(Or Keep Getting Fined by New York Because Your Provider "Forgot" to Remit Your Taxes, You Masochist)
Look, I get it. You saw that other payroll provider. "Easy setup," "Simple payroll," "We handle everything." Adorable. Like a participation trophy for companies that enjoy getting audited.
It's a nice sentiment, like wishing you could go back to a simpler time when your company only had employees in one state and "compliance" meant showing up to work on time. But the reality is you've got people in California, Texas, and New York, and each state is running its own little tax torture chamber with different deadlines, different forms, and different ways to penalize you for existing.
This is about acknowledging that payroll compliance is not a hobby project, you mass-market moron. It's not something you "figure out" by Googling at midnight. There are 11,000+ tax jurisdictions in the US alone. Eleven. Thousand.
This is a call to embrace the tools built by people who have stared into the abyss of multi-state tax compliance so you don't have to. So you can focus on building your actual company, not becoming an unpaid paralegal for the California Employment Development Department.
Because you're not running a lemonade stand with one employee anymore, are you? You want to hire talented people wherever they live. You want to scale without hiring an army of HR specialists. You want to sleep at night without dreaming about Form 941 deadlines.
Here's why you should just use Warp:
Yeah, and how's that working out for you? Let me guess: you're still logging in every two weeks to click buttons. Still getting mysterious tax notices in the mail. Still spending hours on hold waiting to talk to someone who reads from a script about "enhanced processing fees."
Legacy Provider Reality: Hire employee → Platform breaks → Fix it → Hire another employee → Platform breaks again → Get warning alerts everywhere → Process payroll → Something breaks → Get state complaints about missed filings → Open support ticket → Ticket marked "resolved" → State still wants their money → Repeat until you lose your mind
Warp Reality: Hire employee → Wait 30 seconds → Done. AI agents handle tax registrations, unemployment setup, workers' comp, and every single filing. You never see a .gov portal again. The platform doesn't break when you hire someone, because that would be insane.
Here's what's actually happening with your "trusted" legacy provider:
Bland AI grew from a small team to over 100 employees. Their previous provider? The platform would break down every week as they added new employees. Their COO Sobhan Nejad: "We switched from [legacy provider] to Warp about a year ago, and the difference has been striking. With [legacy provider], we were dealing with payroll issues constantly. Every time we hired someone or processed payroll, something would break. It was incredibly frustrating." Every. Single. Time. They hired someone. Something broke.
One founder discovered their provider collected payroll tax and state income tax for employees in New York - then didn't remit the payments to New York. The state fined them massively for not paying state income tax. When they appealed, they lost. The appeals person told them "this is a very consistent issue" with that provider. That founder's LinkedIn post about it got two million impressions in two days. But sure, your provider is probably different, right? Right?
People on Reddit are comparing notes about getting notices from 8-10 states that their Q3 filings were late. Support tickets marked "resolved" while the IRS is still sending love letters. One user: "I did not have to follow up on tickets unless I received a notice from a state. A lot of times the cases were already 'closed/resolved' so I opened a new case and referred to the old case number." Imagine having to create a naming convention for your payroll provider's failures: "State of XX - 2024 Q3 delinquent notice."
Your legacy provider didn't build automation. They built a prettier interface for manual work. Same complexity, same errors, same time drain - just with nicer colors and a marketing budget that would make a Super Bowl advertiser blush. They're optimizing for you to spend more time in their platform, not less.
You know how you can tell a legacy provider has given up on making their product intuitive? They offer certification programs for using it.
That's right. There are entire training courses - taught by third-party companies - just to teach you how to navigate your payroll software. "Congratulations! You are now CERTIFIED in clicking buttons in the correct order!" Companies celebrate when their employees get payroll software certified like it's a meaningful professional achievement. HR people post about it on LinkedIn with party emojis.
This is not a flex. This is an admission that the product is so convoluted, so needlessly complex, that it requires formal education to operate. You don't need a certification to use Superhuman. You don't need training classes to operate Linear. But payroll? Apparently that requires a diploma, you credentialed clown.
One founder signed up for better benefits administration, and the system told them they needed to take a course on benefits administration before they could use it. While they were already using a third-party broker. No explanation why. The course wouldn't load. The screen was blank. They posted it on Twitter and said "Running a payroll & benefits company requires Trust. Nothing in my experience engenders this."
"We just hired someone in Pennsylvania!" Congratulations! Did you know Pennsylvania has local income taxes for like 2,500 municipalities? Each with their own forms? Their own deadlines? Their own special little way of making your life miserable?
50% of new startups now have employees across multiple states from day one - that's 3x more than 2019. The game has changed. You're not managing complexity anymore, you're drowning in it while telling everyone you're "just taking a little swim."
