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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

#211

Post by swyman »

st3v3r wrote: post #94
nostrademons wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The complication is that "wrongdoing" is in the eye of the beholder. Is Uber committing wrongdoing? The taxi companies certainly think so. Many municipalities think so. A lot of folks on Hacker News think so. But the folks who had a few too many beers and missed the last Caltrain and would otherwise drive home drunk if Uber didn't exist? The innocent folks that would otherwise have been killed by a drunk driver if Ub…

Your entire 2nd paragraph is bullshit. There is absolutely nothing in that paragraph that indicates they had to break the law.

No one absolutely, positively, no-possible-other-options "has to" do anything ever. People make decisions on a spectrum and at the margins. There are people who never drink ever. There are people who drink every night but would never drive. There are people who drive drunk every single night. If you make it easier to get home without driving drunk, some people that otherwise would've gotten behind the wheel will make the responsible choice.

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

#212

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#213

Post by 21echoes »

kafkaesq wrote: post #180
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.

Your stomach is tempting you to defect. Your heart is telling you not to. And then, thankfully, your brain chimes in, and reminds you that while short-term PD-like scenarios seem to reward defection, in iterative scenarios -- more comparable to PD-like situations we encounter in real life -- it is cooperation (or at least, not fucking your neighbor over for the sake of short-term gain) that is very strongly incentivi…

> And yet, despite his downfall, Conrad is still a coveted name in Silicon Valley. People want to meet the man who created a $60 million company in just three years and made good on his promise to shake up the insurance industry. Dalgaard says he’s been getting e-mails from people eager to work with Conrad since the day his resignation went public.

> Zenefits might also survive for the one reason that made its product so appealing to business owners in the first place: Shopping for health insurance remains really frustrating. The company says it now has 20,000 accounts. “As long as their problems don’t affect our company, we’ll stay,” says Todd Harmond, vice president for finance and operations of the e-book service Scribd, which uses Zenefits to offer Kaiser Permanente and Anthem health insurance plans to its 85 employees.

> “Unless something else goes really wrong with Zenefits, we’ll stick with them for a while,” says BlogMutt’s Yates. “It’s too much of a hassle to switch.”

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

#214

Post by driverdan »

> And yet, despite his downfall, Conrad is still a coveted name in Silicon Valley. People want to meet the man who created a $60 million company in just three years and made good on his promise to shake up the insurance industry. Dalgaard says he’s been getting e-mails from people eager to work with Conrad since the day his resignation went public.

This just shows how many unethical, delusional, or ignorant people there are. The guy sounds like a nightmare to work for and completely threw the law and business ethics out the window. Who in their right mind would work for or with him?

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

#215

Post by reality_czech »

majewsky wrote: post #174
mindcrime wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Allowing people to ignore laws that they perceive as bad does not work on the scale of a society. What if, tomorrow, I decide that the Penal Code is a "bad law" and start to kill people because I disregard this law? We live in a free society and therefore we have the freedom to disregard any law that we consider "bad". But we must also face the consequences of our actions.

This may surprise you, but humans aren't computer programs. They generally come with individual consciences and can decide what is right and wrong. It is insulting (almost a Godwin's law violation) to compare murder with the "crime" of disregarding arcane taxi regulations. It's very clear to everyone involved that the taxi regulations in question are designed mostly to protect the profits of a few fat cats who own license medallions (no, NOT drivers... most taxi drivers don't own medallions.) And taxi drivers were almost always contractors even before Uber came on the scene, so all the whining about how exploitive it is to be a contractor, etc. etc. is completely misinformed.

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

#216

Post by Bombthecat »

majewsky wrote: post #171
baddox wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like your "poisoning the society" claim is highly subjective, based on how you perceive their actions and what you think is the the "ideal" society. For me, and presumably a bunch of other people, AirBnB and Uber provide really services far superior to their predecessors.

It's probably a case of adding insult to injury. Looking at AirBnB specifically, their most vocal opponents seem to be cities who already have too few apartments left to rent. When a sizable portion of the remaining few apartments is then put on AirBnB rather then rented, rent prices go even higher than they already were. At least, this is what happened in Berlin (and AFAIR also some other large German cities), which…

Yep, and there is no incentive to create new homes. Except for airbnb.

Why would you create a new home when you just can increase the rent?

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

#217

Post by tnorthcutt »

crdb wrote: post #197
kafkaesq wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your stomach is tempting you to defect. Your heart is telling you not to. And then, thankfully, your brain chimes in, and reminds you that while short-term PD-like scenarios seem to reward defection, in iterative scenarios -- more comparable to PD-like situations we encounter in real life -- it is cooperation (or at least, not fucking your neighbor over for the sake of short-term gain) that is very strongly incentivi…

I wish some of my clients understood that. One just ruined all the goodwill they built up with me over the past year (which got them countless free hours, crunch time at short notice, etc.) by stiffing my company of about a grand - literally a few hours' work - on some badly structured justification, the real reason being he felt his colleague was not negotiating hard enough with me and he "showed him". Now I'm going…

Just curious: if they stiffed you, why are they still a client?

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

#218

Post by foldr »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #184
cookiecaper wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The morality is in following the law of the land regardless of your personal assessment of the law's merits or your personal assessment of the motives of the legislators. This should happen unless the law violates some fundamental human right. Respecting the rule of law is a moral principle. Morally speaking, the law should be honored while it is in force, and if it is not a good law, it should be altered through the…

> Respecting the rule of law is a moral principle. > Morally speaking, the law should be honored Emphatically no ; law and morality are two different things, that hopefully correlate, but law does not ever define morality. (If anything it should be the other way around, but far too often it isn't.) > and if it is not a good law, it should be altered through the means provided by the political system. I already explic…

>Emphatically no; law and morality are two different things, that hopefully correlate, but law does not ever define morality

That's obviously not what he was saying. The point is that there is a moral obligation to follow the law under most circumstances.

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

#219

Post by [deleted] »

tnorthcutt wrote: post #217
crdb wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish some of my clients understood that. One just ruined all the goodwill they built up with me over the past year (which got them countless free hours, crunch time at short notice, etc.) by stiffing my company of about a grand - literally a few hours' work - on some badly structured justification, the real reason being he felt his colleague was not negotiating hard enough with me and he "showed him". Now I'm going…

Just curious: if they stiffed you, why are they still a client?

[deleted]

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

#220

Post by cookiecaper »

foldr wrote: post #218
JoshTriplett wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Respecting the rule of law is a moral principle. > Morally speaking, the law should be honored Emphatically no ; law and morality are two different things, that hopefully correlate, but law does not ever define morality. (If anything it should be the other way around, but far too often it isn't.) > and if it is not a good law, it should be altered through the means provided by the political system. I already explic…

>Emphatically no; law and morality are two different things, that hopefully correlate, but law does not ever define morality That's obviously not what he was saying. The point is that there is a moral obligation to follow the law under most circumstances.

Correct. The law does not mean anything if we simply discard and refuse to obey the elements that we believe are unfair. That would be anarchy. Part of the compromise we make in modern society is the willingness to submit to communal norms and standards that are codified into law even if we personally don't agree with the rationale behind those laws. Later, this same courtesy is extended to us when fellow citizens comply with a law that they find personally disagreeable but for which we had successfully lobbied. This is the compromise of living in a democratic society. We need to accept it and comply when the law makes a determination that contradicts our personal preferences, even as we continue to work on rectifying what we perceive as bad law through the democratic process.

In exceptional cases, compliance is not required because it would violate a higher moral principle, but most of the time, the moral thing to do is to honor the law.

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