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ADP Begins to Roll Out a Zenefits Competitor

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Re: ADP Begins to Roll Out a Zenefits Competitor

#71

Post by logn »

wvenable wrote: post #14
cddotdotslash wrote: post #4

I admittedly don't know a lot about this situation beyond what I've read in the news the past day or so. However, isn't it the case that Zenefits is simply building an interface on top of ADP's payroll data? And, from what I've read, it seems like they did this without following the proper procedures (did they write some kind of web scraper?). So if that is the case, ADP has every right to block them. If the situatio…

It actually works a bit differently; it's not all scraping. People enter data into Zenefits and then it populates that data into ADP. I don't think the issue is as cut and dried as the typical web scraping situation and I wonder how HN readers feel about this kind of thing. The data belongs to the client. The client chooses to use both services. Should it matter how the client accesses their own information from the…

> Should it matter how the client accesses their own information from the service?

I don't think so either. Would people feel the same if a store banned wheelchairs? You can write a EULA however you want, but I don't think you should be able to enforce arbitrary provisions which harm customers and potentially violate the Americans with Disabilities Act. Probably this has nothing to do in practice with accessibility for disabled people, but it is related to accessibility and user experience for everyone.

(Disclosure: I write web scraping software... nothing related to this. Also I'm speculating about general circumstances, not individual companies, so please no libel lawsuits :)

Re: ADP Begins to Roll Out a Zenefits Competitor

#72

Post by mynameisvlad »

eropple wrote: post #46
hamburglar wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How smart is it to build a business on unofficial, non-API access to a system maintained by someone who you know will try to screw you at the first opportunity? If I were ADP, I'd probably be intentionally breaking those types of integrations just to make it clear that they don't intend to hamstring themselves by supporting interfaces they never published. The fact that it's someone in a market they intend to enter i…

I didn't say it was smart, but it's smarter than ADP's jokestore of an official API. If you want to talk to ADP customers--and, functionally, you very close to need to talk to ADP customers--those are your options. I feel like maybe the point of my post was not completely clear, though: this would not be a problem, and Zenefits would not be doing this, if ADP was good (not good in the "not poor software" sense, but g…

ADP's customers are most definitely not the third party developers, though. Because of that, you can't really conflate the two into one argument. ADP can easily be "good" to their customers while still having shitty APIs. Hell, plenty of companies do this every day, why should we chastise ADP for running a business?

Furthermore, a profit-seeking corporation shouldn't really be on the moral scale to begin with. At best, they should be amoral, that is, not involved at all in morality. Their primary goal is, and should be, to earn more money, not to be good citizens of the world.

Re: ADP Begins to Roll Out a Zenefits Competitor

#73

Post by wvenable »

hamburglar wrote: post #36
eropple wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From having been there, ADP is a tin-plated nightmare to work with for third-party API access. I'd do the exact same thing in Zenefits' shoes; ADP knows that they are eternally your competitors and will screw you at the first opportunity. Of course, ADP doing that is not doing right by their customers, but who cares, they're just cash cows.

How smart is it to build a business on unofficial, non-API access to a system maintained by someone who you know will try to screw you at the first opportunity? If I were ADP, I'd probably be intentionally breaking those types of integrations just to make it clear that they don't intend to hamstring themselves by supporting interfaces they never published. The fact that it's someone in a market they intend to enter i…

If it makes money, it's smart. If you're filling a need, then it's smart. Sure it's risky but anything you do has some measure of risk. It might even be worth it because it's risky and therefore less competition.

Re: ADP Begins to Roll Out a Zenefits Competitor

#74

Post by shaaaaawn »

It's interesting, because if Zenefits had already IPO'd they absolutely would not be able to take this approach. Too much shareholder risk. And this is just as much a David Sacks thing as it is a Parker thing. I have to believe after my 10+ years in Financial Services that David Sacks already disliked ADP from his PayPal days. Zenefits is going to lose this battle, but it's about the war.

Re: ADP Begins to Roll Out a Zenefits Competitor

#75

Post by joshstrange »

gknoy wrote: post #45
joshstrange wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they are so "completely different" then why would the ADP rep say: > “We are coming out with a product to compete with Zenefits, a full service integrated online payroll and benefits solution.” I can't seem to argue with Zenefits stance that they are being sued for complaining that their access was cut off in an attempt to kill them off while ADP launches a similar product... On top of that who is ADP to cut off a…

> It doesn't matter if a human logs in or a computer, the cost to ADP is the same In the response that ADP posted a couple days ago, they said that the traffic from Zenefits was several orders of magnitude higher than what normal customers were using. If that's true, then the cost could well be higher for them.

I just saw this for the first time, they are claiming while only .25% of users used Zenefits it was responsible for 25% of all traffic which if true is very damning.

Re: ADP Begins to Roll Out a Zenefits Competitor

#76

Post by maratd »

parkerconrad wrote: post #67
cddotdotslash wrote: post #4

I admittedly don't know a lot about this situation beyond what I've read in the news the past day or so. However, isn't it the case that Zenefits is simply building an interface on top of ADP's payroll data? And, from what I've read, it seems like they did this without following the proper procedures (did they write some kind of web scraper?). So if that is the case, ADP has every right to block them. If the situatio…

ADP has for years, and still does, allow bookkeepers, accountants, and HR services firms similar to Zenefits to access client accounts via 3rd-party administrative logins that clients themselves set up in their payroll. The way this works is that you, as an ADP client, call them up and says "hey, I've asked my HR firm, XYZ-HR, to manage my payroll. Can you create an account for them to access my payroll system?" ADP…

> There is nothing improper about how we were doing this.

