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Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

wsj.com

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Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#311

Post by jsjohnst »

xpe wrote: post #217
manquer wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

> I'm part of an exclusive self-selected, self-reinforcing group of self-proclaimed experts, so be sure to send your best offer.

Not a job offer and no offense intended, but you sound like an excellent crypto startup founder there. Oh wait, they wouldn’t have used the term self and instead used a much more grandiose term. :P

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#312

Post by adave »

radicaldreamer wrote: post #91
eatonphil wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Steve Jobs famously took a $1 salary and everything else was in stock.

Coz salary is taxed higher, many billionaires do this. He had enough control to not pay tax and just spend on the company's credit card.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#313

Post by bumby »

pc86 wrote: post #284
kemitchell wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s case by case. I have seen some accurate CEO comp headlines. Some publications certainly bat better than others. As for Intel: $10m a year is still a lot of money. I have also heard that targets are occasionally hit. ;-D

> $10m a year is still a lot of money In absolute terms, 100% yes it is. In "CEO of a major corporation most people in the world have heard about," it's basically nothing.

Not scientific and maybe inaccurate, but a quick Google search showed the average Intel employee makes $100k. The shift in social norms where 100x the average employee (of a tech firm, which skews towards high salaries) is considered “basically nothing” is something worth talking about.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#314

Post by thundergolfer »

slickrick216 wrote: post #272
xpe wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, money is _one_ barometer. I get it -- I often say "we're doomed" -- but very few of us get into the details of what that means. Maybe you have? What does the descent into doom look like? Any predictions?

That’s actually a quote from Atlas Shrugged one of the monologues called the money speech. I should have attributed it sorry. I would say we are heading for further authoritarianism and state capitalism. Things have stagnated. http://faculty.citadel.edu/sobel/Entrepreneurship%20Class%20...

You say “further” but I can’t see how this situation with Robinhood and it’s CEO is an exemplar of authoritarianism or state capitalism.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#315

Post by skrtskrt »

alecbz wrote: post #181
skrtskrt wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Would you say the same about working from home generally, which seems to have more staying power (even if we are seeing some return to office)? It seems not-crazy to me that someone would have thought that WFH was going to stick around post-COVID and thus also make people want to keep being able to work out from home.

they’re quite different

first and foremost, working out at home has always been available. If you prefer working out at home you were probably already doing it.

Second, a lot of people enjoy a social aspect of gyms, or even just find it motivating to be around other people working out even if you don’t talk to them.

You only have to spend a little time around fitness oriented folks to know workout at home was never going to stick

I worked in a consumer goods VC during this time and we couldn’t believe anyone was touching these companies, most were just instagram-aesthetic branding on cheap machines

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#316

Post by actually_a_dog »

BeetleB wrote: post #188
jonas21 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 likel…

Exactly - all these articles about CEO compensation are misleading. Case in point: Intel's CEO's 2021 salary was reported as almost $180M. In reality, he got only about $10M. He hit literally none of the targets that would allow him to get the rest of the compensation (although in theory he has a few years to hit those targets).

"Only $10M." Right. In a country where the median full time, year round worker makes $56k per year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_...

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#317

Post by eqmvii »

civilized wrote: post #8
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…

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

Matt Levine called this the "Bored Markets Hypothesis" at the time. Seemed pretty obvious both then and now in hindsight.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#318

Post by paulryanrogers »

pc86 wrote: post #284
kemitchell wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s case by case. I have seen some accurate CEO comp headlines. Some publications certainly bat better than others. As for Intel: $10m a year is still a lot of money. I have also heard that targets are occasionally hit. ;-D

> $10m a year is still a lot of money In absolute terms, 100% yes it is. In "CEO of a major corporation most people in the world have heard about," it's basically nothing.

> In "CEO of a major corporation most people in the world have heard about," it's basically nothing.

Perhaps CEO pay is beyond the pale generally, and these are obscene expectations.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#319

Post by labrador »

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…

"By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth."

— George Carlin

One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern, or attracted much sustained inquiry. In consequence, we have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves.

On Bullshit, Harry Frankfurt, Princeton University

http://www2.csudh.edu/ccauthen/576f12/frankfurt__harry_-_on_...

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#320

Post by wonnage »

mumblemumble wrote: post #27
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.

To any one person, sure. But, as the saying goes, "None of us is as dumb as all of us." Once you start move into the realm of group decisionmaking based on hypothetical future demand for $OUR_WORLD_CHANGING_PRODUCT, positivity culture starts to take over. Plenty of people in the room where the decision is made may be thinking, "But what if this is a passing fad and people don't really love our product in any sort of…

Positivity culture exists because there’s no real downside for the people exuding it. You swing for the fences and the losses and layoffs are someone else’s problem. Most decent people might find such decision making distasteful and that excludes them from leadership.
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