Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

ADP Sues Zenefits for Defamation

blogs.wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 178 posts

Re: ADP Sues Zenefits for Defamation

#81

Post by stoic »

joshstrange wrote: post #77
jonathanmarcus wrote: post #55

We're a very small company (10 FTEs), but we have been anything but impressed with Zenefits as a customer. We only use them for medical and dental insurance, but in reality, they provide very little, if any value. The Zenefits software is really nothing special, and in fact, the onboarding UI is pretty poor. Now that we have our insurance, Zenefits adds zero value to us. We deal directly with United and Zenefits coll…

> Zenefits doesn't have any intrinsic rights to ADP's system. Zenefits doesn't want or need intrinsic rights to the ADP system. They do need (and deserve) the same level of access as a human working for a client using ADP. They might provide little to no value or be a worthless company but NONE OF THAT MATTERS. The client paid for ADP access and has every right to use whatever means they deem necessary to input or ou…

well, they have the rights granted within the acceptable use policy agreed upon in their ADP contract, anyway

Re: ADP Sues Zenefits for Defamation

#82

Post by DannyBee »

jusben1369 wrote: post #79
DannyBee wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably the latter, but this is a dumb way to do it :) As a customer, my takeaway would be "If ADP doesn't like what i tell people about it, it's going to actually sue me".

I like your posts here but think this one missed the mark. I think as ADP you want "Uncertainty startup Zenefits uncertainty sued Zenefits incumbent ADP uncertainty Zenefits" in the minds of every non startup CFO or VP of HR who was thinking there might be something worth investigating with Zenefits raising $500 mil at a huge valuation.

Sure, i know that is what they are going for, but at least in my case, it wouldn't accomplish that :)

Suing competitors rarely makes people think you are wonderful. Suing competitors to create uncertainty is in fact, a great way to end up in a huge antitrust lawsuit.

Re: ADP Sues Zenefits for Defamation

#83

Post by gravity13 »

CardenB wrote: post #73
gravity13 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was curious what "chastise an engineer candidate on Quora" meant so I looked it up: http://qr.ae/7IErH1 Sounds like a perfectly reasonable answer to me. Especially after reading the question. It gives me a bad taste, I wouldn't want to work with that guy. He's the annoying guy at the table who is like "I work at x" and wants everybody to go "oooh," not "wtf is zenefits?" It reeks of the almost ubiquitous entitled t…

I get where you're coming from, but you have to realize, this guy is a new grad and he's probably pretty scared about which path to take because he doesn't understand the long term implications. He went to quota to discuss it with people and try to figure things out. It seemed pretty obvious to me that the guy was just trying to make the best decision for himself. The right thing would have been for the CEO to let th…

Disagree. Perhaps because I was never an entitled CS grad with the world vying for my attention? I was never scared about whether or not I'd make $120k or $400k. I just wanted to work on something I believed in and be a positive force in this world.

"attack him publicly" - interesting choice of words there.

Re: ADP Sues Zenefits for Defamation

#84

Post by codesuela »

thewhizkid wrote: post #76
tdees40 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't I have both? Isn't that the value proposition of Zenefits?

You can, but given the mixed reviews from actual Zenefits customers on here and elsewhere they aren't there yet. I liken it to tech's war on banks. Everyone loves to make fun of the fact that banks still use "old" technology like mainframes, but when was the last time a bank went down? I will go with a old school bank over a NewCo tech bank any day when it comes to nontrivial things like storing my money.

my banks online banking goes offline all the time sometimes for multiple days, certanly more often than AWS.

Just because you can't see the uptime of non user facing banking backends doenst mean they don't run into problems

Re: ADP Sues Zenefits for Defamation

#85

Post by gravity13 »

ahlatimer wrote: post #71
gravity13 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was curious what "chastise an engineer candidate on Quora" meant so I looked it up: http://qr.ae/7IErH1 Sounds like a perfectly reasonable answer to me. Especially after reading the question. It gives me a bad taste, I wouldn't want to work with that guy. He's the annoying guy at the table who is like "I work at x" and wants everybody to go "oooh," not "wtf is zenefits?" It reeks of the almost ubiquitous entitled t…

The worst part of that answer was edited out. He had "(n.b. -- we are revoking the questioner's offer to work at Zenefits)." Which is a reasonable thing to do, I guess, if you feel the person isn't all that interested in working for your company, but it isn't all that reasonable to say in a public forum. Edit: Here's a link that has the quote about rescinding the offer: http://www.quora.com/Zenefits-CEO-Rescinds-Job-…

lol I didn't know that.

Meh. It's something I would have done myself in the same situation.

