ADP intentionally broke its Zenefits integration • Hacker News Board

Re: ADP intentionally broke its Zenefits integration

#31

Post by tomasien » Mon, Jun 08, 2015, 4:14 PM UTC

jusben1369 wrote: post #23

tomasien wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zenefits' entire service is about re-selling and managing other services. That's like saying an accountant is at fault for relying on payroll processors that may someday decide they want to be accountants too - of course they're not at fault, that's how accounting is DONE. This is ridiculous on ADPs part.

I'm not close enough on the details so I could be wrong. But it sounds like a) Zenefits integrates to ADP and starts being the flow through for payroll. b) Zenefits decides to become a direct competitor to ADP by launching their own payroll service (ZenPayroll mentioned here) c) ADP isn't enthusiastic about supporting a service that plans to upsell or cross sell shared customers to move away from them.

Zenpayroll and Zenefits are different companies and unrelated except that they both did Y Combinator.

Re: ADP intentionally broke its Zenefits integration

#32

Post by ohitsdom » Mon, Jun 08, 2015, 4:15 PM UTC

ADP online access is awful. They make up a username for you, some combination of first initial, last name @ company name. Then the login isn't a modern system, it's the old "authentication required" browser pop up, which disables any user remembering or password managers. Such a pain to deal with!

Re: ADP intentionally broke its Zenefits integration

#33

Post by GnomeChomsky » Mon, Jun 08, 2015, 4:18 PM UTC

jjulius wrote: post #26

rblatz wrote: post #9

ADP has some of the worst online offerings. In order to see my paystub or signup for health coverage I use one site. To request time off I have to use a different ADP site. Both have different usernames and passwords. Both sites look like they were made in the IE 5/6 web development drought. I have no real complaints though with how everything actually works though, never had an incorrect paycheck or messed up PTO.

Huh, interesting. Our company switched from Paychex to ADP last year. In the last month or so their online portal went through a redesign and now looks fairly similar to most modern-day web content. We also have the ability to see our paystubs, request time off and sign up for health coverage all from the same portal.

This is part of the problem. Huge enterprise companies in this space primarily grow through acquisitions, leading to a huge patchwork of products in the same company all doing the same thing. ADP are kings at this—so many different versions of so many different products (again, all doing the same thing) that there is no one ADP experience.

I think this is one of many reasons smaller companies are chipping away at these behemoths because the companies themselves (ahem, SAP) can't even keep it all straight.

Re: ADP intentionally broke its Zenefits integration

#34

Post by cbzink000 » Mon, Jun 08, 2015, 4:23 PM UTC

When I was back at an automotive startup, we had to write an integration with ADP's DMS. I can say without a doubt that it was the worst API I have ever had the misfortune of working with. Horribly buggy, the documentation didn't match the output, endpoints disappeared at random, different endpoints required different auth keys. Made no sense at all.

I even remember a time when our ADP representative called us and said she thought the project should be called off due to the amount of malformed payloads we were sending her.... on our development account. Not production.. Not even testing. Development.

ADP has left a bitter taste in my mouth since then.

Re: ADP intentionally broke its Zenefits integration

#35

Post by zimbatm » Mon, Jun 08, 2015, 4:24 PM UTC

voidlogic wrote: post #14

Someone1234 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is pretty typical to split sensitive personal information (e.g. SSN, pay, health records, etc) from administrative activities (e.g. leave requests). In the event that the administrative side gets compromised, it will limit how "bad" that compromise might be, additionally they may be required to store sensitive information differently (e.g. better physical security, server-drive encryption, etc).

In a well designed system this kind of segmentation and isolation can be done in a way that is transparent to the user experience. TL;DR Have your front end talk to multiple backends-

The front end is where it usually gets compromised

Re: ADP intentionally broke its Zenefits integration

#36

Post by jhgg » Mon, Jun 08, 2015, 4:28 PM UTC

ohitsdom wrote: post #32

ADP online access is awful. They make up a username for you, some combination of first initial, last name @ company name. Then the login isn't a modern system, it's the old "authentication required" browser pop up, which disables any user remembering or password managers. Such a pain to deal with!

Yes. And there's a character limit so it cuts off half way through my company email.

Re: ADP intentionally broke its Zenefits integration

#37

Post by notwhereyouare » Mon, Jun 08, 2015, 4:32 PM UTC

ohitsdom wrote: post #32

ADP online access is awful. They make up a username for you, some combination of first initial, last name @ company name. Then the login isn't a modern system, it's the old "authentication required" browser pop up, which disables any user remembering or password managers. Such a pain to deal with!

when we first got them at work, if you failed to type your password correctly, you were locked out of being able to login until you closed your browser completely

Re: ADP intentionally broke its Zenefits integration

#38

Post by notirk » Mon, Jun 08, 2015, 4:33 PM UTC

ohitsdom wrote: post #32

ADP online access is awful. They make up a username for you, some combination of first initial, last name @ company name. Then the login isn't a modern system, it's the old "authentication required" browser pop up, which disables any user remembering or password managers. Such a pain to deal with!

If you're using LastPass on Windows, you can install the LP Windows app and it can autofill the login box ADP uses. But it's still a hassle and takes a few extra clicks.

Re: ADP intentionally broke its Zenefits integration

#39

Post by pyre » Mon, Jun 08, 2015, 4:33 PM UTC

ohitsdom wrote: post #32

ADP online access is awful. They make up a username for you, some combination of first initial, last name @ company name. Then the login isn't a modern system, it's the old "authentication required" browser pop up, which disables any user remembering or password managers. Such a pain to deal with!

Several years ago, I recall looking at the JavaScript for ADP's online access. It was atrocious. Every text field was wrapped in an event-handler that was basically a case statement for every possible character you might want to type into the field, it was like someone used to writing apps in ncurses was tasked with creating a web app.

It also wouldn't work on Firefox due to an error in the way that they were checking the current browser model, IIRC. (This was eventually fixed though)

Re: ADP intentionally broke its Zenefits integration

#40

Post by pyre » Mon, Jun 08, 2015, 4:38 PM UTC

whoiskevin wrote: post #15

I have to put the blame on Zenefits here. You cannot offer something to a customer that depends on integration with a competitor. Shame on you. No I don't support ADP and am not a fan but basic business dictates that you should not even offer this service if it depends on integration with a competitor.

> depends on integration with a competitor

Zenefits wasn't a competitor to ADP, but it seems that ADP thinks that they may want to roll out a product that competes with Zenefits, so now they are trying to clear the playing field before they step onto it.

This would be similar to Apple deciding to screw up some 3rd party apps that run on OSX because they are working on a product that competes (but has not been announced or released yet). (And then you coming along claiming that said 3rd party software was a 'competitor' to Apple, so should just 'suck it up').