Zenefits CEO responds to rumors of company's struggles | Hacker News Reader

Zenefits CEO responds to rumors of company's struggles

businessinsider.com

65 pointszabramow57 comments

That image in the article makes it look like a terrible place to work: http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/56495c0e112314ef038...

Well, apparently for them it's way easier to aquire people than space, I mean, in the last quarter they hired 350 people, and since 1st November 75. That's like 3 people a day? Sounds crazy to me! With such a hire rate the quality must be going down at least a bit, and I can't even imagine what the on-boarding must look like, they just point at a desk(or a corner of one) and leave you at your own devices...

I might be wrong... but I would be surprised if I am very far from the truth.

Especially with that poster in the background where the only visible part is "WORK HARD"

small desks + stacks of mess... i'll take my cubicle over "open office!"

And I'll take my office, thanks.

Yikes...tend to agree. Can't imagine how I'd get anything done in such a cramped, open environment like that. Way too many distractions.

Also couldn't help but notice the "Work Hard" poster in the background. Hopefully the subtext that is too small to make out is something that makes it sound less severe than it seems on the surface.

Underneath it says "& be nice to people".

Does the text size imply the priority?

uhh, don't know what beach you guys are working from, but I appreciate a strong 'Work hard' vibe, myself.

You want a chilled out work-to-life ratio, there's a number of places out there for you. Hell, some of them are startups. But part of the appeal of working at a startup is that you gotta get shit done.

Work hard and be nice to people. Not a bad thing to see on your wall.

But part of the appeal of working at a startup is that you gotta get shit done

Agreed, but it's a bit gauche to hang a sign on the wall stating the obvious. Unless you're running, say, a kindergarten class.

Dudes, I don't think this Google Search here.

Say you're one of the 75 people they hired this quarter. Do you know what fields are mandatory on the 179c form in Maryland? No. Does one of those people around the table know it? Hopefully yes.

This is a multi-thousand person company to do something that has zero CS challenge to it. You need people constantly communicating changing business requirements and teaching each other evolving internal tools. If you have to get up and [guiltily] knock on someone's door to find this stuff out, the real work is going to suffer.

If domain knowledge is primarily accessed by vocal broadcast to everyone in the room, your business is in trouble.

It took us 6 months to find, renovate, and move into a new office. If they're adding as many people as they claim, that's more than enough time to go from "we're going to need to upsize soon" to "we needed to upsize months ago".

Seems like a potential startup opportunity.

We already have shared buildings but often these places are "bare bones." Maybe someone needs to have the building kitted out (phones, internet, desks, chairs, etc) allowing a startup to move in and be up-and-running within a day.

I know around here they have a couple of those, they're expensive, but they do what they say on the tin.

Or just onboard remote workers?

But businesses hate doing that since then you cannot micro-manage!

PS - But seriously, it boils down to "how do you measure programmer's productivity" which is still an open question.

Nice equipment, but yeah that seems really unpleasant/unproductive.

Random aside: I hate those lights so much. They often give me migraines as they reach the end of their life. Fortunately they have defused LEDs where I currently work which don't have the same issue (and are actually white not orange/yellow).

I want to work somewhere (aside from home) where I can work in the dark. We occasionally get power cuts (and our generator doesn't power the main lights, only emergency lights and equipment) and it is the most pleasant day ever...

http://i.imgur.com/UUw0ANK.jpg

That looks worse than some call centers I've seen. I'm not sure how they expect engineers to get any work done in those situations. That looks like "open office" taken to it's worst possible conclusion.

I know. Phones? Wtf?

That's literally the scene of almost any SV startup. They don't "do" remote. Nor work life balance. It's all about asses in seats. Stay very clear of a work environment like that.

This, albeit without the mess, is my current office setup. I can't quit as I've only been here 8 months, so I'm waiting to complete a full year.

Sort of hoping the company just runs out of money so that I can have a free out.

Would you pay money to exercise those options?

If you don't expect them to succeed then staying a full year for the options is pretty pointless, since they typically expire in ~90 days after you quit.

No - staying primarily to avoid the "job hopper" label, and to finish documentation coverage so that I can avoid burning bridges as much as possible - I am solely responsible for the portion of the product that I work on, no one else at the company even knows the language it's written in (which isn't particularly obscure). There's no way they'll be able to hire a replacement within two weeks, so documentation will be all they have to go on.

So who made the decision to go with that language?

