I have nothing but the utmost respect for Joshua Reeves, every interaction I've had with him has been very genuine and the way he runs his company and culture reflects that. Congrats on the raise!
1) Housing stipend of $500/mo if employees live within a 10-minute walk of the office
2) A semi-annual retreat / hackathon where employees cook meals, hang out, bond, code, and present their projects
3) Plane ticket anywhere in the world that must be used between their 1 and 2-year anniversary at the company.
I know of many companies that already do #1 and #2, but I suppose I haven't heard of this complimentary vacation ever before. Seems like a pretty awesome perk, which shows they respect and value work/life balance.
Interviewed with their lead front-end engineer for a front-end engineering position. Everything was great then he asked me for my "story". I answered as best I could but I guess it wasn't what he wanted to hear so he re-iterated that he wanted to know if he would like working with me. I think that's great thing to determine but was put-off by the question-- I got the feeling I would be working with a bit of a tool.
He also put a ton of emphasis on it being a "start-up" and essentially said something along the lines of "in this type of culture its expected that you earn less". I can only guess they passed on me because of my salary requirements which are ~20k under the average. If that is the case which I can only guess it was, not exactly filled with respect or value for work/life balance. /2 cents
EDIT: and jeez they are pushing themselves hard on ycombinator lately.
Personally, I am totally ok with this. If "start-up culture" means 20 days of PTO, free meals, free gym, a ton of other perks, I would care less about the year end dollar amount. Perhaps that's just me though.
Famous last words. After seeing several SF startups implode, I'll never make the mistake of taking under market pay. I would much rather choose how my compensation gets spent rather than an employer make that decision for me.
It's easy to get lured into the excitement of working in a "start-up culture" but you will recognize the red flags after one has sucked you dry without adding much to your finances.
Some parts of aerospace, specifically the higher profile projects where people will feel like they have bragging rights for working there. Also, maybe the game industry? Basically any industry where people people are dying to be on the inside, despite what the job may entail or their long term prospects.
The strange part, though, is that there's so much money pouring into tech startups right now, and so with a little bit of negotiation skills, you can find all the sexiness and get paid really well.
(This is not meant as a criticism of ZenPayroll or their front-end lead in particular, especially since this instance is just hearsay, but I've come across the attitude described before and have found it personally baffling every time.)
Well when you consider the second half of that type of statement is that you are expected to earn less because you are being given a large equity opportunity in the company you will help build...the statement makes a lot more sense.
To flip your question around: Is there any other for-profit industry where employers wouldn't laugh in your face for saying you would like 0.8% of the company worth in stock options in addition to your salary...
It all boils down to whether you believe in the company you are building. If it is positioned to do great, then of course you would want the equity for that IPO. If you don't have that faith, then what are you doing interviewing at that company anyways...Use your skills to get a higher paying job without the options.
The free vacation ticket is a creative perk, and it's nice that they reward people after a year, but I don't think it's actually that awesome compared to other popular perks.
If you boil it down to numbers, the most you're looking at is a $2000 round-trip ticket to Japan. So it could be similar to a ~2% salary bonus your first year. But of course in practice, most people will get cheaper tickets, and this bonus doesn't give you anything after year 1. Compare this to the $500 stipend - that's $6k every year, and it directly affects your checkbook, instead of being a perk you may be able to enjoy.
The spirit of it is very nice, as a reward for loyalty. But I think it's always useful to look at the bottom line as well.
The $500 per month housing stipend seems a little disingenuous. If the concern was truly about employees and rising real estate prices, why not raise wages by $6000 across the board? It isn't like real estate magically drops in value half a mile away or commuting longer distances is free. Is the policy an attempt to remove an excuse why an employee can't be in the office? Do they want the ability to call an employee during the evening and have them on site 10 minutes later? Do they want to ability to lower wages in the future with less resentment (it is a lot easier to cut perks than salary)? Maybe it is cynical, but those all sound like more realistic reasons to have a housing stipend based on proximity to the office than true concern for their employees.
I don't think it's cynicism at all. It may not be explicitly about being able to call someone up at 8pm, but rather about building a culture where everyone is hanging out at the office all the time and your social circle revolves around your coworkers. That's a deal if the company can get that for $500/month.
Assuming there's more than one landlord they will capture some of the value but not all of it.
E.g., they would be incentivized to raise rents $500, but then one of then could get more business by only raising it to $450 letting the employee capture $50 a month, and so on and so forth.
This reasoning is based on false circumstances. SF has a landlord's market, so they have no reason to shave the price for more business, but they have ample reason to raise the price to extract as much value out of the property.
Some parents with young children find it difficult to get time to be alone in private while not exhausted. This can cause awful stress on a relationship. "Lunchtime" with a partner at home can make a big difference.
