> There wasn’t even an IT person to fix the printers. Conrad hadn’t forgotten to fill these positions. The way he saw it, Zenefits was full of gifted engineers; if their computers weren’t working, they should be able to fix them. Of course, time spent futzing with the Wi-Fi was time not spent building the product or dealing with customers. To Conrad, that just meant the engineers needed to work harder.
> Zenefits uses its own product to manage its employees, and Conrad controlled the account, which meant he personally approved every benefits change or vacation request for hundreds of (later, more than 1,000) employees. “We have people in HR now, but they actually don’t have access to the HR system,” Conrad said in an interview at TechCrunch Disrupt last year. “I do all of it myself. I’m a little crazy.”
Forget the Chrome extension, this is simply psychotic behavior.
Parker didn't approve every single vacation request. He also wasn't the only admin -- his personal assistant, his co-founder, and a couple others had access.
And starting in about Jan 2015, line managers had admin access for their employees -- the feature was shipped publicly in May:
I wonder what sort of chilling effect this had on work/life balance. When the CEO is responsible for approving all vacation requests, are there fewer requests as a result?
> Zenefits uses its own product to manage its employees, and Conrad controlled the account, which meant he personally approved every benefits change or vacation request for hundreds of (later, more than 1,000) employees. “We have people in HR now, but they actually don’t have access to the HR system,” Conrad said in an interview at TechCrunch Disrupt last year. “I do all of it myself. I’m a little crazy.”
Forget the Chrome extension, this is simply psychotic behavior.