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Zenefits confirms 250 layoffs, 17% of company workforce

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Re: Zenefits confirms 250 layoffs, 17% of company workforce

#41

Post by tryitnow »

braythwayt wrote: post #10

> 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…

Not necessarily. It probably means they just overhired, which is a problem at a lot of companies.

They could just plan to get more out of a lower staffing level, this was fairly common in the "re-engineering" triggered layoffs of the early 90s.

My bet is we will see more layoffs like this because managers have erred on the side of overhiring. Now teams are overbuilt and there's no way they need as many employees as they have to achieve their goals.

So they lay them off. We'll be seeing more of this. Management will start erring on the side of cutting staff.

The one constant here is that management is always in error, it's just the direction that has implications for employees.

Re: Zenefits confirms 250 layoffs, 17% of company workforce

#42

Post by braythwayt »

w1ntermute wrote: post #36
braythwayt wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Well, now you're into a different problem: If the market is efficient, what makes you think you can afford to pay them that much?

Your equity isn't magically worth more than the equity of the company that already employs them. And if you give them a tremendous chunk of every sale they make, your COS is through the roof and you aren't making any money.

You might go raise a ton of cash and spend it buying great salespeople so you can buy some MRR and ARR, but everyone else is playing the exact same game, so you don't automatically raise more money than anyone else to spend on better salespeople.

In the end, what I am saying is that there is an efficiency in that market for salespeople such that anything you might think of doing to bring them on board, their existing employer has already done. And possibly better than you ever could.

Re: Zenefits confirms 250 layoffs, 17% of company workforce

#43

Post by rconti »

taway_20160226 wrote: post #3
tarr11 wrote: post #2

We are using zenefits and gusto right now. Gusto is pushing to switch for benefits management, but it's a bunch of work. I feel a little gross about staying with zenefits after hearing about their company, but it's mostly free and seems to work. They are also offering some other services like 401k, shift management and stock options planning. I'm sure at some point I'll consolidate on one of these platforms, but righ…

I don't know if I am alone in this but I have had job offers where the deciding factor on yes/no from my perspective was whether the company uses Zenefits. Everyone I have spoken to on the subject has at least one horror story, and this was prior to the recent revelations. Add that to the general behavor of the company and the employees. Although the CEO "took the fall" for it, it simply cannot be the case that every…

Meanwhile, ADP is an absolute joy to use. clicks 80 times to add 8 hours of PTO for each day of the 10 days I'll be on vacation

Nevermind, I can't actually do that because my account NEVER FUCKING WORKS. Between portal and ipay, the passwords at least used to be shared, even though you had to reset it literally every time you use the site. Now they're not even shared, you need to contact your HR department to get it reset, and even once you DO set a new password, it doesn't work.

Talk about a dumpster fire of a company.

Other than the website, I don't get why a normal employee would care about the difference between providers. What does one do with Zenefits that's so painful? Literally all I ever want to do is see pay statements and enter PTO. ADP's Oracle Forms implementation is a special circle of hell, so I don't really see how it could be worse.

Re: Zenefits confirms 250 layoffs, 17% of company workforce

#46

Post by [deleted] »

dragonwriter wrote: post #14
braythwayt wrote: post #10

> 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…

[deleted]

Re: Zenefits confirms 250 layoffs, 17% of company workforce

#47

Post by w1ntermute »

braythwayt wrote: post #42
w1ntermute wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Well, now you're into a different problem: If the market is efficient, what makes you think you can afford to pay them that much? Your equity isn't magically worth more than the equity of the company that already employs them. And if you give them a tremendous chunk of every sale they make, your COS is through the roof and you aren't making any money. You might go raise a ton of cash and spend it buying great salespe…

Presumably, you're targeting an opportunity that is very lucrative with a product that is very compelling, such that a sales person can generate more value per unit effort than at their current position.

Or perhaps the issue is that, in sales, there isn't the same multiplier phenomenon you see in engineering from massive scale/market opportunity. And this nonlinear effort-to-output relationship is what enables the market inefficiencies (sometimes in favor of companies, and sometimes in favor of engineering employees).

Re: Zenefits confirms 250 layoffs, 17% of company workforce

#48

Post by baddox »

braythwayt wrote: post #10

> 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…

> The job to be done is no longer there. Therefore, those aren't redundancies, those are layoffs, pure and simple.

I would presume that there are still sales and recruiting jobs at Zenefits. Maybe "the jobs were made redundant" isn't quite as accurate as "Zenefits realized that the jobs were already redundant."

Re: Zenefits confirms 250 layoffs, 17% of company workforce

#49

Post by tomjen3 »

w1ntermute wrote: post #26
trjordan wrote: post #21

Earlier 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?

A 10x salesperson will make ten times as many sales, but I doubt they will close sales that no amount of normal sales people can close.

Re: Zenefits confirms 250 layoffs, 17% of company workforce

#50

Post by x0x0 »

rconti wrote: post #43
taway_20160226 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if I am alone in this but I have had job offers where the deciding factor on yes/no from my perspective was whether the company uses Zenefits. Everyone I have spoken to on the subject has at least one horror story, and this was prior to the recent revelations. Add that to the general behavor of the company and the employees. Although the CEO "took the fall" for it, it simply cannot be the case that every…

Meanwhile, ADP is an absolute joy to use. clicks 80 times to add 8 hours of PTO for each day of the 10 days I'll be on vacation Nevermind, I can't actually do that because my account NEVER FUCKING WORKS. Between portal and ipay, the passwords at least used to be shared, even though you had to reset it literally every time you use the site. Now they're not even shared, you need to contact your HR department to get it…

well, I'm 7 emails and 4 phone calls (on two of which those assholes hung up on me) deep into trying to get zenefits to approve a commuter parking reimbursement, including having to send screenshots of the submitted claim in their system to one of their employees because he couldn't see it. And I still don't have my money.

Also, apparently I was rude to the supervisor I spoke with two days ago. Yet somehow their behavior -- wasting my time and repeatedly hanging up on me while on hold -- is totally cool.

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