This might not sound like a big deal to the pre-kid people, or those with tons of energy after the kids are in bed, but for some people this is a relationship-saver.
Lunchtime at home? Better hope you are not on lunch making duty at the office, it's company culture don't you know. You do want to be a team player don't you?
Besides, how reasonable is it to expect to be able to raise a family in downtown SF? Surely if you want space, good schools, and room to grow an extra $500 in downtown rent terms isn't going to make that much of a difference.
Exactly. There are many reasons why an employer might want to give a stipend for (fill in desired behavior) as opposed to just increasing pay.
Some companies give stipends to employees who commute using public transportation. They could just give everyone a raise to cover those fees, but tying the stipend to the behavior actually encourages people to do it.
If they wanted people closer to the office it would have made so much more sense to NOT be in SF itself. $500 doesn't go very far in that neighborhood. That's roughly a walk in closet.
My cynical guess was that it makes it harder to leave, you're in an expensive area and can only justify being there because of their perk. I definitely appreciate the less cynical reasons though.
I've heard Palantir does #1. I live in SF and my office is in SOMA- still takes me about 45 minutes to get to work on Muni. Living in SOMA would be more expensive but palatable with the stipend. That would be very convenient.
Facebook was our inspiration for this perk. I think they had it ~2004-2008 and it was a one mile radius. I was working at Zazzle at the time and many of my classmates who joined Facebook lived in the downtown Palo Alto area as a result.
At some stage Government a both federal and local are going to wake up to all those benefits in kind that sv seems to hand out - as a way of raising additional tax with very little pain the hard working familiy's (tm tony blair)
After all what voter is going to argue with clamping down on tax avoidance if it means that the increase in property tax isn't as big this year or that the federal government can use this additional tax to reduce the deficit (or more likely for pork in some agricultural state)
Not sure if you're suggesting that they will tax those benefits specially or if they'll raise general taxes to cover for the tax-avoidance of those benefits.
Either way, health care is the precedent here. Wage freezes in WWII resulted from FDR's Executive Order 9328[1] left employers in a lurch. The government had control of all wages, earnings, etc., and those wages were (basically) frozen by position. A tax man made $x, while an ad man made $y, no matter where they worked.
This put employers in a tough spot because, so long as incomes were the same everywhere, hiring was difficult because they couldn't raise wages to attract candidates, so they petitioned the government for an exemption on health care benefits, as a way of attracting new hires and competing in the market place. In competitive industries, as these benefits were given in lieu of free market wages, benefits became fairly lavish, and for competitive positions, health care benefits became the norm even after the wage freezes were eliminated, but the net result was that health care as a benefit grew 700% in a 20 year span.
The sum of all that of course is the system we have now, where health care is so broken as a system that we're going to 'fix it' with more of the same, but that's another discussion.
I know its one of the reasons the USA didn't end up with a German style insurance based health system in the late 40's early 50's.
Taxing the benefits is the fairest way to do it.
You could handle this by moving to a system similar to the UK PAYE - any benefits in kind are identified to the Tax man by your employer (via the P60 form) woudl simplify the federal tax system.
I'm a software engineer at ZenPayroll, and it's truly an awesome place to work. The founders and team have taken great care to build an amazing company culture, and I'm really excited to see us grow over the next few years.
The lack of remote opportunities at every Bay Area company, save for a few prominent ones, is disappointing. I live in the area but am frustrated by the commute, but also cannot afford the premium of living in SF.
But I should stop before this turns into a full on rant...
I really don't know what it's going to take to get some of these startups to give remote working a try. I currently work remotely for a mid-west startup and it's completely changed the way I work, and for the better.
I feel like a have more control over my schedule which in turn gives me a better sense of ownership over what I create.
If you've ever done freelance work it's very similar in that it gives you freedom to create your own schedule while providing a more stable form of income. That's not to say I wouldn't go back to freelancing I'm just enjoying the current situation I'm in.
How elitist is the hiring process? I'm always really hesitant to apply to places like that. I'm consistently one of the best developers at my job, I'm really good at getting shit done, and have a ton of faith in my ability. However, as soon as I think about applying at a "trendy" start up, I envision someone grilling me for hours to hand write sorting algorithms on a white board. I have no interest in that, and I feel that it has very little bearing on how good someone is at software development.
We're not interested in a candidate's ability to write sorting algorithms, because those aren't the kind of problems we're solving. Our technical interviews are working on a problem with an engineer. We care a hell of a lot more about how you think than regurgitating Big O notation.
We work in Ruby and CoffeeScript, but we've hired engineers without direct experience in either because we knew they could translate their ample programming knowledge. We're looking for smart people that want to do the best work of their lives. That sounds like bullshit, but we're pretty serious about that. Turns out you can hire smart, passionate people and they'll naturally do awesome things.
