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Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

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Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are you quantifying that the fills are better? I worked professionally on this problem a while ago and it was very hard to do even with full depth feeds direct from the exchanges.

price and execution time? how much slip or price improvement on limits? or god forbid the casual retail market orders fill vs nbbo and pools at exec

If you are seeing a venue not meeting nbbo you have a whistleblower suit to make which have been quite lucrative.

When I was doing this for work the issues we ran into came down to a) making the orders hit the tape close enough to ensure similar priority b) the size of the orders changing execution depending on venue c) differences in performance per symbol.

This was in a place that was sending a fair amount of orders in. Even then given the above finding statistical relevance was hard.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#162
post #138
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Robinhood is struggling for capital, so I wouldn't trust them with my cash whatsoever. Why not? You're protected by SIPC for up to $500k (for securities) and $250k (for cash).

Aren’t they selling the order flow of retail traders? Protected or not. I’m not trusting them. “Robinhood” my ass

other brokers do too..

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#163
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…

Brokerage is such a competitive space, their valuation never made any sense. And big money players would never use Robinhood over Schwab et all

> And big money players would never use Robinhood over schwab et all

Their entire business model is PFOF [0]. That is, a huge fucking scam against retail.

[0] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/paymentoforderflow.asp

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#164
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…

I said the same thing. Taking responsibility doesn’t mean “I acknowledge that this is on me.” Of course it is. How about some accountability? How about getting your pay clawed back etc? Just “taking responsibility” is lip service.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#165
post #17

> As CEO, I approved and took responsibility for our ambitious staffing trajectory—this is on me So, find a decent replacement for CEO.

It's just a turn of phrase... usually "it's on me" just means I've acknowledged what you might be thinking and I'm going to continue doing whatever I want.

... and at the same time trying to show they're a great because capable of acknowledging errors.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

How are you quantifying that the fills are better? I worked professionally on this problem a while ago and it was very hard to do even with full depth feeds direct from the exchanges.

I don't know the situation now, but both used to sell their order flow to the same place. I used both and fills for pretty much the same. However, I used tasty platform to set up options and then execute them on RH most of the time.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#167
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Frustrating to see the incredibly common conflation of equity and salary. Even though it’s always correctly suffixed with “compensation”, people assume that means “a bank account with 8 zeros”.

That's because it effectively is. I suggest you look into pledged asset lines (and more broadly 'buy, borrow, die'), which are even more tax advantaged than just getting paid directly. Sure, there is some marginal cost associated with borrowing against granted equity, but it's almost certainly less than 10%. So yes, it is accurate to assume that if an exec vets $x00 million dollars of equity a year, they have a high percentage of that available to spend on whatever consumption or investment they desire.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#168
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…

Are you talking about the ~$800M in stock-based compensation described here [1]?

Nearly all of that only vests if Robinhood stock hits price targets between $120 and $300 per share. The remainder requires a price of $50.75 to be sustained for 60 days. Since none of these goals have been met, Vlad has not received any of it. And unless the company turns around dramatically - it's currently around $9/share - it's likely he never will.

[1] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1783879/000178387922...

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#169
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Frustrating to see the incredibly common conflation of equity and salary. Even though it’s always correctly suffixed with “compensation”, people assume that means “a bank account with 8 zeros”.

Feels like you're arguing semantics, either way the CEO is being made wealthy right?

Probably still getting much more than they need to live off of, so some of that should go to the people getting let go.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#170
post #59
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you crash a company against the wall resulting in such a disaster and having to cut so much staff, resigning isn't enough. CEO's should have to pay back big parts of their compensation.

executives should be compensated for the performance of the company in the future, not the current quarter or year. this is the board's fault for failing to set effective incentives.

If the CEO picks the board, and packs it full of his other CEO friends, who all have him sit on their boards too, and everyone rubber stamps each others compensation packages; isn't this circular blame game awfully beneficial to all of the CEOs at the expense of all the non-CEOs?
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