ADP Begins to Roll Out a Zenefits Competitor

Re:ADP Begins to Roll Out a Zenefits Competitor by eropple on Wednesday June 10, 2015 @01:42PM (#9693956)

I didn't say it was smart, but it's smarter than ADP's jokestore of an official API. If you want to talk to ADP customers--and, functionally, you very close to need to talk to ADP customers--those are your options.

I feel like maybe the point of my post was not completely clear, though: this would not be a problem, and Zenefits would not be doing this, if ADP was good (not good in the "not poor software" sense, but good in the moral sense). And we should be faulting ADP for not being good to its customers, not Zenefits for trying to bring good to ADP's customers.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:ADP Begins to Roll Out a Zenefits Competitor by mynameisvlad on Wednesday June 10, 2015 @02:02PM (#9694111)

ADP's customers are most definitely not the third party developers, though. Because of that, you can't really conflate the two into one argument. ADP can easily be "good" to their customers while still having shitty APIs. Hell, plenty of companies do this every day, why should we chastise ADP for running a business?

Furthermore, a profit-seeking corporation shouldn't really be on the moral scale to begin with. At best, they should be amoral, that is, not involved at all in morality. Their primary goal is, and should be, to earn more money, not to be good citizens of the world.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:ADP Begins to Roll Out a Zenefits Competitor by Retric on Wednesday June 10, 2015 @03:23PM (#9694668)

"At best, they should be amoral" companies are still run by people. So, your suggesting people should be amoral while at work, which is an unusual stance.

I would suggest it's much better for the laws and regulations to be setup so a profit seeking company would end up being a net benefit. But, suggesting company's should for example try and corrupt politicians in the name of profit seems rather dystopian.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:ADP Begins to Roll Out a Zenefits Competitor by mynameisvlad on Wednesday June 10, 2015 @04:03PM (#9694913)

Amoral != immoral. Amorality simply is the disconnection from morals, while immorality is doing something you know to be wrong. The people in charge would still be held by their own moral beliefs, but we should not be chastizing or congratulating companies for their moral contributions because, as an entity, their decisions should not be based on morals, but on profit.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:ADP Begins to Roll Out a Zenefits Competitor by Retric on Wednesday June 10, 2015 @04:23PM (#9695044)

You just contradicted yourself. If the CEO is unwilling to start a bio-weapons division duo to lack of profits or excessive risks etc then that's a amoral decision because morality did not come into play. However, if they decide it may be profitable, but it's immoral so there not willing to go there then the company was constrained by morality.

PS: It could even go the other way where a CEO feels it's his patriotic duty to aid his government so he wants to start a bio-weapons division. The point is not the choice the point is why it was made.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:ADP Begins to Roll Out a Zenefits Competitor by eropple on Wednesday June 10, 2015 @04:19PM (#9695008)

> Furthermore, a profit-seeking corporation shouldn't really be on the moral scale to begin with. At best, they should be amoral, that is, not involved at all in morality. Their primary goal is, and should be, to earn more money, not to be good citizens of the world.

You are very much mistaken. Society provides the corporation with legal protections and recourses as a fictive person with the understanding that the corporation's existence betters the society, betters the people within it. When this agreement is breached, the society can--though, unfortunately, rarely does, due to globally weird veneration of toxic behavior as "just business"--destroy it. (It has happened before. It should happen more often.)

And let's be really real for a sec: if you look at the stretch of history, neutrality is effectively tacit support for bad behavior. And from a practical perspective, a call for "amorality" is tacit support for immorality.

[ Parent | on HN ]