For a more in depth look at how we think about hiring, you can check out:
Thank you for the thorough reply. I appreciate that you guys recognize sorting algorithms are not the daily work of an engineer. Working on a problem with another engineer is actually what I consider to be the "perfect" interview. Aside from getting a developer in for an entire week as a trial run, I feel like that's probably the best way to see if they're fit for the team and capable of the work.
Do you have any evidence for the claims in The Value of Cultural Interviews? Because, to be honest, I looked at your Careers page and it made my skin crawl. Everyone looked the same, everyone was in the same age demographic, everyone had similar hobbies, you want to be their family (I have a family, thank you, and I work for you to do something interesting and to support my real family).
More to the point (yes, I worry that I'm not being pointed enough ;) ) I have worked with plenty of people that weren't a 'cultural' fit with me, and we did great things. So, I have evidence in direct contradiction of your claims.
On the one hand, this is almost impossible to scientifically prove. You can't reproduce companies, as in building the same exact product with equally talented people where one has great cultural continuity and the other doesn't.
It comes down to the way you want to spend your time. If all you want is a paycheck, that's fine. Take the money, go do something else you feel is more important. I don't mean that we are a family in that we're trying to replace your actual blood relatives.
If you're spending 10 hours a day with a group of people, would you rather give yourself to a cause with a group of people you trust, believe in, who you genuinely want to see succeed beyond any selfish desires of your own, or a group clocking in for a paycheck? Ultimately, which situation do you think will make you happier?
I'm not asserting that it is what everyone wants, but these are our values. This is the type of company we want to build.
This is like complaining that you need to write an application essay to get into college. "But I'm not going to be a writer..."
If the company is awesome, just suck it up for a day. Once you join you can try to change the interviewing process.
I think the thing most people don't realize is that these traditional "interviewing" techniques (like whiteboard coding) are just what gets you in the door. Your real interview starts on day 1, and if you don't perform at the real task, you'll be asked to leave.
Writing sorting algorithms is like tuning a guitar. It's true there exist people who are good at tuning but actually terrible at playing (ie: good at puzzles, but lousy programmers).
But there are few, if any, amazing guitarists who can't quickly tune an instrument. It's a signal.
> This is like complaining that you need to write an application essay to get into college. "But I'm not going to be a writer..."
If my application essay was graded for spelling, grammar, sentence construction, complexity, and other features like I were writing for the AP English exam, I would agree completely with that statement. However, the purpose of such an essay is to communicate why you will succeed in your studies and why the university should admit you. Yes, it takes a minimum level of writing proficiency to do this, but that should be secondary to the message. If you are a university admissions officer who is grading essays on proficiency you should be fired for not doing your job properly.
> If the company is awesome, just suck it up for a day. Once you join you can try to change the interviewing process.
Which just perpetuates the system.
> I think the thing most people don't realize is that these traditional "interviewing" techniques (like whiteboard coding) are just what gets you in the door. Your real interview starts on day 1, and if you don't perform at the real task, you'll be asked to leave.
Then why the hell are you doing them? Just randomly choose a resume that has enough buzzwords and make that person an offer.
> Writing sorting algorithms is like tuning a guitar. It's true there exist people who are good at tuning but actually terrible at playing (ie: good at puzzles, but lousy programmers).
> But there are few, if any, amazing guitarists who can't quickly tune an instrument. It's a signal.
Writing sorting algorithms for a software developer is like tuning a guitar for a musician. Both are broad terms that cover a number of specialties. Most specialties of software developer can write efficient sorting algorithms, but some can't because they have no need to. If you want to hire a guitarist, advertise that you are looking for a guitarist; don't advertise that you are looking for a musician and reject everyone who isn't a guitarist at the interview stage.
I should take a day off work, go get mis-measured and stressed out due to the poor interview style, get hired into a job I cannot do, and get fired because you mis-measured me.
> Writing sorting algorithms is like tuning a guitar....
I know it's not meant literally but, I play guitar and write code. I couldn't play the guitar without having to tune it, so yeah, I can tune a guitar quickly by ear in order to play it, but I can only remember one instance of writing a sort algorithm - it's just not necessary in some domains.
He is using that phrase in the sense of his (perceived) responsibility to his employees, which is undoubtedly stronger than his responsibility to the overall city.
Other than obeying the law and paying taxes, he has no responsibility to the city. Why has it become so fashionable to project obligation onto others? The guy is creating 20+ jobs this year, what more would he need to do to fulfill this "responsibility to the overall city?"
When you've already hobbled the market mechanism on the seller side the only thing that seems to make sense is to try to browbeat the amorphous tide of the demand side, i.e. shouting at the ocean.
Where does someone's butterfly effect responsibility end?
If I create a startup and hire 20 people, and some of those 20 people like to eat some particular type of food for team lunches, and their presence at that eatery makes the lunch line longer for other patrons, do I have some obligation to apologize to those patrons for the long line?
