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Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

wsj.com

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Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#551

Post by lmm »

buscoquadnary wrote: post #230

So several times I've had the opportunity to join fast growing startups that offered quite a bit more compensation, and equity as well. One of the things that I always took consideration of was the stability of the company vs where I was at. Many of these people made a bet that working for Robinhood would pay off, it didn't that is part of the risk that came with the SV salaries, and the stock. I get that it sucks, b…

Name one company where you could be confident there's no risk of being laid off. Big companies definitely go through downturns and cut significant chunks of their staff, and you're even less likely to be able to do anything about it there than at a small company.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#552

Post by legalcorrection »

jupp0r wrote: post #536
adam_arthur wrote: post #358

The truth is that a majority of tech companies don't need 50%+ of their employees. Google could lay off vast swathes tomorrow and be immensely more profitable without any loss in revenue. The 2010s will be remembered as the golden era for tech employment. The second we start getting industry wide layoffs, the insanely high wage inflation we've seen will kick into reverse much faster than you probably believe possible…

Well then - found a company that employs half the people and become the next Google. Should be easy if your magic insights can make you twice as profitable. Maybe this is not how innovation works though.

Not a good argument from you. As if the sheer number of employees is what made Google successful in the first place. And as if efficiency alone makes a successful company. Why would you think these things?

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#553

Post by akg_67 »

strix_varius wrote: post #411
adam_arthur wrote: post #358

The truth is that a majority of tech companies don't need 50%+ of their employees. Google could lay off vast swathes tomorrow and be immensely more profitable without any loss in revenue. The 2010s will be remembered as the golden era for tech employment. The second we start getting industry wide layoffs, the insanely high wage inflation we've seen will kick into reverse much faster than you probably believe possible…

> The truth is that a majority of tech companies don't need 50%+ of their employees. Totally agree. The problem is, nobody knows how to tell which ones. On the ground it's obvious. I'm sure everyone here knows who on their team is crucial to their current production stack, and also knows others who would have no impact (or even positive impact!) if they left. One level up - the direct EM - has most of that context to…

> The problem is, nobody knows how to tell which ones.

I guess there is no leetcode BS for firing. May be someone create one so that circle of sucks can be completed.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#554

Post by smabie »

mikeyouse wrote: post #453
ProjectArcturis wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only way I can understand the Efficient Markets Hypothesis is as a way for academic economists to explain why they personally have not gotten rich trading stocks.

If you’re actually curious about the EMH, you should really read something deeper than non-finance people paraphrasing it poorly.

Finance people (well, the ones that actually make money trading) don't put much stock in EMH either..

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#555

Post by smabie »

skrtskrt wrote: post #77
mgfist wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of this has already happened. Just look at the stocks of all the pandemic companies. Peleton, Teledoc, Zoom, Docusign and on and on. Pretty much all down 80%+ from their highs.

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

Conversely, did you see it coming and make a ton of money?

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#556

Post by spookthesunset »

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…

Next up, the remote work craze. Everybody thinks they are super productive working from home but on a larger scale I imagine it took a huge hit.

Plus it is dystopian as fuck. People need to be around people outside of their immediate family to stay sane and I promise you most of these new remote workers are basically never interacting with people outside their small bubbles.

It’s gonna swing back. Calling it now. A ton of people I’m know made some seriously impulsive moves into houses way out in the middle of nowhere thinking this will last. It will be interesting to see how well their bet paid off in a year.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#557

Post by smsm42 »

bumby wrote: post #426
bastardoperator wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

people gambling their stimulus money because they didn't need it to make ends meet How did you quantify this statement?

One estimate puts it at $170 billion extra flowing into retail investing.[1] Also, it may be reasonable to use the savings rate as a rough proxy. That rate was higher than it has been for decades when the stimulus was active and has since dropped. [2] [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/21/business/stimulus-check-s... [2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PSAVERT

I think the fact that people just discovered that government deciding to put the country under house arrest is the thing now and they can be out of the job and not allowed to leave home at any time now - and started to save more is kinda natural behavior in these circumstances.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#558

Post by legalcorrection »

pipeline_peak wrote: post #463
adam_arthur wrote: post #358

The truth is that a majority of tech companies don't need 50%+ of their employees. Google could lay off vast swathes tomorrow and be immensely more profitable without any loss in revenue. The 2010s will be remembered as the golden era for tech employment. The second we start getting industry wide layoffs, the insanely high wage inflation we've seen will kick into reverse much faster than you probably believe possible…

> The truth is that a majority of tech companies don't need 50%+ of their employees. Then why are they hired? It can’t be image alone

The bureaucracy expands until external factors force it to stop or contract. Google Search and Ads are a small percent of the company but nearly all the revenue. It’s not hard to see how that can lead to runaway bureaucracy.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#559

Post by cudgy »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #322
bumby wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Intel employs 121k people. If you're in charge of managing 121k people - 10x the average salary seems like a minimum. 100x seems in the realm of reasonable. If the CEO's salary is distributed to all employees, they would get a ~0.05% raise. If distributed to the shareholders, it would increase profits by ~0.01%. Yet this person's decisions can have much bigger consequences to both employees and shareholders.

Meh … just like the President … a CEO’s performance is highly correlated to business cycles and stages of a company’s growth. Most of the decisions made are not earth-shattering; they go through the motions and hire the same contractors and make the same decisions that most of their competitor company CEO’s make … after all most of them went to the same business schools and learned the same “cutting edge” business tactics from the same professors.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#560

Post by smabie »

refurb wrote: post #410
martin82 wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it just shows that the CEO earned enough to give every laid off employee a whole annual salary, so you could argue that the layoff could have been prevented for at least a year.

Sure, but no doubt a Silicon Valley programmer could take a 50% pay cut, still have plenty to live on, and double the salary of 3 cleaning staff that work at their company. Should we talk about that too?

Nah probably not since so many people on HN are programmers.
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