their offices. There was an absurdly long courtship of literally backbreaking labor (she was going for an administrative role) mixed with dinners with executives only to be told that she wasn't a fit. Her follow up emails to figure out what could have possibly went wrong weren't returned. Oh the irony of a HR startup treating other humans as resources (to be discarded).

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

#159

Post by TeMPOraL »

pbreit wrote: post #139
tsunamifury wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is a stage where a genuine innovation is in a regulatory grey state because society simply hasn't processed its effects yet. That wasn't the case here... but it is in many other situations. Sometimes ex-post-facto the innovation is ruled against regulation and sometimes not. Take Tesla as an example -- a company who has tried to sell cars online. Since many states hadn't seen that before, they tried to…

AirBnB, PayPal & Uber are better examples. The "follow the rules period crowd" would never have let them succeed. Is that really what we want?

With exception of PayPal, of which I know nothing that would explain them being included in this list, I'd say yes - that's exactly what we want. AirBnB and Uber are burning social trust to make money, they're literally poisoning the society. And to (literally!) add insult to injury, Uber management are also being assholes about the whole process.

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

#160

Post by icebraining »

jacalata wrote: post #151
outericky wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel the laws preventing OEMS selling directly are antiquated. Dealerships are a scam. It's a game of "how much can i squeeze out of the other party" - which generally is bad for consumers. Since most aren't trained to take advantage. OEM's don't need to sell directly, but allowing a "store" model where prices are fixed, non negotiable would likely be best for everyone in the long run. Well, except for the dealers.…

The laws are intended to protect the consumer by making sure there are physical places that can repair your car in the state. The question is whether that's necessary any more.

The laws are intended to protect the consumer by making sure there are physical places that can repair your car in the state.

A law that forced OEMs who wanted to sell directly to have repair shops in the region would have that intention. In this case, it's pure window dressing.

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