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Payroll startup Gusto raises $200M

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Re: Payroll startup Gusto raises $200M

#121

Post by x2f10 »

jbarnold wrote: post #52
Meekro wrote: post #14

I love it when I don't have to think about things, and Gusto combined with Stripe (Atlas and card processing) have made it possible for me to not ever think about a whole lot of things. Now if only there was a company as good as Stripe/Gusto that did accounting+taxes, I'd really be set! I mean, "I give you access to my accounts, (almost) never think about you, and I have a proper set of books and my taxes are fully d…

Pilot.com founder here. This is exactly the startup that we're working on! We have 500+ customers including 100+ YC companies and fully take care of bookkeeping + taxes. Feel free to drop me a note at jeff@pilot.com if I can help.

Fascinating. However, being an accountant, I have to wonder how it's possible to scale. With (accrual) accounting being so dependent on management's estimates, how does it work? Do you offer audit protection? Do you work with ext. auditors? Do you provide GAAP / tax guidance?

Re: Payroll startup Gusto raises $200M

#122

Post by ketzo »

DidISayTooMuch wrote: post #90
ketzo wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like there's a big gap between "our mission is to save the word with payroll software"-esque virtue signalling, and a "PC" culture. 99% of the time, "politically correct" === "polite and respectful of boundaries."

Sorry, I am all for basic courtesy and niceties. But PC culture means not tolerating debate, not open to challenging ideas. It's dogma.

Well, okay, one example of PC culture is sensitivity towards microaggressions. Based on your previous comment, you're probably already rolling your eyes, but bear with me. Microaggressions are usually (and very broadly) defined as actions which unintentionally marginalize people. These actions are almost never noticed by the person at fault -- that's what makes them "micro." Examples include things like calling a black colleague "aggressive" when they're arguing -- that particular language has been applied to black people for a long, long time to cast them as violent or criminal, and thus comes across differently than when applied to a white person.

Anyway, I list that as an example because what you're talking about isn't actually an example of political correctness (which is, again, a shitty term for basic respect and awareness of social context). Humans like black-and-white issues. It's really nice for us to be able to put things in boxes. So when we perceive someone's action in a certain way, our gut instinct is to cast that entire person as that way. Do people sometimes take someone's rudeness (even if accidental) and brand them a racist, discarding all of their opinions? Absolutely. Do some of my family members hear that I voted for Hillary and decide that none of my opinions have value? Also certainly. Humans are dogmatic. "Political correctness" is an umbrella term for cultural sensitivity, and can (like any idea) be applied dogmatically. It is not fundamentally dogmatic.

Re: Payroll startup Gusto raises $200M

#123

Post by philsnow »

ojeggplant wrote: post #66
tempsy wrote: post #18

It seems like a good product, though I always get very uneasy by companies that have extreme company cultures. If you work there, you can’t wear shoes in the office (to give the feeling of being at home?) and apparently you need to change your LinkedIn headline to say you “Empower” X or Y. I feel like every blog post I’ve ever seen from this company is about their “mission-driven culture.” Can we go back to a time wh…

You can wear your shoes in the Gusto office. A good number of us do; in fact I'm doing so right now. I think it's more that you have the option and encouragement to walk around freely without shoes, whereas other offices would probably frown on you for going into a meeting with just socks.

Some employees wear their SF street shoes in the office, and they still encourage other employees to not wear them?

One of the reasons I never applied at Gusto is that I didn't want to take off my shoes. The floor is a commons, and it only takes one person walking around with shoes on to turn it from a "no shoes floor" to a "shoes floor".

Re: Payroll startup Gusto raises $200M

#124

Post by ojeggplant »

philsnow wrote: post #123
ojeggplant wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can wear your shoes in the Gusto office. A good number of us do; in fact I'm doing so right now. I think it's more that you have the option and encouragement to walk around freely without shoes, whereas other offices would probably frown on you for going into a meeting with just socks.

Some employees wear their SF street shoes in the office, and they still encourage other employees to not wear them? One of the reasons I never applied at Gusto is that I didn't want to take off my shoes. The floor is a commons, and it only takes one person walking around with shoes on to turn it from a "no shoes floor" to a "shoes floor".

Of the people who take off their shoes, 99% of them wear slippers or indoor shoes of some sort. The rest who wear socks don't seem to care about the floor either way. As a sidenote, shoe policy is a really terrible barometer for whether or not to apply to a company, regardless of how little it may have influenced your decision. I can't imagine you actually took it into consideration.

Re: Payroll startup Gusto raises $200M

#125

Post by ojeggplant »

ryanmercer wrote: post #67
user5994461 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One way to think about it is that each employees costs $100k or $200k a year. So for $100M, you can comfortably afford a few hundreds people for a few years with all the office space, benefits and hardware required. A regular small-medium business really, nothing special.

>One way to think about it is that each employees costs $100k or $200k a year. Those are some expensive employees, me and my friends don't cost anywhere remotely near that. I make 34k a year after 13 years on the job. A company doesn't have to hire in one of the highest COL cities in the country.

