Zenefits CEO responds to rumors of company's struggles

Re:Zenefits CEO responds to rumors of company's struggles by ryanSrich on Tuesday November 17, 2015 @06:41PM (#10584846)

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.

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Re:Zenefits CEO responds to rumors of company's struggles by jkestner on Tuesday November 17, 2015 @07:28PM (#10585057)

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.

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Re:Zenefits CEO responds to rumors of company's struggles by cballard on Tuesday November 17, 2015 @07:11PM (#10584982)

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.

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Re:Zenefits CEO responds to rumors of company's struggles by joncalhoun on Tuesday November 17, 2015 @07:23PM (#10585030)

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.

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Re:Zenefits CEO responds to rumors of company's struggles by cballard on Tuesday November 17, 2015 @07:28PM (#10585065)

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.

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Re:Zenefits CEO responds to rumors of company's struggles by sumedh on Tuesday November 17, 2015 @10:57PM (#10585821)

So who made the decision to go with that language?

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Re:Zenefits CEO responds to rumors of company's struggles by cballard on Wednesday November 18, 2015 @01:12AM (#10586264)

Apple? NeXT, I suppose?

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Re:Zenefits CEO responds to rumors of company's struggles by yuhong on Tuesday November 17, 2015 @10:02PM (#10585639)

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

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Re:Zenefits CEO responds to rumors of company's struggles by AndrewKemendo on Tuesday November 17, 2015 @08:11PM (#10585251)

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.

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Re:Zenefits CEO responds to rumors of company's struggles by to3m on Thursday November 19, 2015 @06:49AM (#10594231)

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.

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Re:Zenefits CEO responds to rumors of company's struggles by Nicholas_C on Tuesday November 17, 2015 @08:48PM (#10585388)

What was their previous investment experience with remote teams?

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Re:Zenefits CEO responds to rumors of company's struggles by tarr11 on Tuesday November 17, 2015 @08:57PM (#10585421)

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

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Re:Zenefits CEO responds to rumors of company's struggles by AndrewKemendo on Wednesday November 18, 2015 @01:10AM (#10586255)

They didn't expand on it.

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Re:Zenefits CEO responds to rumors of company's struggles by lyricalpanda on Tuesday November 17, 2015 @07:42PM (#10585129)

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

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Re:Zenefits CEO responds to rumors of company's struggles by ryanSrich on Tuesday November 17, 2015 @07:48PM (#10585141)

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.

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Re:Zenefits CEO responds to rumors of company's struggles by colmvp on Tuesday November 17, 2015 @08:01PM (#10585206)

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

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Re:Zenefits CEO responds to rumors of company's struggles by FLGMwt on Tuesday November 17, 2015 @08:57PM (#10585420)

+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.

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Re:Zenefits CEO responds to rumors of company's struggles by astrange on Tuesday November 17, 2015 @07:59PM (#10585196)

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

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