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Comment by olafskyansian | Hacker News Reader

I have a lot of respect for what Zenefits has done to date in shaking up the insurance space, but you have to REALLY question what the heck is going on with Parker's leadership there.

What is going on that the founder/CEO has enough time to chastise an engineer candidate on Quora and put out factually inaccurate posts on topics like healthcare reform (he had something out on LinkedIn a few weeks back) but doesn't have the foresight to build a "real" integration with a payroll vendor that has one available (and an established track record of integrating with competitors in many cases mind you).

You read the glassdoor reviews of Zenefits and you get this picture where no one knows what they are doing. All symptomatic of a company in hyper-growth mode, I get that. The questions becomes, does Parker have the leadership chops to see this through?

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> You read the glassdoor reviews of Zenefits

Am I the only one that finds it strange their reviews seem to alternate between "worst company ever" and "greatest job ever"?

One of the reviewers wrote:

> Don't "advise" your employees to go to this website and leave good reviews to cover up the truth.

Oh yeah well that explains that.

update: typo

Or they could be outright lying. Like HealthTap. If you read their reviews on glassdoor, every 10-15 you get an honest review. And if you google the ceo, he goes through dev teams like tissue, both in this and in prior startups. But the majority of reviews are glowing.

contrast this: http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/HealthTap-Reviews-E453567.h...

http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-HealthTap-R...

etc

First thing that came to my mind was; where I work, if employees do not get paid on time, company will have to deal with quite a lot of grief and substantial monetary loss due to the work arrangement company has. I am sure something like this exists in other jobs/industries/countries too. How come such a critical component was not taken care of?

Also, I had to wean off from using the Mint app because I was concerned about violating my bank's TOS by giving login credentials to a third party, and if something happens in future my claim will be a bit weak. So are SMBs not violating ADP's TOS by providing them login info?

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 tech engineer stench.

If anything, this makes me appreciate the integrity of Conrad.

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-Offer-May-201...

lol I didn't know that.

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

You would have shared publicly that you are revoking someones employment offer because you found them seeking career advice on a Q&A board?

This one is kind of tough. I'd like to think that I'd be better than the Zenefits CEO, but, man, this kid makes it really hard to take his side.

First, it shows really poor judgment on the part of the junior engineer. Dear God, did you think that people can't identify you, specifically? It's not like Zenefits is giving out 10 job offers a day.

Second, you're likely to jump as soon as you get the chance. Neither employer nor employee have any commitment to one another. Okay, fine. But, as an employer, will you completely leave me hanging at a critical time or will you stick a couple of months to complete your task before jumping. Given your lack of discretion, probably you'll leave me hanging.

Third, are you going to air dirty laundry in public? Every company has some, even successful ones. Startups are worse. Again, lack of discretion.

So, yeah, I'd rescind that offer very fast. He'll be lucky if Uber doesn't rescind his offer. I guarantee if I were HR at Uber I'd be trying to pick him out to rescind it.

Would I air that publicly? Probably not.

However, this kid should consider himself lucky that the CEO called him out publicly so he knows what he did wrong. If I were the CEO, I'd probably just rescind his offer without comment. I'd call Uber HR, and they'd rescind his offer without comment.

And, he'd be wondering what the hell happened.

>But, as an employer, will you completely leave me hanging at a critical time or will you stick a couple of months to complete your task before jumping.

And do you put out a handbook or other disclaimer stating that the employer and employee have zero obligation to each other and can terminate the relationship at any time?

Yes, but I generally also attempt to engage in professional courtesy.

And, yes, this goes both ways.

If I, as a boss, can see the writing on the wall, I will attempt to protect my employees. While that includes internal protection in a political firefight, it also includes calling up friends at other companies to see if they might have a job for people on my team if I can see that it's going to be ugly. I have also helped usher people out of my company because I simply couldn't get them what they were worth.

It's called "being a professional". It's also called "this industry is damn small, don't piss off the good people in it."

Sometimes you get caught completely unaware and get sacked without notice, but it's really rare. Most senior people can tell when things are about to get bad generally a month or two in advance--if not more.

If internal, "hidden", policy is different from public, written, policy...the company can go fuck off.

Professional courtesy would be telling someone you want/need them for the next X months and making a real commitment to the worker instead of having a public policy of 'no obligations' while secretly expecting the worker to 'be a professional' and to show undue loyalty.

Wow. I hope you never become a manager.

It's called "politics". And it occurs when two or more humans get together. There are always hidden agendas, different goals, etc.

Learning to navigate it is an essential prerequisite if you want to accomplish something that requires more than your singular individual skill.