Re: ADP Sues Zenefits for Defamation

#86

Post by mark212 »

CPLX wrote: post #50
DannyBee wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe? This is an oft-repeated claim, but my experience tells me differently. Contrary to popular tv shows, there is only so much that can happen. Lawsuits drag on whether someone is trying or not :) Barring some outliers, the difference between lawsuits that are dragged out and ones that aren't is not a factor of 10, it's probably a factor of 1.2. State court is kind of a crapshoot, for sure. But you are super-unlik…

> Barring some outliers, the difference between lawsuits that are dragged out and ones that aren't is not a factor of 10, it's probably a factor of 1.2. That's crazy talk. You can double the length of a lawsuit in one simple stroke just by having your attorney say "Sorry that week is bad for me can we do [date]" every time there's a continuance or adjournment. You can set return dates for any motions you initiate to…

no, actually you can't. It is not possible in ND Cal to "set return dates for any motions you initiate to the last date permitted." That's just not how motions work in ND Cal. And responding on the last hour of every filing deadline is what everybody does all the time. That's why most deadlines are fairly short (30 days, e.g.).

The real driver of court delay is the judge, not the litigants. I've had judges routinely sit on motions (fully briefed) for 9 months in ND Cal. Then one party or the other will move for reconsideration and it's another six month delay. It's just the nature of the beast; judges in the federal system carry very heavy caseloads, particularly ND Cal.

Re: ADP Sues Zenefits for Defamation

#87

Post by mark212 »

jgalt212 wrote: post #30

I don't necessarily stand with ADP, but I do stand with the vendors. Zenefits is just a thin wrapper around other companies real products and businesses. I suspect Zenefits true business plan is a trojan horse. Get between a business and its clients, replicate the wrapped business and whamo you put the existing vendor out of business and grab all their revenues. How else could Zenefits justify their sky high valuatio…

all of this kind of insurance is sold through brokers (i.e., a thin wrapper around other companies' real products). That's what Zenefits is competing with -- mom & pop independent insurance brokers, not benefit providers themselves. And entrenched incumbents like ADP who are slow moving and ossified.

Re: ADP Sues Zenefits for Defamation

#88

Post by slg »

joshstrange wrote: post #77
jonathanmarcus wrote: post #55

We're a very small company (10 FTEs), but we have been anything but impressed with Zenefits as a customer. We only use them for medical and dental insurance, but in reality, they provide very little, if any value. The Zenefits software is really nothing special, and in fact, the onboarding UI is pretty poor. Now that we have our insurance, Zenefits adds zero value to us. We deal directly with United and Zenefits coll…

> Zenefits doesn't have any intrinsic rights to ADP's system. Zenefits doesn't want or need intrinsic rights to the ADP system. They do need (and deserve) the same level of access as a human working for a client using ADP. They might provide little to no value or be a worthless company but NONE OF THAT MATTERS. The client paid for ADP access and has every right to use whatever means they deem necessary to input or ou…

>They do need (and deserve) the same level of access as a human working for a client using ADP.

What is the scale of Zenefits' access? Do they function like a human or as a machine? Isn't treating machines differently than humans a well accepted standard of the tech industry? Why else would Robots.txt exist?

Re: ADP Sues Zenefits for Defamation

#89

Post by imh »

geori wrote: post #67
randall wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever had an insurance broker before? They're like the same thing but without the easy software.

Your local insurance salesperson probably has less bargaining power than Zenefits, so your rates with them could be higher.

FWIW my experience has been the opposite. No idea why, but the local guys do a great job for me relative to zenefits.

Re: ADP Sues Zenefits for Defamation

#90

Post by efuquen »

jusben1369 wrote: post #2

I feel like Zenefits is becoming a case study in everything you don't do when you enter an industry. We'll be switching away because I'm worried who else they won't play nice with in the future. Uber and AirBNB have scared the heck out of huge incumbent industries and cities/governments and had scraps to be sure. But they don't have the consistent missteps as Zenefits. They know when to fight and when to take a lump…

> Uber and AirBNB have scared the heck out of huge incumbent industries and cities/governments and had scraps to be sure. But they don't have the consistent missteps as Zenefits.

I feel like AirBnB, and even more so Uber, have had plenty of very public missteps. Both Uber's CEO and execs have come under fire for some dumb things they've said:

http://pando.com/2014/02/27/we-call-that-boob-er-the-four-mo...

http://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/uber-executive-suggests-dig...

That clearly doesn't mean you can't be successful, but I wouldn't say Zenefits has done or said anything worse than these other companies have.

Post reply on HN