If my 20 employees don't elect my $500 stipend to live within walking distance, what pennance would adequate for me to apologize to citizens of earth for the increased CO2 emissions from their driving and to the citizens of San Francisco for the extra 40 vehicle trips that would be foist upon the city? For good measure, he's paying people $500 a month extra to live within walking distance. For this, he gets a river of crap?!
At some point, companies employ people, those people get paid, those people spend their money consuming other items, but the company has no responsibility to apologize for that 3rd level effect consumption, IMO.
I'm the CEO of ZenPayroll and I added a comment to the main thread but wanted to clarify here as well. I chatted with the WSJ reporter about several topics, and she merged some concepts in her write up.
I was born in San Francisco, but grew up in the suburbs. When I was in college, I used to travel through San Francisco to visit my family and I told the reporter it's been amazing to see all of the neighborhood changes over the years. SoMa used to be much emptier, and was not a very residential area. After they built the Giants baseball stadium, there was a big building boom, and Mission Bay is now rapidly developing as well.
Separately, we discussed our housing stipend program. This perk was actually inspired by Facebook, which used to give a housing stipend for employees that lived within one mile of their office in downtown Palo Alto. We would do this program regardless of where our office is located (in SoMa or elsewhere) because we see a big benefit to folks not having to commute.
The reporter at the WSJ merged these two concepts, hence the quote you listed above.
There are also two recent blog posts we've made which might be helpful. The first is about the funding, and second is our 2013 Year-In-Review, which highlights what we've been working on.
I can't emphasize enough the severity of pain that ZenPayroll is solving. While running a startup in 2012 with multiple W-2 employees and contractors, the industry standard small business payroll solution was QuickBooks Online Payroll. Although it certainly abstracted many local and federal legal & tax complexities into something a first-timer could work with, I still spent at least 10 hours a month running payroll, a process of manual steps that software could easily automate.
The interface was confusing, web-unfriendly, and left me questioning how much money I needed to budget for quarterly taxes (both state and federal) and why we were sending so much money to the IRS for such a small startup. At the end of the day, I always felt captive to QuickBooks. Software should be empowering, not shackling.
Hopefully they use some of this funding to start expanding to new states quicker. I was told last year they'd be available in my state by Q3 2103. That deadline came and went and now I'm being told "by the end of 2014."
The current major companies offering payroll (SurePayroll and ADP) are both expensive difficult to use. I'm currently with SurePayroll and it sucks major balls. It's expensive, (I have 1 full time employee and 1 part time employee that I pay both by check and I think it's upwards of $80 a month for the two of them). Simple tasks that should be easy take multiple steps. I tried updating my bank account information and they required me to fax it in. I'm under 30 and have never used a fax machine. Huge time drain just to update an account and routing number.
I want so badly to switch to ZenPayroll, as I've read so many great things about it. I'll keep crossing my fingers they'll hurry up and get more states on board. The online payroll space is absolutely ready for a game changer, and a company that gets it right will make a ton of money.
Definitely agree regarding their coverage -- only being in 7 out of 50 states is no minor drawback.
The death of ADP and its ilk can't come soon enough. Payroll might not be as 'sexy' as some other markets, but you're right that whichever start-up can battle the big guys here will absolutely make a lot of money.
ADP will never be simple because it's not supposed to be. It also won't die for the same reason. It handles payroll processing worldwide. Payroll is complicated enough when you're just dealing with city, state, and federal payroll taxes. Can you imagine how complicated a system must be to account for all of the international rules and variations of payroll and make it accessible via a unitary interface?
ADP is targeted at corporations with payroll across multiple jurisdictions. The Apples, Googles, and Microsofts. It's not targeted at, nor intended for small businesses, even though they offer a SMB product. If you're not at least dealing with payroll across multiple states, you should be using a your bank's payroll service offerings, or (if you trust them) a local payroll service provider or a payroll SaaS.
I paid a dinner visit to a friend at ZenPayroll and did feel a strong family culture at their dinner table. very unique culture that should be more standard in our startup community.
I'm the CEO of ZenPayroll and we're excited to share this news with everyone. Funding is an enabler, not a destination, and we're eager to use these resources to serve our customers.
As some quick history, the company is a little over two years old and we were a part of the YC W12 batch. My co-founders and I started the company because we had felt the pain of using existing solutions at our previous startups. We also have family members running small businesses, and we had been exposed first-hand to the frustration of doing payroll manually (which is still how many companies in the US do payroll).
We felt that modern software could make this complex process much simpler. It's been fourteen months since our launch and we're proud to be processing hundreds of millions of dollars in payroll, and serving countless small businesses across the country. I remind the team often that building a great company is a marathon, not a sprint, and we're still at the early stage of our journey. We have much more to do!
