See you guys in the stairwell.
Zenefits confirms 250 layoffs, 17% of company workforce
31–40 of 57 posts
Re: Zenefits confirms 250 layoffs, 17% of company workforce
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Redundant" is not a pure synonym for "unnecessary" or "obsolete," and in business-speak it used to have the meaning I shared above. It used to arise a lot in mergers, where "efficiencies" arose by consolidating functions and making entire departments "redundant." If buggy-whips were to disappear as a business because Buggy 2.0 (a/k/a the automobile) comes along, it was not commonplace to say that buggy -whip manufac…
What I think your missing industry leaders often can't grow market share. In that situation R&D is often focused on lowering costs which in some industry's directly translate to people. In this case the skill set is still valuable, you just need fewer people. EX: ATM's did not remove the need for all bank tellers, but they removed the need for huge numbers of them.
I don't see what's missing. Those people are laid off.
Re: Zenefits confirms 250 layoffs, 17% of company workforce
#33Earlier 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…
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?
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 with a demonstrable value-add, and they are employed by a company with a good reputation.
Why would they want to come and work for a start-up that stumbled and then at some future date tried to turn itself around?
Re: Zenefits confirms 250 layoffs, 17% of company workforce
#34> 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…
I think "made redundant" has been the British term for laid off for quite a while; though this is, IME, far less common in American usage. I think the distinction you are positing between them could be a good one to make, but I don't think its one that has ever been consistently applied in general usage of the terms in reference to business. > In this case, the company is laying off a lot of its sales force and recru…
I think that's great you caught on to that. I used to work for a British company and they used the same lingo. Thought it sounded a little harsh at the time.
Re: Zenefits confirms 250 layoffs, 17% of company workforce
#35Earlier 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?
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…
Perhaps offer them more than the outdated model of a fraction of a percent of equity.
And of course be a company with a convincing path to success, which is as a rare an entity as those 10x salespeople.
Re: Zenefits confirms 250 layoffs, 17% of company workforce
#36Earlier 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?
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?
Re: Zenefits confirms 250 layoffs, 17% of company workforce
#37I wonder if that has anything to do with the success of Benefit Focus?
Re: Zenefits confirms 250 layoffs, 17% of company workforce
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
What I think your missing industry leaders often can't grow market share. In that situation R&D is often focused on lowering costs which in some industry's directly translate to people. In this case the skill set is still valuable, you just need fewer people. EX: ATM's did not remove the need for all bank tellers, but they removed the need for huge numbers of them.
I don't see what's missing. Those people are laid off.
If you go from 10 Windows Administrators to 2 Windows Administrators then the other 8 are redundant. If you go from 10 VAX administrators to 0 VAX administrators they are obsolete.
The difference is if you still need anyone with the skill set or not.
Re: Zenefits confirms 250 layoffs, 17% of company workforce
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder how many of them were thrown under the bus for cheating on the insurance broker licensing exam using Conrad's script.
In that case, I wonder if they'd have any luck with suing him, or if the onus is entirely on them for having used it? Not being a lawyer, I'd imagine this would be a civil case where they'd go after his money / stock.
Doubtful. Even if they could claim they were 'pressured' into doing so, there was no real coercion - they made the choice to not go through the process.
Re: Zenefits confirms 250 layoffs, 17% of company workforce
#40Layoffs 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…
> 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 have a product they can sell right now, but they believe they can change it to make it viable. You need engineers to change your product.