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Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

wsj.com

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Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#591

Post by flohofwoe »

dougk16 wrote: post #508
dominotw wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> architect stuff how can someone be good at architect-ing stuff if they never code or code very little. seems like the method GP is describing would be good to weed out such imposters.

They've coded for 10 or 20 years, and now just sit back and design interfaces, write specs, evaluate technologies, mentor juniors, do code review, and of course the ultimate mind blow when you're trying to figure out who to fire: they remove code instead of add it. Unfortunately for the company, these "imposters" do indeed get weeded out in preference to the recent college grad copy/pasting thousands of lines of Stac…

> they remove code instead of add it

If you can remove code from your code base without hampering the functionality, that's usually a much better time investment than writing new code.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#593

Post by aikinai »

trixie_ wrote: post #432
llaolleh wrote: post #24

That's a lot of staff - it means 1/5th of your coworkers got laid off... I'm very bearish on Robinhood - I don't know if they have enough of a moat to defend themselves from other free stock trading apps. People have forgiven so many outages. The Gamestop saga was the straw that broke the camel's back for many.

I like Robinhood and I have no problem with them having technical issues when users a flash mobbed a meme stock. In the end they learned what to do next time.

They weren’t technical issues; they were financial, business, and policy issues. And many people people either lost or think they lost a lot of money because of it.

Robinhood branded themselves as bringing power to the people but as soon as the people got the upper hand in a market, Robinhood turned around and screwed them. It’s a lot worse than a young startup struggling to keep up with explosive demand.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#594

Post by MomoXenosaga »

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…

Unemployment in the Netherlands is historically low.

But can people who work in tech become teachers, nurses and police officers? I am not sure.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#595

Post by aikinai »

cudgy wrote: post #520
colinmhayes wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Housing market appreciation happens because homeowners vote to restrict housing supply. Turns out it’s hard to convince people to vote for lowering the price of something when most of their net worth is tied up in it.

Ridiculous housing appreciation is practically a global phenomena that is due to artificially low interest rates and easy credit driven by many of the central banks around the world. What you describe (housing supply restrictions) is a local phenomena in a few markets like San Francisco and not the primary reason behind the incredible speculative nature of the recent housing market. China has been building in hyper-s…

Japan has the lowest rates in the developed world and a very generous central bank but no housing appreciation.

No one expects housing to appreciate (except in limited, specific situations) and then no one votes or sets policy specifically to prop up prices. There’s a dynamic market with plenty of development and supply in the right types of housing and price points and everyone’s happy pretty much.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#596

Post by MomoXenosaga »

adam_arthur wrote: post #523
reiichiroh wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren’t we complaining we can’t reach anyone human at Google Support?

They could hire entire call centers in poorer countries for the cost of a few engineers. That's a prioritization issue on their end

A call center requires actual people skills. An engineer would be the last person you want for that job.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#597

Post by notfromhere »

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.

They easily can. When you’re in a large, multinational organization with multiple offices and teams everywhere, you are essentially working remotely as is.

Large companies aren’t particularly innovative, so this whole argument is pretty moot to begin with.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#598

Post by MomoXenosaga »

nemo44x wrote: post #467
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.

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.

This is why my country forces people to put a part of their monthly paycheck into a retirement fund.

Most people just have no financial skills and will just get slaughtered on the stock markets. Others refuse to save money for their retirement at all.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#599

Post by notfromhere »

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…

Accredited investor rules exist so that your average person isn’t scammed into penury from a fraudulent investment.

Accredited investors suck at due diligence as is, and Joe Everyman can barely understand their own bank statement, so those rules exist to prevent them from getting raked by extremely questionable investment offers.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#600

Post by notfromhere »

stockboss wrote: post #422
skrtskrt wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 g…

as a bodybuilder for 20 years, i completely agree with you. working out at home has never had the same appeal to me or anyone else i knew who worked out as going to a gym. i got a peloton during covid isolation and it simply wasn't the same. i went to the gym the first day it opened and so did every other regular. i knew peloton wasn't going to continue thriving, however i do have to say they have very quality equipm…

Yeah but regular gym goers aren’t really the target market. That’s a small market as is and companies depending on it plateau pretty quickly
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