Comment by CPLX | Hacker News Reader

Comment by CPLX | Hacker News Reader

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Insurance is important.

Unlike many other consumer products you really don't have any idea what you're buying until after you've bought it. Making an incorrect or misled choice in health insurance is sufficient -- literally -- to completely ruin your life financially in a matter of hours, or cause unnecessary death via untreated illness.

If you want to claim that you can read a health insurance policy binder and understand it be my guest. I am a frequent writer and editor of technical literature and capable of writing code and I have a pilots license and I find health insurance policies almost incomprehensible.

We make sure that you don't get a bad haircut by requiring licenses for barbers. You can't fix my sink or chimney without licensing. We require licensing and testing to act on someone's behalf in the legal system, and in nearly all sales of securities, and of financial products, of which insurance is one mind you.

If Zenefits wanted to make an in-public argument that these rules are not necessary they were free to do so. I would have disagreed, and I'm sure others would have shared my opinion. Maybe they could have won the argument.

They didn't do that. They aren't righteous crusaders passionate about consumer choices and regulatory issues, they're opportunistic business people who broke the law and committed fraud instead of following the rules or working to change them.

I don't disagree with anything you've said here; I wasn't trying to say that insurance is unimportant or simple. My point is that the only justification for licensure over certification is a paternalistic one, and I would say the same thing about both barbers and medical doctors. Maybe I don't have enough space to make a convincing argument here, if you're curious I definitely encourage you to pick up Milton Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom and read chapter 9; it's a pretty entertaining read.

Since you would have disagreed, can you explain why you think 52 hours of clicking "next" is a necessary step in becoming a broker?

Zenefits employees did pass the exam, and they possess the knowledge you believe is necessary. It's just that the law requires 52 hours of clicking before you are even permitted to take the exam. Why do you think this is a good law?

You're being disingenuous.

The requirement isn't "clicking next for 52 hours" it's spending that amount of time studying an online course. You're required to actually pay attention for 52 hours and then certify that you did.

For another example, the requirement inherent in a multiple choice exam isn't a matter of "filling out a semi random sequence of the letters A, B, C, and D" it's knowing the answers to the test.

The filling out the letters is a signal that you know. Signals aren't perfect, in that example if you don't know but copied answers from someone else that's cheating and the signal would be unreliable then, and you've subverted the actual intended requirement.

The requirement in this case is spending about a week of your life actually studying this material and the clicking of the next button as well is a signal that you did it.

Don't confuse the means with ends. You could have argued that the amount of hours spent studying the material is also a useless metric. But that's a more nuanced argument that you haven't made, and one that has defensible positions on both sides.

Clearly clicking next isn't a meaningful requirement, but so what, it's not actually the requirement. Spending time studying is, and they cheated and lied about it.

What the law actually requires is clicking for 52 hours.

But lets take your claim as a premise; why is it important that a person spend time learning? Suppose two people know the material equally well, but one of them learned it faster than the other. Why is that a good regulation? How does it benefit consumers to make it illegal to learn things fast?

I know a former algebraic geometer (lots of category theory) who learned Haskell very rapidly. Would it benefit consumers of his services to pass a law saying he needs to learn Haskell at a slower rate comparable to a RoR hipster without a math PhD?

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess you have no idea what the law actually requires in detail. It's ok neither did I. Here's an example of what it looks like, there is a lot more on the linked pages, which collectively comprise the actual requirements:

https://govt.westlaw.com/calregs/Document/ID813F6A0622011E4A...

> why is it important that a person spend time learning? Suppose two people know the material equally well, but one of them learned it faster than the other. Why is that a good regulation? How does it benefit consumers to make it illegal to learn things fast?

I don't know. But I do know that basically every educational institution requires some level of engagement measured in time. You can't just pass tests to get an undergrad degree or a PhD either. The requirement to spend actual time is hardly cruel and unusual.

I also know that the requirements were clear enough to be known to Zenefits and they willfully evaded them.

What is the difference between a Harvard graduate in Economics and someone who attended and completed all the requirements for an Econ degree but was short one art elective class and never got a degree? Should he just fudge his job applications since the art class isn't important?

What's the difference between someone assigned 100 hours of court ordered community service who did it and someone who went back to court with forged paperwork saying they did it?

In all the examples, and Zenefits as well, the difference is that the person is committing fraud, is lying, and is not ethical.

Cheating on requirements isn't the same as arguing to change the rules, regardless of how confused you continue to pretend to be about it.

You can't just pass tests to get an undergrad degree

Yes you can. Almost every school has a procedure for taking a test or convincing a professor that you have the knowledge the class provides. You still pay the cost of the course, but do not actually attend it.