During this interview with the WSJ, I talked at length with Debbie about some team programs we put in place. People are the foundation of any great company and the ZenPayroll team is the entire reason we've been able to do what we've done over the past two years.
I wanted to clarify some of the programs she wrote about:
(1) Housing stipend -- the main driver of this perk is actually the desire to have folks live near the office. We would offer this type of program regardless of where our office is located (even if it was in a lower cost area) because we see a big benefit to folks not having to commute. We realize that not everyone can live nearby, and several of our teammates actually live on the Peninsula, East Bay, or other parts of SF. Our inspiration for this perk was the housing stipend Facebook provided it's employees early on, when they were located in downtown Palo Alto.
(2) Flight at one-year anniversary -- it’s easy in startup life to become caught up in the day to day. We’ve always found it rewarding to travel because it gives everyone perspective, and taking a step back can help people better understand what’s important to them, which makes them a better teammate as well. We put the two-year expiration in place as a specific restriction so teammates have to do a trip during that year. They don’t have to go of course, but we do everything we can to encourage them to do it.
(3) Workation -- similar to #2 above, we’ve found that changing our environment helps us think about things differently. Many other startups do similar types of retreats, and we’ve really enjoyed going away as a team for 5-6 days and working on smaller cross-functional projects that can be completed during the workation. It’s also a team bonding event, and yes, many folks in the office like to cook breakfast. :)
A bit of an outsider's perspective, from someone at a company (FullContact) that does some similar things -
1: Free EcoPass and/or free parking - EcoPass is a pretty killer bus pass that lets you take the express routes and you can even do long trips for a severely discounted price. The airport from downtown, for instance, runs $11. With EcoPass it's $2.50. We've found that many people would rather take the bus than drive, even if driving and parking in Denver isn't nearly as much of an inconvenience as it is in SF. It also solves the "car trouble" issue for most people.
2: $7,500 each year for vacation - In a startup, you're going to work harder, probably for a bit less money, than anywhere else. Burnout will happen. This is our way to combat it. We remove the obstacle of "can't afford a vacation" by actually paying you to take one.
3: Powder Day Policy - There's 8 inches at Vail and you can't stand to be inside? Go. Take the day. Just don't screw over your team and make it up in the next two weeks. The same holds true when it's 72 and sunny for the first time in a month and you need to just get away.
What we found - First, the obvious. Recruiting engineering talent isn't easy. The same can be said for just about every position that a company needs to fill, but engineering is especially difficult. By way of comparison, we have 9 positions open right now and almost 3,000 applicants. Of those, only 2 percent have applied for the engineering positions.
79 percent have applied as "I just want to work at FullContact".
While that's a drastic difference, it's also better than what we were seeing prior to adding the "non-traditional" benefits as part of the recruiting/retention plan.
The real questions that will hit ZenPayroll (as they have us) are these - You're going to start getting a LOT more applicants. How much time do you have to put in to filter them? Are you going to start getting a lot more GOOD applicants? How many of them just want to game the system for a year to get a taste of the good life? Are your processes good enough to weed them out?
As an outsider with common ground, it's good to see even more companies taking this approach. But as an insider to the turbulence that they can create, I would urge them to make sure that they're as prepared as they can be for those bumps.
Not an economist but my instinct is that if a housing stipend became widespread practice for startups in SF it would aid in inflating the market by making prices artificially low.
77 comments
[ 1.6 ms ] story [ 135 ms ] thread1) Housing stipend of $500/mo if employees live within a 10-minute walk of the office
2) A semi-annual retreat / hackathon where employees cook meals, hang out, bond, code, and present their projects
3) Plane ticket anywhere in the world that must be used between their 1 and 2-year anniversary at the company.
I know of many companies that already do #1 and #2, but I suppose I haven't heard of this complimentary vacation ever before. Seems like a pretty awesome perk, which shows they respect and value work/life balance.
He also put a ton of emphasis on it being a "start-up" and essentially said something along the lines of "in this type of culture its expected that you earn less". I can only guess they passed on me because of my salary requirements which are ~20k under the average. If that is the case which I can only guess it was, not exactly filled with respect or value for work/life balance. /2 cents
EDIT: and jeez they are pushing themselves hard on ycombinator lately.
It's easy to get lured into the excitement of working in a "start-up culture" but you will recognize the red flags after one has sucked you dry without adding much to your finances.
(This is not meant as a criticism of ZenPayroll or their front-end lead in particular, especially since this instance is just hearsay, but I've come across the attitude described before and have found it personally baffling every time.)
To flip your question around: Is there any other for-profit industry where employers wouldn't laugh in your face for saying you would like 0.8% of the company worth in stock options in addition to your salary...
It all boils down to whether you believe in the company you are building. If it is positioned to do great, then of course you would want the equity for that IPO. If you don't have that faith, then what are you doing interviewing at that company anyways...Use your skills to get a higher paying job without the options.