If I was making 34k a year after 13 years on ANY job in the USA, I'd get off Hacker News ASAP and make changes in my life so that it doesn't reach 14 years.

As an answer to your original question, Gusto's CTO responded in the question above yours. His answer below:

Co-founder and CTO of Gusto here. This is a REALLY good question and something that’s hard to appreciate until you actually to build a payroll system. I think a common misnomer is that if you’re not doing ML/AI/AR/blockchain/[insert latest technology here], you’re not doing R&D. The domain of Payroll turns out to be an incredible complex business domain. I think Ron Jeffries says it best in his post: http://wiki.c2.com/?WhyIsPayrollHard The software design of such a complex business domain at scale turns out to be an incredibly hard engineering challenge, and something that is often overlooked when we think about big engineering challenges. A little known fact is XP and Agile were developed by Kent Beck while working on a Payroll system for Chrysler (In fact, Kent now works at Gusto to help us with our payroll system).

Re: Payroll startup Gusto raises $200M

#126

Post by walshemj »

hollerith wrote: post #31
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can we go back to a time where employees aren’t asked to be 100% emotionally attached to their work When was this? Post-War corporations sported a common uniform. Industrial Era culture was demandingly monotonous and before that we’re talking about guilds and their customs. Broadly speaking, there are benefits at multiple levels to having a cohesive company culture (including eclectic traditions). We’re just seeing…

When I was a kid in the early 1970s, my dad took my brother and me to his workplace sometimes on Saturdays. There I interacted with machinists, electronics techs and at least one engineer. Also my dad was an engineering manager. It was definitely common and acceptable for the machinists, techs, engineers and manager to say that they would rather be doing something else than working or that they would rather have a jo…

I am not surprised some very skilled blue collar heavy engineering jobs could be very lucrative.

One example is "suddenly working to rule" just before a major delivery and getting paid back handers off the books for example. This is an example told to me by a hr/ir professional who came from Clydeside

Re: Payroll startup Gusto raises $200M

#127

Post by dragonwriter »

fhbdukfrh wrote: post #104
ryanmercer wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>One way to think about it is that each employees costs $100k or $200k a year. Those are some expensive employees, me and my friends don't cost anywhere remotely near that. I make 34k a year after 13 years on the job. A company doesn't have to hire in one of the highest COL cities in the country.

You're a software dev with 13 years experience and make $20/hour? You've been significantly undervaluing yourself for a long time

> You're a software dev with 13 years experience and make $20/hour?

Assuming a consistent 40hr workweek, $16.34/hr from the annual pay posted. Which reinforces rather than contradicts your point.

Re: Payroll startup Gusto raises $200M

#128

Post by [deleted] »

DidISayTooMuch wrote: post #45
tempsy wrote: post #18

It seems like a good product, though I always get very uneasy by companies that have extreme company cultures. If you work there, you can’t wear shoes in the office (to give the feeling of being at home?) and apparently you need to change your LinkedIn headline to say you “Empower” X or Y. I feel like every blog post I’ve ever seen from this company is about their “mission-driven culture.” Can we go back to a time wh…

This is exactly my feeling. Gusto just comes across as a nauseatingly virtue-signaling company (another is Lyft which I found out when I interviewed with them). I read an interview somewhere by Joshua Reeves, and he seemed to answer every question like he was Tony Robbins or some top-level guru. Dude, I don't want your life advice, tell me how to run a profitable company. Silicon Valley tech is overtaken by this need…

[deleted]

Re: Payroll startup Gusto raises $200M

#129

Post by Astroloth »

CPLX wrote: post #118
nemo1618 wrote: post #11

I remember switching to Gusto early on in the life of my startup, and how surprised I was to realize that I was excited about payroll software. The UI and UX were 100x better than the stuck-in-the-90s software we were using previously. It made me really optimistic that starting a startup would only become easier as services like Gusto popped up to meet their needs. My only gripe is that I liked the old name (ZenPayro…

> My only gripe is that I liked the old name (ZenPayroll) better I think you can blame the “laws, what are those” guys over at Zenefits for necessitating a rebrand.

False. ZenPayroll rebranded as Gusto in September 2015, months before Zenefits legal troubles went public.

Re: Payroll startup Gusto raises $200M

#130

Post by londont »

doh wrote: post #50

I'm really happy for them. I used to like Gusto a lot. It worked fairly well when we were a few people, but as we grew, things started breaking, especially as our setup started becoming more and more complicated. For instance, we have offices in 5 states and two countries. Gusto doesn't support outside of US folks, so we had to maintain two systems. One of the most frustrating things was the 2 day payroll. They turne…

(co-founder here) Sorry to hear about the issues you've had with our 2-day program. We've been working on making it better and the caps are now much more rarely used and we'll be getting rid of them completely shortly. Hope we can win you back one day :)
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