But I see it as symptomatic of a cultural contempt for regulations. It seems like a conflict of interest for a company to wantonly decide which regulations are worth following and which aren't. Especially when the salespeople could be personally liable, and the catastrophic outcome is somebody finding out that their $1m surgery isn't covered by their insurance despite promises it would be from the salesperson.
Supposing that the exam is supposed to test the candidate's actual knowledge -- i.e., their ability to correctly represent things and act in compliance with the law while engaged in conversation with potential customers -- I certainly can see a risk of someone just saying "eh, I'll skip the material, take the exam with a reference open on my desk, pass it and be fine" and then getting into major trouble later when it turns out they did actually need to know a lot of that stuff off the top of their head in order to do their job.
We certainly don't want giant companies influencing policy changes (though, that happens frequently). I think a good indicator of whether a policy can justifiably be circumvented is if it actually hurt anybody. Has the "macro" hurt anybody yet? The articles have been vague.
Lyft and Uber skirt similar kinds of regulation but they're completely up front about it. They don't pretend that their drivers are licensed or claim any benefit for having licensed drivers in any way. They're simply offering a different product than what taxis offer - getting a ride with a random unlicensed stranger. They're not trying to get the best of both worlds - the legitimacy of being licensed and the cost saving of not bothering with it.
Lyft and Uber, and Airbnb too, are simply offering a new product that doesn't come with any reassurance for consumers from regulatory compliance. They're betting that reputation systems (ratings, reviews, etc.) will provide assurance for consumers just as well if not better than government regulation. So far the market is showing they just might be right.
I suspect that if Zenefits had offered a platform where anyone can sell insurance to anyone from the beginning then people would be less pissed about it. Of course offering an unlicensed insurance brokerage product would probably be a lot harder to pull off than offering an unlicensed taxi product.
P.S: I'm totally for sensible regulations. However, sensible regulations usually require wide amounts of nepotism, cronyism and backstabbing to break. If a regulation is important enough that people could be hurt by it, then it should not be circumventable by a web script.
The employees who used it and then signed a false declaration are at risk of jail.
That was their choice, but they were seemingly under pressure from their CEO, so it seems fairly evident (to me) that Parker created a real problem for his team, even if the customers are OK.
[Edit: Removed out-of-place "committed"]
I would actually rather have companies like Zenefits sidestep regulations like that to show the regulators where they screwed up than Zenefits pump money into skeevy Lobby groups.
In any case, what's the point of "show[ing] the regulators where they screwed up" if you don't want them to change anything anyway? What's the point of having regulations at all if you're going to let them be a joke?
'Making trainees watch a video' seems like silly regulations asking to be circumvented. Why not make the exams more stringent so people are forced to actually pay attention.
Here's the regulator's description of half of the requirements:
http://www.insurance.ca.gov/0200-industry/0050-renew-license...
There exist many tick-box requirements in the vast, vast field that is compliance in regulated industries. There is a political valence to this observation.
My personal favorite one is the time where I had to threaten to fire myself if I ever misused patient information. I threatened to fire myself if I ever misused patient information. I then documented the fact that I had threatened to fire myself if I ever misused patient information. If I am ever investigated on suspicion of failing to have threatened to fire myself if I ever misused patient information (a crime which is separate from misusing patient information), I will be able to produce adequate documentation attesting to the fact that I threatened to fire myself if I ever misused patient information.
Typically the voiceovers are short, e.g. 60 seconds, to ensure that you are actually at your computer clicking "next" rather than just letting the voiceover run while you do something productive.
Once you've clicked "next" 52x60=3120 times you are then permitted to take the exam.
Zenefits "Macro" automated the clicking, allowing their people to simply learn the material and then take the exam.
tl;dr; The state of California says "you must learn this material very slowly" and Zenefits employees are fast learners.
One of my proudest hacker moments* a while back was taking online defensive driving school (to have a speeding ticket excused) and figuring out what to type into the Javascript console to make the 'next' button clickable before the timer on the page ran out. (This technique would have been subverted had there been any server-side checks whatsoever, but nope...they completely entrusted the client to keep the time. I suppose they don't have much of an incentive to make it any more difficult given that the government probably doesn't have a very rigorous accreditation process for these courses.) That cut whatever was left of the required 6 hours down to about 20 minutes. I guess I'm an unethical monster that should never be allowed to run a company. :\
*I know, it's pretty lame in comparison to, say, figuring out how to jailbreak an iPhone, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't proud.
Just breaking the law is stupid.
Plus sometimes you know how bad the worst case legal scenario is and it's the best option. With stuff like taxi regulations the fines probably aren't too bad.
Airbnb and Uber are managing to fight the regulatory hurdles with ~5x is ~13x the valuation of Zenefits, respectively. While Zenefits is ~5x the valuation of Aereo, it seems they have some catching up (read: fundraising) to do.