I love the way Conrad gets all the blame and is thrown under the bus...
'The fact is that many of our internal processes, controls, and actions around compliance have been inadequate, and some decisions have just been plain wrong. As a result, Parker has resigned.'
Not much subtlety there. Presumably as COO he had nothing to do with 'internal processes, controls, and actions around compliance' which seems a little odd to me. So what was he doing all day then?
I also like how the company values are instantly changed...
'Effective immediately, this company’s values are: ...'
Which is interesting because most companies spend ages coming up with the correct values for the company and it usually involves feedback from employees.
As a former Zenefits user, and after contentiously conversing with Parker a few times on social media then soonthereafter reading how the company flouts laws and regulations while feigning simple ignorance of them, I'd say the buck certainly stops with him.
He needed to finally accept that his company has some serious internal issues that have cost a not-unsubstantial amount of people a lot of time, money and grief over the years, including some of my own employees. The company certainly has a lot of promise, but was managed the wrong way from day 1 and it needs someone with some real experience to right the ship if they are to stay viable.
The issues go far beyond insurance. The whole platform was a mess when my company used it and support was virtually non-existent because of their complete ineptitude.
Responsibility ends with the CEO. If you're the CEO your job is to make sure things don't go wrong and take the dive under the bus if you let things get bad enough that its required.
David Sacks joined Zenefits about 13 months ago, so I presume while as COO he is somewhat responsible, it seems far more likely his opinions being different from Conrad is what led to Conrard's removal.
This is a great question, especially since it seems like he would have been in charge of the salesforce (where a lot of these issues happened).
So unless he wanted to change these processes and Parker stopped him, it does feel like there is another side to this story... (modulo many of the other issues that must of driven this change)
"But what the former chief operating officer didn’t acknowledge is that for a long period of time he and Mr. Conrad worked closely together, sitting next to each other at work and meeting regularly for dinner, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The person said that Mr. Sacks, who describes himself in his Twitter profile as a “hypergrowth addict,” helped spearhead the company’s large fundraising shortly after joining the company in December 2014 as well as its strategy to grow quickly despite a lack of internal controls and processes."
Does anybody think that writing down company values has any effect on anything ever? This is what people do to go through the motions of leadership when they have no clue what their employees actually do.
Right. So sick of that dumb shit. Anyone gullible enough to buy into propaganda like that is too stupid to hire, imo. I havent worked anywhere whereupon hearing mission statement oriented bullshit from the ceo or minions that I didnt say to myself, "ok...whatever...".
Maybe I'm unlucky, but I've never seen a company where this is true, if they are > 5 people. And those were non-profits where growth wasn't really a concern.
TBH, I knew a number of folks within Google Search who took "Don't be evil" very seriously. I dunno about the top-level execs, but there were plenty of folks with mid-level VP or Director titles who cared deeply about the user experience and doing right by users.
Whenever a major organization develops a new system as an official standard for "X", the primary result is the widespread adoption of some simpler system as a de facto standard for X...
Looks like the WSJ article has some additional information, including this rather telling quote about the current company values, which seem rather different than the set of values Sacks espouses:
<<Mr. Conrad, 35 years old, is known for his brash style and the company’s operations reflected that. His company’s mantra — “ready, fire, aim” — is followed by many Silicon Valley startups meant to encourage aggressiveness.
Such a cavalier approach often works well for tech companies, such as Facebook Inc., whose motto in the past was famously “move fast and break things.” But it may have served Zenefits poorly as it operated in the regulated insurance industry.>>
Over the long run there are an infinite number of thing to "break", or "disrupt"...you'd better have a solid product when you attempt to fill the void you've created...
The analogy of conquering armies pushing forward and failing to nail down resupply lines comes to mind...
In football it's called out kicking your coverage...
Hypergrowth is not necessarily an evil, but the old maxim "cover your flanks" is generally apt...
If he were indeed following the "move fast and break things" mantra, then i guess someone should have warned him that doesn't include things like.. the law.
<<Which is interesting because most companies spend ages coming up with the correct values for the company and it usually involves feedback from employees.
>>
"Operate with integrity", "put the customer first", and "make this a great place to work for employees" seem like pretty generic / good values (that are probably based on a lot of experience Sacks has from Yammer).
The fact that they are called out in this email seems pretty telling of why Parker had to go...
'The fact is that many of our internal processes, controls, and actions around compliance have been inadequate, and some decisions have just been plain wrong. As a result, Parker has resigned.'
Not much subtlety there. Presumably as COO he had nothing to do with 'internal processes, controls, and actions around compliance' which seems a little odd to me. So what was he doing all day then?
I also like how the company values are instantly changed...
'Effective immediately, this company’s values are: ...'
Which is interesting because most companies spend ages coming up with the correct values for the company and it usually involves feedback from employees.