The New York Times published its 2014 CEO compensation report and continued its steady drumbeat against the whackadoodle nature of executive compensation at America’s publicly traded companies. In a world where S&P CEOs earned 373 times the salary of the average worker, according to The Wall Street Journal — up from 42 times in 1980 — it seems that whackadoodle is the appropriate operative term. Of course, in a tech industry where most people tuck themselves in bed at night dreaming of stock options that will finance Ferraris, private islands, or at least college tuition for the kids at tweedy private universities, not everyone may be concerned about the inequality ramifications of a giant CEO salary. So be it.

Last week, the HR/HCM technology industry experienced a full-fledged unicorn sighting in the form of Zenefits announcing a $500 million round led by Fidelity and Fort Worth-based TPG Capital at a whopping $4.5 billion valuation.

When it comes to HR technology, it’s always puzzled me why talent acquisition and corporate learning were always viewed as something apart from “talent management.” That separation has largely fallen away over the past few years — especially as much of the hottest innovation in the industry has emerged from these two categories. However, when it comes to learning technology, the silo mentality is alive and well.

In the research report on learning technology buyers that we did last year in conjunction with Brandon Hall Group and the Human Capital Institute, one of the key insights was corporate learning moving to the center of the talent technology stack. At the enterprise level, learning is moving across and down into the organization. At the midmarket and SMB levels, interest in and adoption of learning technology is exploding.