
Engineer asks Quora which job offer to take. CEO replies: not ours. (Zenefits) - RockyMcNuts
http://qz.com/400027/engineer-asks-quora-which-job-offer-to-take-ceo-replies-not-ours/
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eldude
Use of power to punish, especially those considering joining your tribe, are
empirically shown to be disliked and generate a reduction in available power
over and alignment with those outside the tribe. This will hurt Zenefits,
despite the CEO's intention to strengthen it. This was an amazing opportunity
for the Zenefits CEO to publicly and prominently compete and make the case for
working at Zenefit's (in a general sense, not for this candidate
specifically). Instead, he ran away and threw the candidate under the bus.
Shameful.

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koube
Do you have a source? Not doubting you, but I think I see a lot of people take
glee in punishing other people and would like to have an objective reason to
disagree with it.

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eldude
I'm having difficult finding the studies, but here's a research paper on the
subject that includes a lot of evidence on the matter: "The evolution of
prestige: Freely conferred deference as a mechanism for enhancing the benefits
of cultural transmission"[1]. Once you're literate in power dynamics, you'll
see evidence everywhere.

> I see a lot of people take glee in punishing other people

The fact that prestige is more effective than force, doesn't mean that force
isn't effective. Imagine someone who's completely undeserving of any prestige-
based status, yet has the means to control a business. Prestige-based status
is unavailable to them, so they will use force, and eventually, the only
employees that stick around are those that accepts such uses of force.
(Imagine a toxic work environment)

Silicon Valley on the other hand (or engineers) are in high demand, and thus
have no need to endure use of force (abuse) because there are those that will
employ them that are deserving of prestige.

[1]
[http://www.hirhome.com/academic/hen&gil.pdf](http://www.hirhome.com/academic/hen&gil.pdf)

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fatjokes
I'm trying very hard to see it from the CEO's point of view but I'm failing. I
mean, I wouldn't want to hire an unenthusiastic employee either, but I
wouldn't have taken a prospect preferring Google over a little HR startup so
personally. And taking the prospect's deliberation over a career choice as a
sign of indecision? Seriously!? I can't see Zenefits coming off looking good
after this. The irony is that it happened while pointing out another's social
media mishap.

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Eridrus
Well that certainly leaves a bad taste in my mouth about Zenefits.

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sampo
The again, for people who deeply case about the exact things Zenefits is
doing, maybe this gives a stronger incentive to work there as there is less
"passers-by" in the personnel.

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Eridrus
I'm honestly confused about why engineers going to work at Zenefits would
"deeply care" about what they're doing. They're writing HR software and
aggregating benefits.

It's certainly going to make some HR professionals' and founders' lives
easier, but I doubt there are a tonne of engineers who deeply care about it.

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sampo
Yeah. If someone passionately wants to, say, write code for robotics, they
might commit to their employer if they work at, say, Boston Dynamics.

But yes, Zenefits is a relatively bad example for this kind of passion, I
assume.

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rkrkrk21
This is just in humour but I am just wondering how folks would have reacted if
Google's CEO's would have chimed in after Conrad's reply and would have
invited this candidate for an interview at Google.

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known
A salesman should never tell the customer that he can find a better product in
next shop