If you boil it down to numbers, the most you're looking at is a $2000 round-trip ticket to Japan. So it could be similar to a ~2% salary bonus your first year. But of course in practice, most people will get cheaper tickets, and this bonus doesn't give you anything after year 1. Compare this to the $500 stipend - that's $6k every year, and it directly affects your checkbook, instead of being a perk you may be able to enjoy.
The spirit of it is very nice, as a reward for loyalty. But I think it's always useful to look at the bottom line as well.
E.g., they would be incentivized to raise rents $500, but then one of then could get more business by only raising it to $450 letting the employee capture $50 a month, and so on and so forth.
1) turns your employees into neighbours
2) reduces wasted commute time
3) increases exercise compared to drivers (10 mins is better than nothing (edit: twice a day!)) thus reducing medical costs
4) reduces absenteeism due to dental appointments, kid concerts, etc that tend to be near home. Improves family life.
5) reduces the carbon footprint of the business
6) reduces the car-related absenteeism: breakdowns, maintenance appointments, even injuries and deaths.
Increasing salaries would do none of these things.
Some parents with young children find it difficult to get time to be alone in private while not exhausted. This can cause awful stress on a relationship. "Lunchtime" with a partner at home can make a big difference.
This might not sound like a big deal to the pre-kid people, or those with tons of energy after the kids are in bed, but for some people this is a relationship-saver.
Besides, how reasonable is it to expect to be able to raise a family in downtown SF? Surely if you want space, good schools, and room to grow an extra $500 in downtown rent terms isn't going to make that much of a difference.
Edit:
(* ok, maybe $300 difference after taxes.)
Some companies give stipends to employees who commute using public transportation. They could just give everyone a raise to cover those fees, but tying the stipend to the behavior actually encourages people to do it.
After all what voter is going to argue with clamping down on tax avoidance if it means that the increase in property tax isn't as big this year or that the federal government can use this additional tax to reduce the deficit (or more likely for pork in some agricultural state)
Either way, health care is the precedent here. Wage freezes in WWII resulted from FDR's Executive Order 9328[1] left employers in a lurch. The government had control of all wages, earnings, etc., and those wages were (basically) frozen by position. A tax man made $x, while an ad man made $y, no matter where they worked.
This put employers in a tough spot because, so long as incomes were the same everywhere, hiring was difficult because they couldn't raise wages to attract candidates, so they petitioned the government for an exemption on health care benefits, as a way of attracting new hires and competing in the market place. In competitive industries, as these benefits were given in lieu of free market wages, benefits became fairly lavish, and for competitive positions, health care benefits became the norm even after the wage freezes were eliminated, but the net result was that health care as a benefit grew 700% in a 20 year span.
The sum of all that of course is the system we have now, where health care is so broken as a system that we're going to 'fix it' with more of the same, but that's another discussion.
[1] - http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/executive-orders/19...
Taxing the benefits is the fairest way to do it.
You could handle this by moving to a system similar to the UK PAYE - any benefits in kind are identified to the Tax man by your employer (via the P60 form) woudl simplify the federal tax system.
I'm a software engineer at ZenPayroll, and it's truly an awesome place to work. The founders and team have taken great care to build an amazing company culture, and I'm really excited to see us grow over the next few years.
But I should stop before this turns into a full on rant...
I feel like a have more control over my schedule which in turn gives me a better sense of ownership over what I create.
If you've ever done freelance work it's very similar in that it gives you freedom to create your own schedule while providing a more stable form of income. That's not to say I wouldn't go back to freelancing I'm just enjoying the current situation I'm in.
We're not interested in a candidate's ability to write sorting algorithms, because those aren't the kind of problems we're solving. Our technical interviews are working on a problem with an engineer. We care a hell of a lot more about how you think than regurgitating Big O notation.
We work in Ruby and CoffeeScript, but we've hired engineers without direct experience in either because we knew they could translate their ample programming knowledge. We're looking for smart people that want to do the best work of their lives. That sounds like bullshit, but we're pretty serious about that. Turns out you can hire smart, passionate people and they'll naturally do awesome things.
For a more in depth look at how we think about hiring, you can check out:
ZenPayroll Is Not Hiring Hackers https://zenpayroll.com/blog/zenpayroll-is-not-hiring-hackers...
The Value of Cultural Interviews https://maddo.xxx/thoughts/how-to-conduct-cultural-interview...
If you have any questions, shoot me an email. I'm chris@
The question is whether or not I'm a "hacker" :)
More to the point (yes, I worry that I'm not being pointed enough ;) ) I have worked with plenty of people that weren't a 'cultural' fit with me, and we did great things. So, I have evidence in direct contradiction of your claims.
