Use of power to punish, especially those considering joining your tribe, are empirically shown to be disliked and generate a reduction in available power over and alignment with those outside the tribe. This will hurt Zenefits, despite the CEO's intention to strengthen it. This was an amazing opportunity for the Zenefits CEO to publicly and prominently compete and make the case for working at Zenefit's (in a general sense, not for this candidate specifically). Instead, he ran away and threw the candidate under the bus. Shameful.

Do you have a source? Not doubting you, but I think I see a lot of people take glee in punishing other people and would like to have an objective reason to disagree with it.

I'm having difficult finding the studies, but here's a research paper on the subject that includes a lot of evidence on the matter: "The evolution of prestige: Freely conferred deference as a mechanism for enhancing the benefits of cultural transmission"[1]. Once you're literate in power dynamics, you'll see evidence everywhere.

> I see a lot of people take glee in punishing other people

The fact that prestige is more effective than force, doesn't mean that force isn't effective. Imagine someone who's completely undeserving of any prestige-based status, yet has the means to control a business. Prestige-based status is unavailable to them, so they will use force, and eventually, the only employees that stick around are those that accepts such uses of force. (Imagine a toxic work environment)

Silicon Valley on the other hand (or engineers) are in high demand, and thus have no need to endure use of force (abuse) because there are those that will employ them that are deserving of prestige.

[1] http://www.hirhome.com/academic/hen&gil.pdf

I'm trying very hard to see it from the CEO's point of view but I'm failing. I mean, I wouldn't want to hire an unenthusiastic employee either, but I wouldn't have taken a prospect preferring Google over a little HR startup so personally. And taking the prospect's deliberation over a career choice as a sign of indecision? Seriously!? I can't see Zenefits coming off looking good after this. The irony is that it happened while pointing out another's social media mishap.

Well that certainly leaves a bad taste in my mouth about Zenefits.

I'm not sure I agree. The candidate plainly said they just wanted to put a notch on the ol' resume.

But they could just have sent him or her a message withdrawing the offer -- no need to do it publicly.

On the other hand, perhaps the CEO shouldn't be so disingenuous to believe that his company is the end-all, be-all for engineers. To some extent, it's on him to prove to engineers that it's worth staying at Zenefits over a Google. I think he could have rightly admonished the guy, without withdrawing the offer.

The again, for people who deeply case about the exact things Zenefits is doing, maybe this gives a stronger incentive to work there as there is less "passers-by" in the personnel.

I'm honestly confused about why engineers going to work at Zenefits would "deeply care" about what they're doing. They're writing HR software and aggregating benefits.

It's certainly going to make some HR professionals' and founders' lives easier, but I doubt there are a tonne of engineers who deeply care about it.

Yeah. If someone passionately wants to, say, write code for robotics, they might commit to their employer if they work at, say, Boston Dynamics.

But yes, Zenefits is a relatively bad example for this kind of passion, I assume.

You know I would agree with you but let's be honest: It's not in your best interests to stay at one company for a long (3-4+ yrs) time. Your salary will not rise with your skills (especially in your first 5-10 years) and you will be behind the curve and your peers. Also staying at one place can be really bad for learning new things because you get set your ways and only see 1 way to do things. I'm all for weeding out <2yr candidates (people who won't stay past 2yrs) but let's not expect people to commit their lives to these companies cause the companies sure as hell don't care about you.

I never want to say "I'll never work X" but after seeing this I can't imagine myself wanting to work for Zenefits. It appears any questioning of the CEO and/or actually (god forbid) thinking about YOUR best interests appears to be a no-no at this company.

This is just in humour but I am just wondering how folks would have reacted if Google's CEO's would have chimed in after Conrad's reply and would have invited this candidate for an interview at Google.

A salesman should never tell the customer that he can find a better product in next shop