Getting my degree many, many years after entering the field, I skipped a huge swath of undergrad classes this way. Stuff like non-computer related classes was all that I needed to do 'in person'.

In other words, I skipped 'pressing buttons' for a large chunk of time due to fact that I knew the material and could prove it.

The main difference to the above being that the school recognized that it was possible for a student to understand the core material completely without taking the class, and the above rules do not admit that possibility.

Getting my degree many, many years after entering the field

So would you say you had experiential learning in the subject matter of the classes you were being allowed to skip after demonstrating both evidence of this experiential learning and the attendant competency?

Testing out of a course due to earned knowledge is different from passing a multiple choice exam with Cliff Notes awareness of the material.

is different from passing a multiple choice exam

Some of the classes did just have multiple choice tests that would have been easy enough to 'Cliff'. Though it's not really relevant to larger discourse.

That still doesn't change the facts of the original situation. The test is the determining factor of whether or not they 'completed' the course. Indeed, someone who 'Cliff'ed the notes, and passed the test, and watched Netflix on a second screen while pushing all of the right buttons would still be accepted. Which is the ultimate failure here. Either the time limit is necessary and can't be skipped (due to the physical limitations of some inherent process), or the time limit is artificial and the actual possession of knowledge is sufficient.

Who is served by putting an artificial time limit in place that does not actually prove knowledge of the material?

Academic institutions are paid by the credit or by the year. Of course they will insist on receiving a minimum amount of money before giving out the precious certification.

heating on requirements isn't the same as arguing to change the rules, regardless of how confused you continue to pretend to be about it.

Try to pay attention. Above you said that you'd argue against changing the rules. I asked you to justify that, and it sounds like you don't have much of an argument beyond "well universities do it too".

> Try to pay attention.

Please don't be uncivil. This comment would be fine without that bit.

"What the law actually requires is clicking for 52 hours."

No it doesn't, and by saying that, you're telling the rest of us that you don't actually understand what's going on, but you want to seem "edgy", and "disruptive".

It's not an exam to pass. A license must be earned continuously by practising within law. A license would be taken away even if you have the best knowledge but are even slightly off on ethics of practice.

A policeman can be strongest, but a sexual harassment case will disqualify him.

When I see a broker license, I know I'm dealing with a knowledgeable, honestly practising professional. Can't say that about Zenefits anymore. They must lose license.

EDIT: You can give credit to any kind of cheating with the reasoning you gave. Why is SAT I verbal section important in a student becoming an electrical engineer? He should be allowed to cheat, according to you?

Scroll up: the question is not whether Zenefits should obey dumb laws. CPLX said he would argue that the law in question isn't dumb.

I think a person should be allowed to take the SAT without actually being obligated to click "next" for 52 hours. If they don't know the material they'll get a low score.

This is not SAT unfortunately. Your score and your behaviour are both needed for a license. Besides, in situations like these attendance policy is important. You can't test every single edge case possible on a test. The state has to answer if a license holder says "I did not know X." As a taxpayer, you would question why the hell does a person who does not know X has state license to practice?

Unless you're asking every person to recite the whole textbook, the only way to be sure is an attendance policy.

Attendance policies and requiring 52 hours of "next" clicking also don't ensure that a person knows all the edge cases.

What exactly do you believe that clicking "next" repeatedly tells you about a person's behavior?

(Again, remember that the question is why 52 hours of clicking is a good law. If a person didn't click for 52 hours when the law didn't require it, that would not be evidence that they are willing to violate unjust laws.)

the question is why 52 hours of clicking is a good law

It isn't. It's 52 hours of study, everyone is latching onto "clicking" to make a disingenuous point. Almost every exam you take is intended as an assessment of your knowledge, not "are they able to recite answers to 10 questions in a 2 hour period inside an exam room"

If the exam is intended as an assessment of your knowledge, then why should it matter how much time you spent acquiring that knowledge?

It doesn't matter. The requirements of license seem to be 52 hours of mandatory study/attendance and passing the exam. Zenefits clearly cheated on one of the requirements.

the state wants you to make sure you read everything and that you can answer questions about it. It doesn't seem like a stretch at all, especially considering people run their livelihoods based on that license. It's a license to conduct a proper practice and a career.

The question we are discussing in this thread is whether or not it's a dumb law. Your comment simply reiterates that the law exists, which no one disputes.

The point is that those requirements seem redundant.

52 hours of study to start a whole new career do not seem redundant to me. Specially when the field is highly sensitive, legal repercussions are huge, collateral damage arising out of wrong communications can be millions of dollars.

Besides, the "redundant" requirements just caught a person trying to cheat -- Zenefits. So you cannot even claim they aren't working.

Yeah, no. You're oversimplifying this, and pretending like all there is is clicking "next".

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