
David Sacks Stepping Down as Zenefits CEO - londont
http://www.wsj.com/articles/zenefits-ceo-david-sacks-is-expected-to-step-down-1480730433
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qwrusz
Feels like an old school Friday night news drop. Man, Zenefits has had it
rough in the press recently.

I think Sacks has done an extraordinarily good job as CEO. Hard to put oneself
in the CEOs shoes here, but this guy had to make multiple _huge_ decisions and
changes to Zenefits over the past year. Sacks' consistency of right calls and
handling things deftly under a ton of pressure, I can't remember the last time
a CEO had to run such a gauntlet, maybe _Iceman_ back in 1986. The guy
deserves more credit than he has gotten. Though it's not surprising the press
missed this part of a story as they tend to do when they smell unicorn blood
in the water.

I also don't think it's too surprising he is stepping down. How long can
someone work on cleaning up someone else's mess? While under-compensated for
it. And while putting better more interesting potential opportunities on hold.

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snarf
This was partially his mess as well since he was COO before becoming CEO, no?
And he has a very significant investment in Zenefits which he made when
becoming COO, so while he does not draw a cash salary, it's hard to say he is
under-compensated given the investment opportunity and his ownership stake. I
do think he had a very difficult job as turnarounds are tough, and he made a
good effort.

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harryh
He was only COO for a year before the CEO got fired and he took over. I think
it's fair to say that it's partially his mess but also fair to say that a lot
of the mess got created before he started as COO.

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ENOTTY
Apparently he's joining Thiel and the Trump team
[http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/02/technology/zenefits-
chief-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/02/technology/zenefits-chief-
quitting-and-is-said-to-consider-trump-transition-team.html?_r=0)

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jasonjei
Politics aside and whatever one's thoughts are on Donald Trump, I think it's
good that a leader like Mr. Sacks is joining government.

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gist
> and whatever one's thoughts are on Donald Trump

I wonder why it's always necessary when mentioning Trump (anywhere not just
HN) to say something like that which sounds like an apology.

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jasonjei
I think because Trump is not a middle ground for most people. It's almost one
of those topics you try not to bring up for fear that you would offend
somebody whether you drop criticism or praise.

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buf
Huge fan of David Sacks. Rough blow about Zenefits the past few months. It
feels like one piece of bad news after another.

Really, the big news here is Gusto. Gusto has hands-down slipped right passed
Zenefits and will consume their market.

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kumarm
Surprising. From This week in startup's interview that came out 3 days back,
it appeared David Sacks had no such plans:
[https://soundcloud.com/twistartups/twist-e692](https://soundcloud.com/twistartups/twist-e692)

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rmason
Did you see Jason try to get him into discussing politics and he wasn't having
any of it? I thought he was just being diplomatic but they're friends and I am
willing to bet Jason was just trying to bust his chops fully knowing what was
going to happen.

What I didn't know until digging tonight was after Peter Thiel founded the
Stanford Review that David Sacks was one of the editors who succeeded him.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stanford_Review](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stanford_Review)

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Magicstatic
I think what's interesting is that Sacks was put into this position at the
request of the board and shareholders. For the most part, this will be a
interesting transition for Zenefits as they deal with the wave after wave of
bad news...

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twblalock
I don't know why anyone would want to be the CEO of such a troubled company
without either a huge golden parachute or a huge payoff in the event of an
acquisition.

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forgetsusername
> _I don 't know why anyone would want to be the CEO of such a troubled
> company_

He was already COO. Does he bear no responsibility for the "trouble"? Do you
think that falls solely on the CEO (which he ended up becoming)?

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OoTheNigerian
Seems appropriate considering he was supposed to have Conrad's back but seemed
to happily throw him under the bus when the Zenefits issues came to light.

This will be a good way to close out that chapter and for everyone to move on.

FWIW,asides the throwing of Conrad under the bus, Sacks seemed to have done a
pretty good job (from the outside) of steadying the Zenefits ship after last
year's collusion.

I expect Buzfeed to have the gossip back story by early next week.

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hkmurakami
tl;dr since some of us won't have wsj access:

 _“David Sacks is still the CEO of Zenefits and remains very committed to the
company,” she said in a statement. “This is not a role that David sought, but
he accepted it without any compensation at the request of the board to get the
company past a crisis. Now that the crisis is over, David is leading a process
to determine what senior talent the company needs to get to the next level.”_

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khare_ashwini
The "web" link allows you to access WSJ w/o any subscription.

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Chickenosaurus
The web link does not work for every HN user. WSJ always displays the paywall
for certain geo-locations, even when Google is the referrer. This applies to
Germany and multiple other countries.

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MarkCole
Not sure that is strictly true. I live in Germany and the web link gives me
WSJ with no pay wall.

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Chickenosaurus
Your comment sparked my interest. After playing around a bit, it seems Firefox
users get the paywall while Chrome users do not.

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manigandham
Firefox has some built-in "tracking protection" that might not send referer
headers.

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sgustard
The lead has changed to: "David Sacks confirmed he is stepping down as chief
executive of Zenefits, less than a year after taking over the troubled health-
benefits broker."

The "still the CEO of Zenefits" quote from his last-to-know PR person is now
gone.

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bedros
to get access to article, click on the web link above (second line) it will
get you to google search, then click on first link

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464192002d7fe1c
I was aware of the ability to do the google hack, but not that link/feature,
very useful, thanks!

