[phibit]

Does anyone have any more information about the "52 hour online training program" that "the Macro" allowed them to skip? If that training program is any bit as useless as "online driving school", I can sort of understand how the Macro came to be...

[patio11]

California requires 20 hours of training to get a license for health and accident insurance, 20 hours to get a license for life insurance, and an additional 12 hours on ethics training for people wanting to pass the exam for either. These are tick-box requirements that allow you to take the exam you need to pass to get the relevant license. Several providers have online courses you can take for $50 < N < $100 which fill up the required 52 hours and, importantly for the purpose of box ticking, generate documentation certifying that you put in your 52 hours.

Here's the regulator's description of half of the requirements:

http://www.insurance.ca.gov/0200-industry/0050-renew-license...

There exist many tick-box requirements in the vast, vast field that is compliance in regulated industries. There is a political valence to this observation.

My personal favorite one is the time where I had to threaten to fire myself if I ever misused patient information. I threatened to fire myself if I ever misused patient information. I then documented the fact that I had threatened to fire myself if I ever misused patient information. If I am ever investigated on suspicion of failing to have threatened to fire myself if I ever misused patient information (a crime which is separate from misusing patient information), I will be able to produce adequate documentation attesting to the fact that I threatened to fire myself if I ever misused patient information.

[yummyfajitas]

As further detail, the way these things work is the following. The "training" consists of watching some powerpoints and listening to a voiceover reading the slide. You can't click "next slide" until the voiceover has finished. The voiceovers add up to 52 hours.

Typically the voiceovers are short, e.g. 60 seconds, to ensure that you are actually at your computer clicking "next" rather than just letting the voiceover run while you do something productive.

Once you've clicked "next" 52x60=3120 times you are then permitted to take the exam.

Zenefits "Macro" automated the clicking, allowing their people to simply learn the material and then take the exam.

tl;dr; The state of California says "you must learn this material very slowly" and Zenefits employees are fast learners.

[loumf]

Also, at the end they have you attest that you actually did the training under penalty of perjury. Zenefits instructed their employees to lie instead.

[throwaway28715]

> If that training program is any bit as useless as "online driving school", I can sort of understand how the Macro came to be...

One of my proudest hacker moments* a while back was taking online defensive driving school (to have a speeding ticket excused) and figuring out what to type into the Javascript console to make the 'next' button clickable before the timer on the page ran out. (This technique would have been subverted had there been any server-side checks whatsoever, but nope...they completely entrusted the client to keep the time. I suppose they don't have much of an incentive to make it any more difficult given that the government probably doesn't have a very rigorous accreditation process for these courses.) That cut whatever was left of the required 6 hours down to about 20 minutes. I guess I'm an unethical monster that should never be allowed to run a company. :\

*I know, it's pretty lame in comparison to, say, figuring out how to jailbreak an iPhone, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't proud.

[pj_mukh]

If everyone agrees it is a "silly" requirement (especially because it was circumvented so "easily"), why are we so mad at Zenefits?

We certainly don't want giant companies influencing policy changes (though, that happens frequently). I think a good indicator of whether a policy can justifiably be circumvented is if it actually hurt anybody. Has the "macro" hurt anybody yet? The articles have been vague.

[timv]

Has the "macro" hurt anybody yet?

The employees who used it and then signed a false declaration are at risk of jail.

That was their choice, but they were seemingly under pressure from their CEO, so it seems fairly evident (to me) that Parker created a real problem for his team, even if the customers are OK.

[Edit: Removed out-of-place "committed"]

[pj_mukh]

I still don't see how the macro allowed them to do anything different from just scrolling to the end of a list of terms and conditions. AFAIK, they still had to pass an exam?

[stonedge]

Some of the compliance training I've had to take didn't have an exam. But the software tracked how quickly you went through the training. If you went through too quickly, you didn't get credit.

[skewart]

The problem is that they were getting the advantages of being licensed while not actually following proper procedure for licensing. They were effectively lying to everyone. Sure, it's a pretty harmless lie, but I can see how people in the industry would be pissed.

Lyft and Uber skirt similar kinds of regulation but they're completely up front about it. They don't pretend that their drivers are licensed or claim any benefit for having licensed drivers in any way. They're simply offering a different product than what taxis offer - getting a ride with a random unlicensed stranger. They're not trying to get the best of both worlds - the legitimacy of being licensed and the cost saving of not bothering with it.

Lyft and Uber, and Airbnb too, are simply offering a new product that doesn't come with any reassurance for consumers from regulatory compliance. They're betting that reputation systems (ratings, reviews, etc.) will provide assurance for consumers just as well if not better than government regulation. So far the market is showing they just might be right.

I suspect that if Zenefits had offered a platform where anyone can sell insurance to anyone from the beginning then people would be less pissed about it. Of course offering an unlicensed insurance brokerage product would probably be a lot harder to pull off than offering an unlicensed taxi product.

[pj_mukh]

Hmm? I'm not sure I care if the "industry" is pissed if said industry accepts regulations that we all agree are silly

P.S: I'm totally for sensible regulations. However, sensible regulations usually require wide amounts of nepotism, cronyism and backstabbing to break. If a regulation is important enough that people could be hurt by it, then it should not be circumventable by a web script.

[delazeur]

The solution to silly regulations is to change them, not to ignore them or subvert them. Think what a can of worms would be opened if regulatory compliance was contingent on some ephemeral, arbitrary, socially defined notion of "silliness."

[pj_mukh]

Nope. I don't want monied corporations anywhere near my regulations. Let's just have the pertinent regulatory agencies realize that making someone stare at a screen for 'X' minutes doesn't make a training program. You are asking for someone to side step that stuff.

I would actually rather have companies like Zenefits sidestep regulations like that to show the regulators where they screwed up than Zenefits pump money into skeevy Lobby groups.

[delazeur]

So you don't want the government to change regulations because it would give rich corporations an opportunity to leverage their lobbying dollars. Instead, you want rich corporations to cheat their way around regulations at leisure. (Note that what Zenefits did was not a legal loophole, it was a method of falsifying compliance documentation.)

In any case, what's the point of "show[ing] the regulators where they screwed up" if you don't want them to change anything anyway? What's the point of having regulations at all if you're going to let them be a joke?

[pj_mukh]

I think we are arguing for the same thing. I just don't want agencies to change regulations because a large company wants them too. Id rather an agency be smart enough to find out that companies are using a loophole, and then close that loophole. A company will always use all loopholes available to it, to not do so would be silly

'Making trainees watch a video' seems like silly regulations asking to be circumvented. Why not make the exams more stringent so people are forced to actually pay attention.

[467568985476]

It is perhaps a silly requirement, considering that the salespeople still passed the required exam.

But I see it as symptomatic of a cultural contempt for regulations. It seems like a conflict of interest for a company to wantonly decide which regulations are worth following and which aren't. Especially when the salespeople could be personally liable, and the catastrophic outcome is somebody finding out that their $1m surgery isn't covered by their insurance despite promises it would be from the salesperson.

[ubernostrum]

It is perhaps a silly requirement, considering that the salespeople still passed the required exam.

Supposing that the exam is supposed to test the candidate's actual knowledge -- i.e., their ability to correctly represent things and act in compliance with the law while engaged in conversation with potential customers -- I certainly can see a risk of someone just saying "eh, I'll skip the material, take the exam with a reference open on my desk, pass it and be fine" and then getting into major trouble later when it turns out they did actually need to know a lot of that stuff off the top of their head in order to do their job.

[rhizome]

My impression is that it is, but that doesn't excuse them.