And, for your information, yes, people like you wind up on the short end of the stick because you ignore politics. People like me get new jobs, better opportunities, advance warning, etc. because I have helped out people in the past. The combinations of being both technically qualified and politically savvy is quite powerful.

You don't owe any loyalty to a company, but if you piss off the people, it will bite you in the ass.

The company should correct its image to reflect reality.

I'll grant you that it showed poor judgment if he really thought he could stay anonymous. That said, I disagree with basically everything else. I think you're reading way too much into that.

Where you work will have an impact on your career (I think that's obvious). Part of that is simply the social proof of which company. It helped my career by working for various YC companies, for instance. Were they necessarily better than non-YC companies? No, of course not, but people put stock in it anyway.

The first company you work for may very well have an outsized impact on your career compared to subsequent positions. You should make that decision carefully.

Most importantly, when I go to work somewhere, they shouldn't expect that I will work there the rest of my life. Staying at a company 2-5 years is pretty normal. That's a short enough timespan that you should be thinking about how the company will impact your career after your time with them is done. Furthermore, part of the behavior of a good manager and company is to encourage and facilitate your career growth, even though they realize that doing so may very well cause you to grow out of your position at that company.

He's also a kid, looking at his first career out of college. Did you know the right things to look for immediately and inherently? Do you now? Did some of the things you looked for then end up getting discounted as you got more experience? Do you maybe think you shouldn't hold it against him that maybe he also doesn't know everything?

So no, I wouldn't say that that kid was wrong for thinking about several different aspects of the opportunities he was presented, name-recognition amongst them, even if I would contend that he should maybe put less of an emphasis on it, but that's just the thing he might have heard when he asked the question. Nor do I think that he's more likely to up and leave the company when the going gets rough.

> Do you maybe think you shouldn't hold it against him that maybe he also doesn't know everything?

The problem isn't that he doesn't understand everything. The problem is that he doesn't seem to understand "discretion".

I'm about to give someone access to very sensitive HR information across multiple companies. Do I really want to do that when he just demonstrated that he can't make a simple job inquiry with enough discretion to not piss the CEO off? Doubly so since it was a GOOD job offer.

Sure, he could certainly say that posting about this was an instance of a lack of discretion (hopefully not on quora itself), but that isn't what he said and what he DID say would certainly be a bit of the pot calling the kettle black with regards to discretion, wouldn't it?

Edit: I still contend you're making a mountain out of a molehill. This kid asked a reasonable questionable in an unreasonable way. He could've avoided a lot by simply redacting the names of the companies; I think we both agree on that. That said, I kind of expect a kid fresh out of college to make a few mistakes with regards to professionalism. An organization hiring those individuals should be set up to mitigate that damage and gently steer them in the right direction, not crucify them publicly. While I expect the occasional flub of professionalism from new employees (and I think on a scale of unprofessionalism, this ranks pretty low), I expect a great deal more from CEOs of corporations with a valuation in the billions. Both messed up with regards to professionalism, but one made a much bigger screw up, and it was the one who I would most expect to behave professionally.

I dunno, I see several posts a week on HN where I think "I bet your cofounder/colleague/boss/investor will know this is you if they read it" questions every week, many of which are far more contentious in subject matter, so this kind of questionable judgement isn't that unusual. The stupider point is that he was seriously considering turning down an apparently better environment and $15k more because Uber gets more mainstream press attention and has a more inflated valuation. But we were all naive about the world of work once...

As a CEO I'd want candidates getting a second opinion privately so they were reassured when they decided to accept my offer, and the only reason I'd see "not ruling out much worse offer from other company" as a major black mark is if being savvy in commercial decisions was an important aspect of the role.

A savvier candidate would probably be trying the "That's great, but I also have an outstanding offer in a similar total comp range from Uber. At this stage I think I'd fit much better into your team, but if you could move a little on the financial side of your offer I'd be much more inclined to confirm without waiting have that followup conversation with the Uber hiring manager" approach anyway. And quite possibly succeeding...

> Third, are you going to air dirty laundry in public?

Zenefits doesn't have an issue with sharing private information with the public.

> However, this kid should consider himself lucky that the CEO called him out publicly so he knows what he did wrong.

This person should consider himself lucky that the CEO did this, so he knew the bullet he dodged.

Really? I would have kept my mouth shut and not removed doubt about my foolery.

Why? To preserve my "image" with fickle internet communities full of judgmental people who give me a double standard because my name is known?

This is why I'm glad I'm not famous...

Smart people don't want to work for fools.

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 the guy talk it out and come to the conclusion that Zenefits would be the best opportunity for him, not to attack him publicly for trying to figure out the best career path.

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.

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