As a former employee, I can say it's totally different than it used to be. Everyone associated with the problems has been shown the door, major house cleaning. The atmosphere is much more serious now, it's a completely different company.
That said, many early employees would have corrected these problems if they were widely known. It was not the lax environment some articles made us out to be. Everyone had to pull their weight and we were very serious about getting everything right. It was a huge disappointment to discover that some department leads allowed this stuff to exist, reducing the value of the many late nights myself and others put in.
> That said, many early employees would have corrected these problems if they were widely known.
How can anyone on the outside be sure there aren't comparable problems which still aren't widely known? I just don't see a reason to believe what Zenefits says because their marketing literature says compliance a lot more now.
>How can anyone on the outside be sure there aren't comparable problems which still aren't widely known?
I'm not sure how any company can provide this proof. However, the rage felt by all the truly dedicated individuals who watched their equity decline in value has drastically changed the culture, everyone is on watch to make sure that doesn't happen again. In addition, new technology and new teams have the explicit purpose of monitoring and maintaining compliance, which I believe are effective. The internal shift to being a "compliance company" is not just marketing speak, it is real.
You can't, which is one of several reasons why the original fuckup was so serious. Your track record matters. Why would a new customer go with Zenefits over someone who's always taken compliance seriously?
If equity value is what's motivating people's desire to not illegally cut corners, I see little reason to assume they won't revert to previous behavior once the spotlight is off, especially as time passes and personnel changes.
Personally, I don't believe there is such a thing. The only careful doctor is one who has made a bad decision that killed a patient; the only careful military officer is one who has had a strategy of theirs fail and lost soldiers under their command. Everyone else has too much bravado, and no emotional revulsion to shortcuts, and so can't be be trusted with real responsibility.
Genuine question: why would you make a throwaway to say a former employer, which fucked up, is taking ownership of its mistake and making serious changes to improve itself?
At this point, I actually trust them more than your average startup. They have cleaned house and really made a deliberate effort to shift the culture. Firing a lot of people (starting with the CEO founder) is a decent sign of really wanting to change. The newer people definitely seem much more level-headed and less aggressive. Of course this is all subjective, but trust always is.
There's also the part that further scandal would almost certainly destroy the company completely. So Sacks is likely making an effort to avoid scandalous behavior even more than the average startup.
Compare Zenefits's response to that of Theranos, where Holmes remarkably still has her job after being literally banned from the industry.