Binance lays off over 1k Employees • Hacker News Board

Re: Binance lays off over 1k Employees

#61

Post by spaceman_2020 » Fri, Jul 14, 2023, 6:58 PM UTC

loeg wrote: post #39

bdcravens wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have around 100M registered users, so approximately 1 employee for every 100k users seems reasonable.

That figure seems implausibly high. 1 in 80 humans on Earth are not only participating in crypto but specifically have an account on Binance? It certainly cannot be the number of active users.

If its indeed true, the gap between onchain and offchain users is even more immense.

On chain, there are not more than 100k users across chains daily. Real users across all EVM chains is probably around 20k/day. Major airdrops like Optimism and Arbitrum went out to like 600k wallets (and most have multiple wallets). OpenSea has like a few thousand daily active users.

Which makes you wonder - all these billions in funding for serving just…100k real users? Because if its not onchain, it might as well be a database.

Re: Binance lays off over 1k Employees

#62

Post by kodah » Fri, Jul 14, 2023, 6:58 PM UTC

CoastalCoder wrote: post #24

zeitgeistcowboy wrote: post #6

The article says a spokesperson said they "need to focus on talent density." Talent density is a new buzz word to me!

Man, that seems like a heck of a send-off for those employees. There's no fig-leaf such as "they killed entire projects" or "they pivoted". Just the spokesperson saying that, if you're one of the laid-off employees, it's because you lacked talent. Not sure that's a company I'd want to work for.

I worked for a large fintech firm that used this as reasoning to layoff 700-some employees years ago. They cited their changing needs and the talent of those engineers juxtaposed to their needs changing. I had seven friends among those engineers, only one of which I would consider in a grey area with respect to the skills he possessed that were relevant to the times. The company refused to release a full list of employees that were let go so we used Slack to create a list of users deactivated between certain time periods (this gets tricky with EU). What we learned is that most of them were tenured employees with higher wages. Their wages (likely) predated a movement that caused average wages at the company to go down so that everyone on every team with the same title made the same amount. These were basically the people left over who didn't quit but stopped getting raises because they were above pay bands for their level.

Re: Binance lays off over 1k Employees

#63

Post by RyanAdamas » Fri, Jul 14, 2023, 6:58 PM UTC

We just need a law that bans cryptographic exchanges and transfers in the USA. They are not assets, they provide no real utility, they are just speculative devices that no longer function as originally intended; as a replacement for fiat currency. So, it simply needs to be outlawed and all the money repatriated into whatever currency it came from; most of it dollars.

Re: Binance lays off over 1k Employees

#64

Post by moralestapia » Fri, Jul 14, 2023, 7:01 PM UTC

pfisch wrote: post #57

ceejayoz wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Precisely this. It's like being pleased about the value of your Madoff holdings. Looks great, on paper, until too many people try to cash out at once.

I mean you could say that about any stock or bank. If everyone tries to cash out it goes to 0.

Banks shouldn't ... in principle.

Re: Binance lays off over 1k Employees

#65

Post by raesene9 » Fri, Jul 14, 2023, 7:01 PM UTC

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #56

benreesman wrote: post #17

I haven’t paid any serious attention to crypto-type markets in a while but historically BTC/USDT was a pretty good number to look at if you could only look at one and it’s (glances)…whoa back above 30k? That’s not like peak tulip or even close but historically like, high-ish I think. I don’t particularly feel like reading the entrails of the crypto chicken at the moment so I’m going to assume that the crypto market (…

The SEC just lost its case against Ripple, so I don’t know what’s happening on the regulatory front.

It didn't lose the whole case, it lost certain summary judgement issues, and prevailed on others, the real case there is still to come.

It was overall a bit of a win for ripple but far from the end of the game.

Re: Binance lays off over 1k Employees

#66

Post by CydeWeys » Fri, Jul 14, 2023, 7:02 PM UTC

arp242 wrote: post #46

ot wrote: post #9

> It was not easy saying no to Super bowl ads, stadium naming rights, large sponsor deals a few months ago, but we did. Today, we are hiring for 2000 open positions for #Binance. https://twitter.com/cz_binance/status/1537013824666095617 Jun 2022, didn't age well.

Knew someone who worked at Binance, as support. I'm sure he's competent enough at his job, but he has no special skills or anything. He made more money than I did as a senior software dev at the time. It seems not only did they hire a lot of people, they also paid them an ungodly amount of money.

It sounds like he didn't make that much money for long. Better to have a real career where you're making good money every year, year after year.

Re: Binance lays off over 1k Employees

#67

Post by arbol » Fri, Jul 14, 2023, 7:04 PM UTC

RyanAdamas wrote: post #63

We just need a law that bans cryptographic exchanges and transfers in the USA. They are not assets, they provide no real utility, they are just speculative devices that no longer function as originally intended; as a replacement for fiat currency. So, it simply needs to be outlawed and all the money repatriated into whatever currency it came from; most of it dollars.

This seems pretty out of touch. They're the first challenger to fiat currencies ever. Outlawing them will stifle any innovation that arises from their development.

Re: Binance lays off over 1k Employees

#68

Post by ceejayoz » Fri, Jul 14, 2023, 7:04 PM UTC

pfisch wrote: post #57

ceejayoz wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Precisely this. It's like being pleased about the value of your Madoff holdings. Looks great, on paper, until too many people try to cash out at once.

I mean you could say that about any stock or bank. If everyone tries to cash out it goes to 0.

There's substantial difference between a bank run and a Ponzi collapsing.

Re: Binance lays off over 1k Employees

#69

Post by ineedasername » Fri, Jul 14, 2023, 7:05 PM UTC

ehnto wrote: post #13

zeitgeistcowboy wrote: post #6

The article says a spokesperson said they "need to focus on talent density." Talent density is a new buzz word to me!

Only the densest talent available made the cut. Part of this new talent push was upgrading the chairs, to handle the increased talent density. Our people are 90% tungsten and it's something we are really proud of.

The next big crypto scandal headline:

”Authorities Investigating as Evidence that Depleted Uranium Propped Up Dense Talent, Actually Empty Inside”

Re: Binance lays off over 1k Employees

#70

Post by justapassenger » Fri, Jul 14, 2023, 7:06 PM UTC

arp242 wrote: post #46

ot wrote: post #9

> It was not easy saying no to Super bowl ads, stadium naming rights, large sponsor deals a few months ago, but we did. Today, we are hiring for 2000 open positions for #Binance. https://twitter.com/cz_binance/status/1537013824666095617 Jun 2022, didn't age well.

Knew someone who worked at Binance, as support. I'm sure he's competent enough at his job, but he has no special skills or anything. He made more money than I did as a senior software dev at the time. It seems not only did they hire a lot of people, they also paid them an ungodly amount of money.

High salaries are part of the grift.

Makes you look really successful (they pay a lot, so they must be super profitable!) and helps, at least partially, select employees who won’t be asking questions, just do their job and collect paychecks.