So, tl;dr: not Zenefits. The CEO revoking your offer after this perfectly reasonable question makes it sound like a bad place to work.

Here's why.

Hear what is meant, not what is said

Asker, you're early in your career. When you explain that Zenefits isn't buzz-y, your big concern is that you want to get the best bang for your long-term buck.

This is entirely fair.

A positive work sitch early on compounds in big ways later in your career. Brand recognition matters. Being able to parlay past experience into future opportunities is a critical career management skill.

There's nothing wrong with including Zenefits's buzz in your calculus. You'd be irresponsible not to.

What a fair reading of this says is that Zenefits failed to persuade you of its long-term resume value. That speaks to a failure in their sales process, not to a failure of fit.

Cult employment

Problem is, these venture-funded companies end up smoking a lot of their own PR-pipe as they run around convincing people to grant them press exposure and investment money.

This leads to a pretty beefy lack of humility after awhile. Chasing all of this outside validation makes your issue seem like an affront to their story, and therefore to their personal investment in the organization.

That's an understandable blindspot, but remember: it has toxic effects.

This sort of unchecked hubris means that if, later on, you have a problem in the workplace, getting it fixed will mean touching the very same third rail.

Lack of humility is a bad signal.

How Zenefits went wrong

You got to the final stage of a difficult, expensive, important funnel for this organization. They thought enough of you to make you an offer—put cash and equity on the table because they bought your ability to contribute.

While their precious startup snowflake means the world to them, at the end, we have to be real:

Tech jobs are fungible means of paying the bills.

If that seems harsh, just remember: startups view employees as largely fungible as well. Look how a simple question got an offer rescinded.

Here's how the trade works. You get:

• A certain amount of bullshit to contend with as far as processes and personalities
• A huge chunk of your time limited to the specific goals of one organization
• A predictable pay check
• A potential equity payday
• Certain intangibles you can leverage for future employment

In exchange, they order you around and occasionally induce you to work unpaid overtime.

This is a really, really common deal. If Zenefits had something special, above and beyond this standard deal, it was incumbent upon them to identify what that was and why you should value it.

Zenefits was bad at its job—and then blamed you for it

It was up to Zenefits to either:

Suss out that you weren't the right fit because you didn't share the team's values

OR

Identify what unique value only Zenefits could offer, and make it abundantly clear to you what that was.

It should have been obvious to you, at the point where you held the letter, that Zenefits was the way to go. It wasn't.

Okay, those fuckups happen sometimes.

A good organization tries to learn from that. Figure out what they got wrong. Remedy it with you, or fix the process for the future.

Instead, the company CEO threw a tantrum and rescinded your offer.

No, that would be a bad sign for a cult. For a business, it's a reflection of a problem in the recruiting-as-sales process.

You're supposed to—intrinsically—get the company? It's not on them to persuade you by telling a good story? Huh.

If the candidate values big technical challenges, why didn't you figure that out and make it clear you could offer them?

Most damning, after being caught, he covers for himself like he's doing you some kind of favor. C'mon.

Before:
(via: Tracy Chou on Twitter)

After:

There are better gigs. Look for less insecurity and more willingness to learn in your potential leadership.

Look for a company that doesn't try to intimidate folks who would perform legit due diligence.

Good luck out there.