Robinhood lays off 23% of staff • Hacker News Board

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#561

Post by lmm » Wed, Aug 03, 2022, 5:56 AM UTC

sillysaurusx wrote: post #505

nemo44x wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hardest part of this to me to deal with is that it’s the truth. For decades, the conservative line was if you give people money they’ll just blow it on gambling and booze. Turns out it’s true.

Ah yes, it’s completely fair that the only people who should be morally allowed to participate in the financial apparatus that sometimes leads to getting rich, are the people who are already rich. I see no incongruities whatsoever with this logic. rapid eye blinking Bunch of people lost money. Some of them got rich. Booze is good and gambling is fun and it’s ok to blow their own money on exactly the things that every…

The accredited investor rules aren't what's locking out individuals from getting the deals that are actually worth something. Those deals are already buttoned up by the connected VC folks. Look at the endless string of ponzis that get advertised to a typical doctor or dentist, that's all you're missing out on.

I agree that the rules are overly crude and that in principle there should be some more equitable way to achieve the same way. But I'm also very confident that those rules have stopped a lot of people losing all their money and killing themselves.

> Meanwhile my friend is now a multi millionaire simply because he didn’t lose his coins and didn’t sell them. Was he stupid? Did I blow my money on gambling, but he was just lucky?

Yes. You both did a stupid gamble and one of you got lucky for now. There's no broader lesson to take from that.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#562

Post by taurath » Wed, Aug 03, 2022, 5:57 AM UTC

rootusrootus wrote: post #139

That's brutal. We just laid off a couple hundred people last week, only five from our department (which is 190 people) but two of them were from one of my teams. Demoralizing, and in the case of that team, absolutely devastating to productivity in the short term. Cutting almost 1 in 4 employees is beyond anything I can imagine. I think I'd feel like I was rearranging deck chairs if I survived the cut and stuck around…

I’ve gone thru those it a few times - while most all other companies were doing hiring freezes or layoffs as well. It’s times like that that employers really squeeze every last bit out of those “lucky enough” to stay around.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#563

Post by cudgy » Wed, Aug 03, 2022, 5:58 AM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #436

deaddodo wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SWE (and many professional/“white color”) salaries have been stagnant for a decade and a half. In fact, the overall average has been on the decline. Try again.

You can make your point (even a bad one, like this) without being snide. Do you have a source supporting your comment that SWE comp in 2005 was the same as it is today?

SWE’s straight out of school made 90-100k in the late 90’s. Isn’t that what they make now?

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#564

Post by ycombobreaker » Wed, Aug 03, 2022, 5:59 AM UTC

lmm wrote: post #548

015a wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously there's bias involved, but I really don't see a reality where this isn't the case. I've literally never worked at a company where half the team could be laid off and the product would still function at its current level of functionality for 12 months; let alone adding functionality. If you've worked at a company like this; I imagine there are some; then sure; the lights could be kept on. Hey there Oracle &…

> But to argue that tech companies don't need 50% of their employees, when they're the plurality of the wealth of the United States' public markets; its comical. If they were claiming this was something unique about tech I'd be sceptical. But if they're claiming it's just regular corporate dysfunction I'm not so sure. I've watched whole teams of extremely talented engineers put multiple years into building something…

I think I agree with you, but I'd take it a step further. The plan from management may in fact be various projects in development, few of which will see the light of day. Those few pay for all of the spent effort on the others.

This is no different from VC behavior. It's unfair to label the shuttered projects as not contributing to the bottom line, if they were part of a pool of investments.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#565

Post by cudgy » Wed, Aug 03, 2022, 6:03 AM UTC

sumedh wrote: post #387

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.

> is considered “basically nothing” is something worth talking about. Except if the CEO screws up the company goes bankrupt and people lose their jobs. Look at Nokia and RIM.

Nokia and RIM got clocked by the iPhone. I don’t care who their CEO could have been, these companies were on the downward trend and headed for tough times.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#566

Post by humaniania » Wed, Aug 03, 2022, 6:06 AM UTC

twblalock wrote: post #118

A lot of Robin Hood's growth in particular was driven by people gambling their stimulus money because they didn't need it to make ends meet, and by the Fed juicing the markets with low rates for far too long, and by the ridiculous meme stock phenomenon. It was a perfect storm of stupidity. Personally I'm glad that some sanity is returning to investing, and we are still a long way from getting back to normal.

What evidence do you have to support those claims about causes?

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#567

Post by spaceman_2020 » Wed, Aug 03, 2022, 6:08 AM UTC

pram wrote: post #310

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or when making money became harder. Amazing the number of people I personally know who took 1 year of day trading to be the “norm” and made big life decisions based on their results. From quitting good jobs to buying houses they can’t afford, all because they made big money in 2021 and thought they could keep repeating it every year.

Options trading in particular is really addicting, like gambling. I’ve had periods where I was completely sucked in, looking at charts and news all day. I will admit I’ve had thoughts in the past of “I should just quit my job and do this” without any practical consideration as to how sustainable it would be. Not because I thought I would be rich, just because I wanted to trade all day! It’s kind of like being addicte…

I did that too and you’re spot on about how addictive it can be. But I looked at my wins and realized that I had no real thesis and was essentially gambling. Had to quit at that point.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#568

Post by f6v » Wed, Aug 03, 2022, 6:10 AM UTC

lmm wrote: post #544

sumedh wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (actually write and ship large amounts of quality code) What about Dev leads who mentor/architect stuff instead of writing code day to day. How will you measure that?

> What about Dev leads who mentor/architect stuff instead of writing code day to day. Those are precisely the negative-impact people I want to get rid of!

Up to a certain stage in your life everyone in a position of power is a moron. Some people evolve past that line of thinking, some don’t.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#569

Post by wyclif » Wed, Aug 03, 2022, 6:14 AM UTC

spookthesunset wrote: post #547

bagels wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Covid and the wide scale embracing of remote work is really going to combine with layoffs to massacre our wages. Some FAANG companies will likely prioritize hiring in Europe and Asia and use that to pressure bay area salaries down.

That remote work stuff will go away. People are kidding if they think large organizations can innovate and remain competitive when everybody on a team isn’t in the same room. Individually people might think they are more productive (at least coders do) but the communication issues that arise from remote work are gonna really become an issue soon enough.

Nah, remote work isn't going anywhere—it's here to stay. I know management doesn't want to believe that because they want to count asses in seats, but the collaboration issue has been solved by Zoom/GitHub/Trello/Slack &c.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#570

Post by manigandham » Wed, Aug 03, 2022, 6:15 AM UTC

Foobar8568 wrote: post #524

bpodgursky wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand this as theoretical possibility, and it could lead you astray if you're trying to tell a 40% developer from a 60% developer... but in practice I have never met a superstar IC who doesn't also ship a ton of code (even while they help out others). If you fire the 10% of ICs who push the least code, to within a rounding error you're extremely unlikely to regret it.

Your best engineers are facilitators, not coding monkeys.

Those are not engineers then, they're managers.

It's strange to see this confusion when it comes to software. Any other discipline and you wouldn't say engineers that don't do any engineering are the best engineers.