You were automating it, weren't you?

With bookkeepers, accountants, etc. the login and work done on the system was manual. It was an actual person doing it.

In your case, a computer is doing it instead.

Virtually every site out there, from Facebook to Twitter, prohibits the use of bots and scraping. Not surprising ADP isn't a fan.

What is surprising is that you feel you're entitled to access their system however you want? It's their system. If they want to prohibit bots and allow only people, that's their biz. If you think ADP is full of it, create your own system with a public API and put them out of business.

Re: ADP Begins to Roll Out a Zenefits Competitor

#77

Post by beat »

justizin wrote: post #65
eropple wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the claim is coming from a company that has already made it clear they are doing things they should not be doing I'm troubled by this assertion. I know firsthand that ADP will actively fight attempts to integrate with them; their APIs are bad, poorly documented, and have reliability problems. Should somebody attempting to do well for the customer--and, yes, make some money, but it's not like Zenefits is inventing p…

Zenefits could simply implement ACH themselves, as ZenPayroll has. ADP is not a monopoly. Zenefits built a model that vaguely value adds onto ADP by using a more modern web stack. I'm no huge fan of ADP, but they're being generous to even consider themselves to be competing with Zenefits .

The word "simply" does not belong in the same sentence with "implement ACH".

Signed,

Someone who worked on ACH for nine years.

ps: I'm pretty sure they're trying to do just that. But you have to consider just how incredibly difficult ACH is - not just from a coding perspective, but from a regulatory perspective. Banking and accounting legal entities need created.

pps: ADP knows good and well that Zenefits is working on their own ACH implementation with their buckets of cash. This is a preemptive strike.

Re: ADP Begins to Roll Out a Zenefits Competitor

#78

Post by pkaye »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #57
phantom_oracle wrote: post #41

Reading this story, the lawsuit story and in trying to keep up with this entire fiasco... You end up feeling both sorry and a sour taste in your mouth for both companies. They're both obviously very good at "spin" and drumming up PR to win support of their audience. I previously thought things would get settled amicably, out of court, with Zenefits saying "sorry", ADP saying "its okay" and the 2 companies settling on…

> With that in mind, and also the fact that Zenefits can no longer be classified as a startup - with +50 (or is it +100 employees) Ha, because of all of the manual entry they have to do as of February 2015 Zenefits had over 500 employees. When the CEO went on TWiST just a week or two ago he said they were over 1,000 and hiring 100 new employees a month. They're burning hard and fast.

Why do they have to do manual entry?

Re: ADP Begins to Roll Out a Zenefits Competitor

#79

Post by beat »

noir-york wrote: post #22

I believe that this is called a 'free market'. Also, called 'underestimating your competition'. This common misconception that big companies are hide-bound dinosaurs is dangerous for any start up to hold. Most large companies are indeed oblivious, but some elephants - if you tweak them hard enough - turn around and stomp you. Always respect your competition. Some of them may be smarter than you think.

Something I've noted about the Silicon Valley startup mentality, and I'm seeing in this discussion, is a lack of understanding of just how difficult enterprise projects actually are. The attitude is often that big companies work so hard for so long and spend so much on projects and still have crap, that they must be lazy and stupid. This is not at all the case. The enterprise is full of smart, hardworking, determined people - as good as Silicon Valley - and they still wind up with crap and failure most of the time. That's not a reflection on the enterprise, that's a reflection on the difficulty of the problems the enterprise tackles.

Like I told someone at a Silicon Valley enterprise/health meetup last year... if you saw a startup with $50M annual revenue, you'd think they're huge, right? I've worked on three different projects larger than that, and they're all small potatoes in their enterprises.

Re: ADP Begins to Roll Out a Zenefits Competitor

#80

Post by hamburglar »

_lce0 wrote: post #66
hamburglar wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How smart is it to build a business on unofficial, non-API access to a system maintained by someone who you know will try to screw you at the first opportunity? If I were ADP, I'd probably be intentionally breaking those types of integrations just to make it clear that they don't intend to hamstring themselves by supporting interfaces they never published. The fact that it's someone in a market they intend to enter i…

A public web app is an official API, thought primarily to be used by humans; but built using protocols such that it's possible to be used by programs on behalf of humans .. You access HN by your browser, the same as Zenefits' customers accessed ADP services indirectly .. The point is where to put the line between what's a good allowed access, and a bad too-much-indirection access

Ok, let's for the sake of argument grant you that a public web app is an official interface (I'm not saying API because it's not a "programming" interface). The implied contract is that humans will continue to be able to use the web app to access the functionality it's intended to provide. Anything in the HTML is an implementation detail, not part of the contract, and is subject to change at any time, so long as the contract (human usability) is still fulfilled. This is why web scraping is such a risky proposition: the structure of the page may change at any time without violating the implied contract of a human being able to use the web page.

The existence of a public interface usable by humans (a web app) does not in any way imply the existence of a machine-usable protocol for accessing that same functionality. If you infer one, you do so at your own risk. By the same token, the existence of a machine-usable interface that is not public does not imply a contract that it will continue to exist.

If you build your business on an imagined contract, be prepared to have a bad day when the other "party" to the non-contract "violates" it.

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