Warp handles 1,000+ businesses with one part-time contractor. Your legacy provider employs 30% of their company just to do compliance and ops. One of these approaches involves AI actually doing the work. The other involves humans making mistakes, blaming "system issues," and offering you AirPods as an apology.
Having an app doesn't mean having automation. It just means you can do manual work from your phone instead of your laptop.
Meanwhile, customers are posting screenshots of their inbox with 12+ unread emails from their legacy provider in a single week. "Last Chance: RSVP for Thursday's Webinar!" "Nominate your HR Hero today!" "You're invited: See how we help!" One founder: "I already pay you, can you please stop sending me these? I've hit the unsubscribe button three times." The provider's response, apparently: "lol"
This is where your subscription fee goes. Not to making the product work. To a marketing team that won't stop emailing you about webinars you didn't ask for.
Fake automation:
Actual automation:
Our best customers forget we exist. That's not a bug - that's the entire point.
When something goes wrong with your legacy provider, you open a support ticket. Then you wait. Then you follow up. Then you escalate. Then you follow up on the escalation. Then you realize your ticket was marked "resolved" three weeks ago even though nothing was resolved. Then you open a new ticket referencing the old ticket number. Then you develop a naming convention for your tickets because there are so many of them. "State of XX - 2024 Q3 delinquent notice." This is your life now.
One founder described their experience as "one of the worst customer service experiences ever." Another called the whole company "trash of trash product with some trash people." Someone else said the provider's customer service "has declined over time" and their R\&D refund process is now delayed by "1-2 years (not the 10 weeks that is shared online and even from the provider themselves)." For startups depending on those refund checks for cash flow, this isn't an inconvenience - it's potentially fatal.
Warp Support Stats (updated daily, because we're not hiding anything):
Here's a fun quote from a founder who actually evaluated payroll products: "You probably know this, right? Like, [legacy provider] is a terrible product. But it has succeeded because there's this crazy Silicon Valley ethos of a founder who knows the right venture guys. Let's go use his product. Because he's a good guy. And that's how it propagates. It's like a terrible virus."
The same founder continued: "I'm sure you guys are better, but I don't want to buy a product on that same basis of who the customers are, who the venture investors are. Because I do know that game: love design with the products for the product."
Let that sink in. These legacy providers didn't get market share because they built something great. They got it because VCs know the founders and founders trust VCs. It's a referral network for mid software that somehow became the default. And you're paying the price every time you get a penalty notice, every time support ignores you, every time you're offered AirPods instead of a fix.
Remember when you copy-pasted that same offer letter template into 30 different emails, then realized you forgot to update the salary in 12 of them? Remember manually chasing down I-9s and W-4s across email, Slack, and carrier pigeon because your "onboarding system" is just a checklist someone made in Notion?
Warp sends offer letters and NDAs in 30 seconds. Employees complete everything on one platform: personal info, legal documents, offer letter signing, benefits enrollment, and 401(k) setup. From SSN to t-shirt size, we collect everything in minutes, not hours.
Julius migrated to Warp in 8 minutes. Not 8 hours. Not 8 days. Eight minutes. Meanwhile your legacy provider needs a "dedicated implementation specialist" and a 6-week timeline to move your 15-person company. Then they offer you a gift card for the inconvenience.
Warp saves founders 10+ hours a month on HR ops. That's a full workday you're currently burning on payroll nonsense.
Companies scale 5×, 8×, 10× without scaling back-office headcount. Zero payroll errors. Zero missed filings.
Fine, let's do math. You like math, right?
Warp Pricing (actual transparent pricing, imagine that):
No hidden fees. No surprise invoices. No sales call required to learn the price.
When you hire in more than one state
When you're tired of .gov portals
When "works fine" stops feeling fine
When you'd rather build than debug payroll
For the love of all that is holy, JUST USE WARP. Stop pretending your legacy provider is "working fine" while you're quietly dreading every payroll cycle. Stop accepting manual work dressed up as automation. Stop being your own unpaid HR department. Stop being a customer of a company that responds to your cancellation with a headphone offer.
Your future self - and your accountant - will thank you.
Now get back to work, and build something amazing
Inspired by justfuckingusereact.com
Created by the winter intern "wintern" at Warp.
Warp serves 1,000+ startups including companies backed by Y Combinator, a16z, Sequoia, and more. We've raised $24M from Sound Ventures, Drew Houston, Arash Ferdowsi, Kyle Vogt, and operators from OpenAI, Brex, and Dropbox. We automate HR, payroll, and compliance across all 50 US states and 200+ countries. Pricing starts at $25/mo per person. No hidden fees. No manual work. No more .gov portals. No certification required. No gift cards offered during cancellation.