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Zenefits confirms 250 layoffs, 17% of company workforce

venturebeat.com

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

#2

Post by tarr11 »

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 right now they don't seem stable.

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

#3

Post by taway_20160226 »

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 everyone else is blameless - the culture there is rotten to the core. Andreesen Horowitz, and Lars Dalgaard in particular should shoulder much of the blame for encouraging business practices which are shady at best and downright illegal in all probability.

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

#9

Post by w1ntermute »

stygiansonic wrote: post #7

From the CEO: " These changes are almost entirely in the Sales organization, with about a dozen employees in Recruiting. "

I wonder how many of them were thrown under the bus for cheating on the insurance broker licensing exam using Conrad's script.

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

#10

Post by braythwayt » 

  > 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, and you become aqui-hired by BigCo, they may decide that all recruiting will be handled by their existing team, and your recruiting team becomes redundant.

Notice that the job to be done is still there, it's just that the company has more people doing it than necessary.

But in this case, the company is laying off a lot of its sales force and recruiting team while mumbling further content-free buzzwords about refocusing its strategy. Meaning, they aren't growing any more, so they won't be selling as much or recruiting as much.

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

The distinction is important, because "redundancies" can arise as you grow (e.g. acquiring), but "layoffs" imply that the engine is sputtering. Eliminating redundancies is a matter of optimization. Laying people off is a matter of scaling back your ambitions.

The company is obviously trying to spin this, and VentureBeat is regurgitating their press release word-for-word without any editorial oversight whatsoever.

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