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Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

wsj.com

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Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#291

Post by xpe »

nrmitchi wrote: post #116
yuan43 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... your best people will just leave. Where is the evidence for this? I get that it seems like what would happen, but where are the cases proving that's what happened? Especially in an economy shedding jobs, there may not be many other places to go. Also, studies seem to find that money doesn't motivate people to perform at a higher level. https://hbr.org/2013/04/does-money-really-affect-motiv

The best people (the ones you really don’t want to lose) will always find a place to go.

This is somewhat of a tautology.

How do you think of "best"? There are many senses:

(a) People that do well in a particular organizational context?

(b) People with a certain set of skills?

In the software industry, these do change pretty dramatically from time to time. For example, the FAANG style of interviews disrupted what came before. And of course, there is considerable variation between FAANG style hiring and others.

I bring all this up not just to be pedantic... (Is there anything wrong with being pedantic? We should do a proper study to find out, but I digress...) ... because I'm curious if and how the industry is changing.

Many software developers got comfortable with being in the driver's seat and being fawned over. This has changed a lot, it seems to me, in the last 3 to 6 months. Where does this leave us?

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#292

Post by jmyeet »

NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #195
jmyeet wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... 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...

And follow that to its logical conclusion. why were those unsettled trades? And no this isn't a T+2 issue.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#293

Post by coffee_beqn »

babypuncher wrote: post #69
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…

With the job market still being as strong as it is, cutting pay like that would be a disaster. If my employer told me they were cutting my pay by 20% one morning I would already be out doing interviews by the afternoon. With layoffs you at least control what talent you are giving up in exchange for a smaller payroll. With across the board salary reduction, your most talented employees will get up and leave and the pe…

Heck, I might stop ignoring 99% of the daily recruiting mail I get if that happened

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#294

Post by colechristensen »

dan-robertson wrote: post #126
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…

Isn’t Robinhood public rather than VC-backed?

Well they were VC backed, they recently went public. shrug

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#295

Post by arthurcolle »

dls2016 wrote: post #236
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…

It does happen, though it’s a newsworthy event: https://nypost.com/2011/06/30/atm-receipt-showing-astounding...

> But it’s not clear where the customer spent his 400 bucks.

Haha, I have an idea. P.S. Dealbreaker.com is great in general for tabloidy high finance news

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#296

Post by xpe »

ethbr0 wrote: post #243
xpe wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine if I was visiting Laos and told someone I met in the countryside that I spent, say $2,000 on a racing bicycle -- which would be considered "normal" in bike racing culture in many parts of the US. Imagine what that person would think! My central point is this: People are quick to "normalize" their behavior relative to their perceived peer group. So, yes, multinational CEO compensation is hard to comprehend. (I…

There was a podcast episode on the psychology behind this. Radio Lab? Summary: people only look up , never down. Ask someone who makes $100, and they'll explain they don't have a lot because someone makes $500. Ask someone who makes $100,000, and they'll explain they don't have a lot because someone makes $500,000. Ask someone who makes $100,000,000, and they'll explain they don't have a lot because someone makes $50…

Is this an offer of employment? It doesn't look like an offer of employment. \s

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#297

Post by ianai »

fleddr wrote: post #231
xyst wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is where we balance it out with unions. Unions have historically gotten us everything today that most people think is just SOP. Limited work weeks (40 hrs). Monday thru Friday as business days. Paid vacations. Family and medical leave. Breaks. Paid holidays. Sick leave. It’s a shame there’s been a massive push from corporations pushing anti-union propaganda. We have been complacent. We need unions to make our vo…

I agree, unions and legislation. The devil is in the details but those are the main instruments, if only we were more willing and motivated.

Maybe it’s worth reiterating that the unions and legal frameworks didn’t just happen “because unions.” And unions weren’t always (never were) guiltless entities. It was always a fight. The past is full of incidents to be horrified and emboldened by learning.

Edit-there have been long periods where seemingly nothing can possibly change. Then enough backlash is raised against another side (even the status quo) and things change.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#298

Post by [deleted] »

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

#299

Post by throwaway155324 »

jmyeet wrote: post #292
NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

And follow that to its logical conclusion. why were those unsettled trades? And no this isn't a T+2 issue.

This is blatantly wrong. The entire problem was the standard settlement delay, which requires sufficient collateral to derisk the settlement period -- regardless if they are from instant deposits or made from cash accounts. Robinhood could not have kept operating even if instant deposits were disabled and every account had margin disabled.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#300

Post by lovich »

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.

If the CEO is ultimately responsible for nothing, why are they paid so exorbitantly?
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