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Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

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Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#171

Post by remflight »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #45
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…

I realize it's not something that happens, but I would say "taking responsibility" would mean taking, oh, I dunno, $50M of that $800M in compensation in 2021, and distributing it to those laid off? (How the hell is your life different with $750M instead of $800M anyway?)

With $800M you can’t keep up with the really successful billionaires. You know, things like sports teams, bezos’s yacht etc.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#172

Post by PheonixPharts »

KMnO4 wrote: post #88
eatonphil wrote: post #54

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”.

It's even more bizarre/frustrating for someone, especially in tech where many of our TC is largely RSUs, not understand that wealth is almost never held in cash.

When I was young (and poor) I also believed that being rich meant having Scrooge McDuck piles of cash to swim in.

After my first big RSU payout I quickly realized that nobody with more than a few 100k in assets keeps anything close to the majority of them in cash. Savings accounts are for the poor. Anyone, even in the every day millionaire level, keeps most of their wealth in non-cash investments, leaving only enough cash to cover crisis situations. Especially with inflation this high, holding cash is literally throwing money away.

Nobody has a bank account with 8 zeros, except maybe lottery winners that never learned the basics of asset management.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#173

Post by CameronNemo »

gruez wrote: post #133
daoist_shaman wrote: post #124

This is a red flag. Robinhood is struggling for capital, so I wouldn't trust them with my cash investments whatsoever. Not that anyone has trusted them for a while, but yeah.

>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).

You actually want to have to rely on insurance? I would hope that my brokerage can at least stay solvent ffs.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#174

Post by Phlarp »

adambyrtek wrote: post #151
memish wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminder that Vlad Tenev founded Robinhood, an incredibly successful app that disrupted an industry and is still best in class. There really is no replacement for a founder CEO.

Would you say the same about Travis Kalanick or Adam Neumann?

And Elizabeth Holmes

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#176

Post by drc500free »

yuan43 wrote: post #34

Why not cut pay across the board? I know this is not the cultural norm, but I am curious how long this norm can persist. Without the ability to cut pay, layoffs are the only option for companies burning cash and losing altitude. That locks pay increases at the same inflated point that the bubble supported but which reality does not. To go one step further, is there a single advanced economy in which pay cuts, rather…

I worked at a startup that tried that. Within 4 months, a good chunk of the best tech people were gone. Within 12 months they had gone under.

Maybe for an economy-wide recession where your workers have no other options. But if it's just startup risk that are making you founder, you're basically guaranteeing a death spiral. There is some chance if you make it a fixed-term paycut with a payback with interest, but you better have a real cult leader as CEO to get people onboard with something complicated instead of just getting a job at Google.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#177

Post by alecbz »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #75
alecbz wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Even if you know something exists, you might just have never tried it for some reason until something causes you to, at which point you might realize you enjoy it.

E.g., I got a bike over COVID, found I liked biking a lot, and have been doing it a lot more now.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#178

Post by renewiltord »

Arcuru wrote: post #56
renewiltord wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His salary is like $300k and the stock options he was granted as the pandemic growth hit break even at some $300/share (it's $9/share right now).

Elsewhere in the thread, others mention he was paid 800 million in stock awards in 2021. Do you have some other supporting info? The 800 million number seems to be better supported via a quick search - https://www.execpay.org/executive/vladimir-tenev-42307/r-186...

Page 68 and on of the Schedule 14A filed with the SEC, published this May. The $300 I was referencing was the top price target of the PSUs that make up his comp.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#179

Post by abirch »

Spivak wrote: post #100
pcurve wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, talk is cheap. Of course he's responsible, whether he admits it or not. If not willing to step down, then give up pay.

Good lord, if I resigned every time I caused a production issue my resume length would triple. You are allowed to admit you made a mistake without publicly self flagellating. This is some straight puritanical shit.

How many lives were impacted significantly by your production error?

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#180

Post by elcomet »

RSHEPP wrote: post #147
fleddr wrote: post #85

We live in such morally bankrupt times. You can just say "you take responsibility" without actually taking responsibility at all. Our expectations have become so low and we've become so complacent that just the statement is enough. In similar vain, "we care about your mental health" as is the common internal email from HR. No actual care is offered though. Giving staff a day off is a tangible example of doing at leas…

Company I work for gives international Mental Health Day off, October 10th.

It seems strange to fix a specific day, people might need a day off for dealing with their mental health on another day of the year.
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