Robinhood lays off 23% of staff • Hacker News Board

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#71

Post by munk-a » Tue, Aug 02, 2022, 10:28 PM UTC

systemvoltage wrote: post #55

cjrp wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taking responsibility would mean returning a significant portion of that compensation.

Wait, shouldn't this be returned back to whom the money belonged (investors)?

Investment comes with risk - that's why you can make money at it. I think it's fair to say if this business is struggling it'd be more equitable to share the excess compensation with rank and file employees that are being deprived of their livelihood but unfortunately they likely have no "right" to that compensation with how various employee contracts are structured. It's usually the case in situations like this that the CEO getting a golden parachute is less expensive to the company than trying to get out of paying them. Companies, of course, would prefer a world in which no one had to be paid so all this thread is sort of a socialist pipedream where the havenots might actually get treated fairly since if the money wasn't going to the CEO it'd likely end up straight back in the pockets of investors.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#72

Post by papandada » Tue, Aug 02, 2022, 10:29 PM UTC

soneca wrote: post #49

> ”In his message Tuesday, Mr. Tenev said the new round of changes at the company are particularly concentrated in its operations, marketing and program management departments.” People here on HN often say how bad is to be an engineer in a non-tech company. It seems that it’s much worse to be a non-engineer in a tech company.

Some company will always need a person who can actually make things work, definitely.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#73

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Aug 02, 2022, 10:29 PM UTC

ab_testing wrote: post #47

Somehow I feel that all these VC backed firms just add employees for the sake of adding employees. I use Tastyworks - another free online brokerage that it almost at feature parity with Robinhood. They have stocks, options, futures and even some selective crypto. They also make money using PFOF just like Robinhood. However on Linkedin, their employee count is less than 100 (99 to be precise) On the other hand, Robinh…

[deleted]

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#74

Post by roughly » Tue, Aug 02, 2022, 10:29 PM UTC

mgfist wrote: post #48

rossdavidh wrote: post #7

"Last year, we staffed many of our operations functions under the assumption that the heightened retail engagement we had been seeing with the stock and crypto markets in the COVID era would persist into 2022..." We are now at the point when we will find out which of the changes to behavior (financial and otherwise) that came about with the onset of the covid-19 pandemic are going to be lasting, and which are not. I…

All of this has already happened. Just look at the stocks of all the pandemic companies. Peleton, Teledoc, Zoom, Docusign and on and on. Pretty much all down 80%+ from their highs.

If anyone had any notion that the markets were efficient or rational in any way regarding the actual underlying value of the companies they purport to represent, I certainly hope that notion didn’t survive the pandemic - I’m not sure what world stocks were pricing in over the last two years, but it didn’t pass even a cursory smell test.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#75

Post by thaumasiotes » Tue, Aug 02, 2022, 10:30 PM UTC

alecbz wrote: post #53

civilized wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should have been obvious to anyone that people would do less day trading once they had anything better to do.

Hindsight's 20/20? Why would we feel sure that people wouldn't keep up with habits they picked up during COVID? That seems like it could have been similarly likely to me -- someone picks up day trading, gets hooked, and now it's a regular habit.

Well, you'd ask the question "why weren't they doing it before?". If the answer is "they didn't know about it", you might expect them to keep doing it. But not otherwise.

Day trading has had a lot of popular awareness for a long time.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#76

Post by 88913527 » Tue, Aug 02, 2022, 10:30 PM UTC

sianemo wrote: post #63

eatonphil wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of execs take "only" $100ks of compensation in salary and the rest in stock.

He's perfectly capable of giving stock to these employees as well.

It's simple to say we'd be more charitable if we had incomes 1,000x or more our current annual compensation, but I do genuinely wonder if I'd be different. Would I be greedy, would I care about doing right to the laid off employees-- it's hard to imagine how crossing that bridge might change people.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#77

Post by skrtskrt » Tue, Aug 02, 2022, 10:30 PM UTC

mgfist wrote: post #48

rossdavidh wrote: post #7

"Last year, we staffed many of our operations functions under the assumption that the heightened retail engagement we had been seeing with the stock and crypto markets in the COVID era would persist into 2022..." We are now at the point when we will find out which of the changes to behavior (financial and otherwise) that came about with the onset of the covid-19 pandemic are going to be lasting, and which are not. I…

All of this has already happened. Just look at the stocks of all the pandemic companies. Peleton, Teledoc, Zoom, Docusign and on and on. Pretty much all down 80%+ from their highs.

Any institution that invested in "home workout" stuff deserves to lose every dollar they put in, how could you not see that coming.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#78

Post by akomtu » Tue, Aug 02, 2022, 10:30 PM UTC

paxys wrote: post #29

> As CEO, I approved and took responsibility for our ambitious staffing trajectory—this is on me Reminder that Vlad Tenev received $800M in compensation in 2021. In the same year the company made terrible bets on crypto and banking, took an irreversible reputation hit among its core user base because of the GME fiasco, had multiple user data breaches, was subject to several investigations and was fined hundreds of mi…

"With big money comes big responsibility, so I took that responsibility and I'm going to take more of it next year. As a result of my increased responsibility, 25% of our staff will be given new opportunities this year and 25% more will see even more opportunities next year. Stay tuned."

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#79

Post by outworlder » Tue, Aug 02, 2022, 10:30 PM UTC

niyazpk wrote: post #64

ab_testing wrote: post #47

Somehow I feel that all these VC backed firms just add employees for the sake of adding employees. I use Tastyworks - another free online brokerage that it almost at feature parity with Robinhood. They have stocks, options, futures and even some selective crypto. They also make money using PFOF just like Robinhood. However on Linkedin, their employee count is less than 100 (99 to be precise) On the other hand, Robinh…

Sure, but also, none of my (investing) friends use Tastyworks, and almost all of them are using RH as their primary investing platform! Companies in hyper-growth stages may hire/fire differently than others.

> as their primary investing platform

:%s/investing/speculation/g

Very few people use RH as 'investing'. Those will be on boring brokers like Vanguard.

I have a Tastyworks account too - the fills are way better than Robinhood's. As expected, since they charge some amount per trade. But that means that the "free" platform will definitely have more users, just because it's supposedly free (even though you pay for it in the fills, and get frontrunning trades)

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#80

Post by tomrod » Tue, Aug 02, 2022, 10:30 PM UTC

munk-a wrote: post #44

paxys wrote: post #29

> As CEO, I approved and took responsibility for our ambitious staffing trajectory—this is on me Reminder that Vlad Tenev received $800M in compensation in 2021. In the same year the company made terrible bets on crypto and banking, took an irreversible reputation hit among its core user base because of the GME fiasco, had multiple user data breaches, was subject to several investigations and was fined hundreds of mi…

There are talks of "late stage capitalism" all over the place - I think CEO compensation is one of the biggest hallmarks of it. Capitalism is supposed to naturally reward value creation to incentivize further value creation - somehow we've found ourselves in a situation where folks on the bottom of the pyramid aren't going to get incentivized for efficient labour no matter how much value they create - while folks at…

Ehhhh.. Economic rents and scarcity of talent with solid networks still apply to execs as much as pro sports.

You don't buy an exec because they are brilliant or hard working, you buy them for their network and how much they can grow the the business relative to compensation. At least in theory.