It comes down to the way you want to spend your time. If all you want is a paycheck, that's fine. Take the money, go do something else you feel is more important. I don't mean that we are a family in that we're trying to replace your actual blood relatives.
If you're spending 10 hours a day with a group of people, would you rather give yourself to a cause with a group of people you trust, believe in, who you genuinely want to see succeed beyond any selfish desires of your own, or a group clocking in for a paycheck? Ultimately, which situation do you think will make you happier?
I'm not asserting that it is what everyone wants, but these are our values. This is the type of company we want to build.
If the company is awesome, just suck it up for a day. Once you join you can try to change the interviewing process.
I think the thing most people don't realize is that these traditional "interviewing" techniques (like whiteboard coding) are just what gets you in the door. Your real interview starts on day 1, and if you don't perform at the real task, you'll be asked to leave.
Writing sorting algorithms is like tuning a guitar. It's true there exist people who are good at tuning but actually terrible at playing (ie: good at puzzles, but lousy programmers).
But there are few, if any, amazing guitarists who can't quickly tune an instrument. It's a signal.
If my application essay was graded for spelling, grammar, sentence construction, complexity, and other features like I were writing for the AP English exam, I would agree completely with that statement. However, the purpose of such an essay is to communicate why you will succeed in your studies and why the university should admit you. Yes, it takes a minimum level of writing proficiency to do this, but that should be secondary to the message. If you are a university admissions officer who is grading essays on proficiency you should be fired for not doing your job properly.
> If the company is awesome, just suck it up for a day. Once you join you can try to change the interviewing process.
Which just perpetuates the system.
> I think the thing most people don't realize is that these traditional "interviewing" techniques (like whiteboard coding) are just what gets you in the door. Your real interview starts on day 1, and if you don't perform at the real task, you'll be asked to leave.
Then why the hell are you doing them? Just randomly choose a resume that has enough buzzwords and make that person an offer.
> Writing sorting algorithms is like tuning a guitar. It's true there exist people who are good at tuning but actually terrible at playing (ie: good at puzzles, but lousy programmers).
> But there are few, if any, amazing guitarists who can't quickly tune an instrument. It's a signal.
Writing sorting algorithms for a software developer is like tuning a guitar for a musician. Both are broad terms that cover a number of specialties. Most specialties of software developer can write efficient sorting algorithms, but some can't because they have no need to. If you want to hire a guitarist, advertise that you are looking for a guitarist; don't advertise that you are looking for a musician and reject everyone who isn't a guitarist at the interview stage.
No. Thank you, but no.
And to take "some responsibility", he made it easier to push housing prices even higher by subsidizing already well-off employees?
*correction: as explained elsewhere, this is potentially a misquote: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7265916
Why have people started talking about responsibility to your environment as if it's something new?
If I create a startup and hire 20 people, and some of those 20 people like to eat some particular type of food for team lunches, and their presence at that eatery makes the lunch line longer for other patrons, do I have some obligation to apologize to those patrons for the long line?
If my 20 employees don't elect my $500 stipend to live within walking distance, what pennance would adequate for me to apologize to citizens of earth for the increased CO2 emissions from their driving and to the citizens of San Francisco for the extra 40 vehicle trips that would be foist upon the city? For good measure, he's paying people $500 a month extra to live within walking distance. For this, he gets a river of crap?!
At some point, companies employ people, those people get paid, those people spend their money consuming other items, but the company has no responsibility to apologize for that 3rd level effect consumption, IMO.
I was born in San Francisco, but grew up in the suburbs. When I was in college, I used to travel through San Francisco to visit my family and I told the reporter it's been amazing to see all of the neighborhood changes over the years. SoMa used to be much emptier, and was not a very residential area. After they built the Giants baseball stadium, there was a big building boom, and Mission Bay is now rapidly developing as well.
Separately, we discussed our housing stipend program. This perk was actually inspired by Facebook, which used to give a housing stipend for employees that lived within one mile of their office in downtown Palo Alto. We would do this program regardless of where our office is located (in SoMa or elsewhere) because we see a big benefit to folks not having to commute.
The reporter at the WSJ merged these two concepts, hence the quote you listed above.
Here's a link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7265814
There are also two recent blog posts we've made which might be helpful. The first is about the funding, and second is our 2013 Year-In-Review, which highlights what we've been working on.
https://zenpayroll.com/blog/series-a-funding https://zenpayroll.com/blog/zenpayroll-2013-year-in-review
Hope this helps!
The interface was confusing, web-unfriendly, and left me questioning how much money I needed to budget for quarterly taxes (both state and federal) and why we were sending so much money to the IRS for such a small startup. At the end of the day, I always felt captive to QuickBooks. Software should be empowering, not shackling.
http://www.paychex.com/
The current major companies offering payroll (SurePayroll and ADP) are both expensive difficult to use. I'm currently with SurePayroll and it sucks major balls. It's expensive, (I have 1 full time employee and 1 part time employee that I pay both by check and I think it's upwards of $80 a month for the two of them). Simple tasks that should be easy take multiple steps. I tried updating my bank account information and they required me to fax it in. I'm under 30 and have never used a fax machine. Huge time drain just to update an account and routing number.
