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Comment by StClaire | Hacker News Reader

I first heard of Zenefits when the CEO withdrew a job offer for someone who asked (anonymously) on Quora if they should accept an offer from Uber or Zenefits. The CEO didn't want anyone who wasn't all in for Zenefits "world changing" product.

Since then: that CEO got busted for writing a chrome plug-in to help people get around California's webinar requirement to get a license to sell insurance.

And the new CEO—the old COO—sent out a memo that sex in the staircases and alcohol in the office are not OK.

And he had to give away a huge portion of equity to early investors who accused the old CEO of turning Zenefits into a criminal enterprise for using unlicensed brokers to sell insurance.

This news does not surprise me.

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> Since then: that CEO got busted for writing a chrome plug-in to help people get around California's webinar requirement to get a license to sell insurance.

I don't understand how he wasn't charged criminally for that.

> And the new CEO—the old COO—sent out a memo that sex in the staircases and alcohol in the office are not OK.

This was a deciding factor for a lot of people choosing not to work at Zenefits.

I know I wouldn't want to work somewhere that frowned upon getting drunk at the office and having sex with my co-workers in the office stairwells.

  I know I wouldn't want to work somewhere that frowned upon 
  getting drunk at the office and having sex with my co-
  workers in the office stairwells.

Truly, what is the point of working there if you can't have workplace 'friends with zenefits'.

I think the idea is that you don't want to work at a place where that memo is needed in the first place.

Hey, that's not what he said - don't put words in his mouth!

Urban Dictionary

Friends with Zenefits: Two co-workers who have a sexual relationship in the office without being emotionally involved or committed to each other. The sexual encounters only occur at the office during working hours.

So essentially paid sex with benefits?

Since then: that CEO got busted for writing a chrome plug-in to help people get around California's webinar requirement to get a license to sell insurance.

early investors who accused the old CEO of turning Zenefits into a criminal enterprise for using unlicensed brokers to sell insurance.

I guess they somewhat misinterpreted the Y-Combinator preference for entrepreneurs who are a "little bit naughty."

I'm of two minds about that. On the one hand, that's bad for the obvious reasons that I don't need to repeat.

OTOH, most of these training videos exist for stupid reasons. They don't make brokers any better at navigating ethical dilemmas -- as the content is usually 100% obvious -- nor make them any more predisposed to be ethical. And they training videos did that, and they do actually watch them, said brokers don't remember any of it two days later.

The training, and its mandate, basically exist to protect someone else from liability: "see, we told them you can't lie to potential customers, not our problem!" And that, in turn, probably exists only because we tolerated that defense:

"Yeah, I [did obviously unethical practice] ... but no one never told me I couldn't!"

So we all go through the motions of watching a mandatory training video that tells us nothing we didn't already know and won't remember anyway.

These were basic training videos/courses to teach them how to be brokers! They hired random salespeople, and cut corners (=cheated) on the very minimal (52 hours) state required training to allow them to be licensed insurance brokers.

The result was their brokers ended up being very ignorant of insurance products and practice.

Ethics is a small portion of the requirements. It's mostly basic stuff on what insurance is.

Is this 52 hours / state? or does it cross license between states?

It is a requirement of the State of California to be able to sell insurance in that state. It is independent of any federal regulation, or any other state's regulations.

Yes. But you can get licensed in every state in the US, but only do training in (for) one state. (Usually.)

Most other states will waive the pre-licensing requirements if you are already an agent in one state. Sometimes it depends on your state. They still want their ~$100 a year though.

Zenefits fell down there as well--they had many gaps in their producer licensing. They've now open sourced a compliance app to track this. https://www.zenefits.com/blog/zenefits-now-leader-licensing-...

(Most insurance agencies get by with a spreadsheet for this...)

They also list all their licenses here

https://www.zenefits.com/licenses/

Usually right before a major market correction, at the peak of a bubble, unsavory, downright illegal and deceptive elements are introduced because of the monetary incentive.

I'm looking at the headlines and thinking whether the clock has begun ticking.

There was a thread a few days ago called "Who's Firing?" that seemed like kind of a spoof. Suddenly it seems more relevant.

It has nothing to do with bubbles. They started doing it years ago to grow faster. There are some good articles about what happened.

"Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked." - Warren Buffett

Weak correlation. The bad actions at Zenefits were going on several years ago. The same was true of Theranos, their ill behavior goes back nearly to the beginning of the company.

There may be somewhere between 250 and 300 total billion dollar "unicorns" at this point. So far as I've seen the last two years, the Zenefits companies are still rare.

The money parade doesn't end until the Fed pulls the plug on hyper low interest rates. It started there and it ends there, as it did the prior two easy money periods of time (late 1990s and mid 2000s). Until then, the trillions in cash sloshing around will keep seeking better returns via various forms of higher risk speculation.

There's a profit incentive at all stages of growth and economic strength.

I reminds me before the 2001 crash I remember at the height reading a 3 inch long story in the WSJ mentioning that a business school professor did background checks on a 100 tech startups. Found 1/3 of them had CEO/COO/CFO's or board members that had been prosecuted previously for securities fraud.

Perhaps it's the same guys from 2001 pumping and dumping but have found a clever way to avoid the SEC by keeping a private equity market that only VC's have access to so they can play hot potatoes until a unicorn IPOs

Oh that's a really good suspicion.

Since the sort of dip last year it seems the clock is ticking. Look at unicorns that were about to IPOnin Q1. AppDynamics got bought by Cisco, other moved their plan to somewhen 2018 IPO. You read about more lay-offs then in previous times. Something is going on, maybe a deflation or a slower beginning of a bubble burst.

It is very hard for an organization to recover from ethics and culture issues.

Sounds like a fun place to work though.

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