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Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

wsj.com

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Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#191

Post by Keegs »

nerdponx wrote: post #130
jrochkind1 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?)

The article said it was around 1000 employees. So cutting his pay by $50m would mean $50k per laid-off employee . How as an investor or shareholder can you not look at this as downright robbery?

But the same $50m paid to a single employee (on top of hundreds more) is not robbery?

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#192

Post by abirch »

PheonixPharts wrote: post #172
KMnO4 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Scrooge McDuck was a gold bug so he may have kept the gold to swim in just like Peter Schiff

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#193

Post by eropple »

88913527 wrote: post #113
leereeves wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it charitable to accept responsibility for the consequences of your mistakes, and compensate those you've harmed? Or is it just common decency?

It's probably not that simple. Most chief executives delegate the responsibility of hiring staff to others. Sure, the buck stops with the executive, but ultimately nobody can review every single operational decision at scale. Maybe they hired for a world where the pandemic didn't happen and the monetary supply didn't tighten, then the world changed.

What CEO doesn't approve overall hiring numbers? If you're worth paying millions upon millions of dollars a year, shouldn't you have capital-F Foresight?

Or is it more that most public-company CEOs are probably not playing above replacement level?

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#194

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

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?

I would say that Kalanick and Neumann's mistakes were quite a bit worse than overhiring.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#195

Post by NovemberWhiskey »

jmyeet wrote: post #137
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…

> ... took an irreversible reputation hit among its core user base because of the GME fiasco God I'm so sick of hearing this. It comes from people who seriously don't know what happened. let me explain: RH had (and still has) a service that you can trade immediately on signing up and sending funds rather than waiting for them to clear. This mostly works out fine because people buy different things and you have the un…

>That's literally all it was.

No; that's really not what it was.

This was not about margin lending to Robinhood customers. It was about a multi-billion dollar increase in collateral required by the NSCC due to a large volume of unsettled trades in highly volatile stocks.

ref. https://fortune.com/2021/02/02/robinhood-gamestop-restricted...

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#196

Post by fipar »

somehnacct3757 wrote: post #115
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…

The Shopify layoff also contained this phrasing. Shows how tone-deaf these CEOs are. Shopify's version: > Ultimately, placing this bet was my call to make and I got this wrong. Now, we have to adjust. As a consequence, we have to say goodbye to some of you today.

This is basically the Lord Farquaad line: "some of you may die, but it is a price I am willing to pay"

I don't think they're tone-deaf as much as they don't care. Which reminds me of another line, this time from Kids in the Hall (from the Girl Drink Drunk sketch): (from memory, so may not be exact) "I can't help to feel responsible for this, but then again, I can't help not to care: that's just who I am")

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#197

Post by kevinpet »

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…

His job is to make big ambitious bets. These didn't pay off. CEOs are not hired (or retained) for the benefit of employees or customers, they are hired by boards for the benefit of shareholders, and shareholders in Robinhood were not buying for stable reliable dividends.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#198

Post by throwfh80h82 »

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…

At this point, unfortunately, "take responsibility" it just a PR phrase. It doesn't come with any consequences, responsibility, or costs to the individual in the corporate class.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#199

Post by rch »

manquer wrote: post #87
jrochkind1 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?)

The rich don’t see it that way. At its core wealth accumulation is a scoring contest so every penny counts for those care. Also if you have all the material needs that is satisfied, then you go after the rare hard to get high value exclusive money drain this is human nature. For your specific example what that 50m might make difference it maybe a bigger jet that flies further or a second jet for the family or a yatch…

I'd like to see what that amount of cash could could do for southern Madagascar right now.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#200

Post by PheonixPharts »

abirch wrote: post #192
PheonixPharts wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Scrooge McDuck was a gold bug so he may have kept the gold to swim in just like Peter Schiff

That's a great point, even Scrooge McDuck does not hold cash!
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