Apple? NeXT, I suppose?

The way I hear it from reading here, most SV startups spend too much of their funding on beautiful offices and amenities to encourage work as a lifestyle. That also gets a backlash. No blanket statement covers all situations or people—maybe some of those requirements are necessary for a given startup at a given time.

I have a feeling that you don't really know much about SV startups.

Quite the contrary really. I've done contract and full time work for several (5) SV companies as well as countless interviews with 10s of others. My experiences have been fairly consistent.

I work remotely for a SV startup. And no one on the team works stupidly crazy hours. That's why anecdata is so misleading.

+1 for my new favorite term "anecdata"

I'd be interested to hear your bullet points on working remotely for a SV startup. Work/life balance, perceived differences from onprem workers, etc.

This is the office layout used by just about any company at all in Asia (Japan at least).

We are a remote team. I talked with a VERY PROMINENT VC not long ago and he had this to say about it:

It’s probably also worth mentioning that we have a bit of a bias against distributed teams, based on previous investment experience.

What was their previous investment experience with remote teams?

http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2010/07/05/the-power-of-i...

They didn't expand on it.

Our research on the relationship between employee proximity and shareholder returns suggests suggests that optimal return will result from compressing employees into a hypersolid. 0.01mm^3 of employees could then generate between $10e788 and $11e788. Despite the massive energy requirements, ROI is still substantially positive, but gravitational effects at this scale make safe containment tricky.

When optimizing for input cost, a reasonable solution for most purposes turns out to be: pack them like battery hens.

Which also reminds me of the famous Quora fiasco: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-best-way-to-start-my-caree...

Looks like it's this:

http://magculture.com//wp-content/uploads/2008/05/wallpaperb...

Yeh that's terrible

Not surprising, given the CEO's history.

http://labs.openviewpartners.com/uber-zenefits-ceo-quora-deb...

Wow that looks like a nightmare. If I went into that space for an interview, I would runaway quick. I wonder if most of their employees are support. I can't imagine getting any kind of dev work done in that environment.

I interviewed there this summer, and as the recruiter was giving me a tour, I pretty much decided I wasn't interested. It was just desks as far as the eye could see. It just looked like the SV version of a sweat shop.

Hah, this image made me realize that the iconic Burrill "Work Hard and Be Nice To People" looks a little more sweatshoppy when all you can see is the "WORK HARD" part and a crowded office.

That is awful. Are there people who enjoy working in places like this?

1600 employees and only $80 million in revenue? That's only $50k per employee, which seems very low for a company hiring that aggressively (+25%/quarter).

The article makes it very clear that they are not yet profitable, and won't be for at least a year. Even if they're burning $100M a year, they've raised almost 5 times that amount - so they can sustain losses for a long time.

Exactly! This is a catastrophe in the same way that any public company missing earnings by 1 cent is - Oh my god they only grew by 4x instead of 5x, it's bubblegeddon! Maybe it's a shit show behind the scenes, but from what I've read there's nothing to freak out about

On the other hand, it most certainly isn't a good sign that they have this many employees.

When I read they recently raised $500 million I thought that must be a typo. I thought it must have been $50 million. I was wrong, they actually raised $500 million.

I wonder why they really need 1600 employees...to be quite honest, and I have a feeling half of them are contractors / consultants.

Commissioned salespeople for sure.

Many, many, many people doing customer support & fixing simple problems.

My guess is most of the employees are support & sales which are generally lowering paying positions. Considering all of the complaints on the other recent HN thread, they most likely need a lot of support to hold down the fort.

He'd rather respond to us disgruntled customers instead of doing PR. I'm very concerned about the future of this company. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10578397

I expect him to say that his company is "doing great," but he doesn't address why Fidelity cut its outlook on Zenefits (especially if everything is rainbows and butterflies).

It went from a 4.5B company in their estimation to a 2.5B company in their estimation, still less than 3 years after it was founded. All projections were so far into the future already that they could swing massive %'s based on partner activity, even small revenue misses (ever changed your mo/mo growth rate in a spreadsheet by 1%?), or competitive activity. But going from a 4.5B company to a 2.5B company while still less than 3 years old isn't a sign of the apocalypse in the company.

Assuming the figures that Conrad is saying are correct, it is still an amazing company that is growing quickly. Just investors are starting to take a more realistic view on valuations, and readjusting those valuations in their books.

Just because super ambitious growth targets aren't met doesn't mean the company is about to go under...

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