I want so badly to switch to ZenPayroll, as I've read so many great things about it. I'll keep crossing my fingers they'll hurry up and get more states on board. The online payroll space is absolutely ready for a game changer, and a company that gets it right will make a ton of money.
The death of ADP and its ilk can't come soon enough. Payroll might not be as 'sexy' as some other markets, but you're right that whichever start-up can battle the big guys here will absolutely make a lot of money.
ADP is targeted at corporations with payroll across multiple jurisdictions. The Apples, Googles, and Microsofts. It's not targeted at, nor intended for small businesses, even though they offer a SMB product. If you're not at least dealing with payroll across multiple states, you should be using a your bank's payroll service offerings, or (if you trust them) a local payroll service provider or a payroll SaaS.
As some quick history, the company is a little over two years old and we were a part of the YC W12 batch. My co-founders and I started the company because we had felt the pain of using existing solutions at our previous startups. We also have family members running small businesses, and we had been exposed first-hand to the frustration of doing payroll manually (which is still how many companies in the US do payroll).
We felt that modern software could make this complex process much simpler. It's been fourteen months since our launch and we're proud to be processing hundreds of millions of dollars in payroll, and serving countless small businesses across the country. I remind the team often that building a great company is a marathon, not a sprint, and we're still at the early stage of our journey. We have much more to do!
During this interview with the WSJ, I talked at length with Debbie about some team programs we put in place. People are the foundation of any great company and the ZenPayroll team is the entire reason we've been able to do what we've done over the past two years.
I wanted to clarify some of the programs she wrote about:
(1) Housing stipend -- the main driver of this perk is actually the desire to have folks live near the office. We would offer this type of program regardless of where our office is located (even if it was in a lower cost area) because we see a big benefit to folks not having to commute. We realize that not everyone can live nearby, and several of our teammates actually live on the Peninsula, East Bay, or other parts of SF. Our inspiration for this perk was the housing stipend Facebook provided it's employees early on, when they were located in downtown Palo Alto.
(2) Flight at one-year anniversary -- it’s easy in startup life to become caught up in the day to day. We’ve always found it rewarding to travel because it gives everyone perspective, and taking a step back can help people better understand what’s important to them, which makes them a better teammate as well. We put the two-year expiration in place as a specific restriction so teammates have to do a trip during that year. They don’t have to go of course, but we do everything we can to encourage them to do it.
(3) Workation -- similar to #2 above, we’ve found that changing our environment helps us think about things differently. Many other startups do similar types of retreats, and we’ve really enjoyed going away as a team for 5-6 days and working on smaller cross-functional projects that can be completed during the workation. It’s also a team bonding event, and yes, many folks in the office like to cook breakfast. :)
1: Free EcoPass and/or free parking - EcoPass is a pretty killer bus pass that lets you take the express routes and you can even do long trips for a severely discounted price. The airport from downtown, for instance, runs $11. With EcoPass it's $2.50. We've found that many people would rather take the bus than drive, even if driving and parking in Denver isn't nearly as much of an inconvenience as it is in SF. It also solves the "car trouble" issue for most people.
2: $7,500 each year for vacation - In a startup, you're going to work harder, probably for a bit less money, than anywhere else. Burnout will happen. This is our way to combat it. We remove the obstacle of "can't afford a vacation" by actually paying you to take one.
3: Powder Day Policy - There's 8 inches at Vail and you can't stand to be inside? Go. Take the day. Just don't screw over your team and make it up in the next two weeks. The same holds true when it's 72 and sunny for the first time in a month and you need to just get away.
What we found - First, the obvious. Recruiting engineering talent isn't easy. The same can be said for just about every position that a company needs to fill, but engineering is especially difficult. By way of comparison, we have 9 positions open right now and almost 3,000 applicants. Of those, only 2 percent have applied for the engineering positions.
79 percent have applied as "I just want to work at FullContact".
While that's a drastic difference, it's also better than what we were seeing prior to adding the "non-traditional" benefits as part of the recruiting/retention plan.
The real questions that will hit ZenPayroll (as they have us) are these - You're going to start getting a LOT more applicants. How much time do you have to put in to filter them? Are you going to start getting a lot more GOOD applicants? How many of them just want to game the system for a year to get a taste of the good life? Are your processes good enough to weed them out?
As an outsider with common ground, it's good to see even more companies taking this approach. But as an insider to the turbulence that they can create, I would urge them to make sure that they're as prepared as they can be for those bumps.
Pretty good perk for now though, I'd take it.