He's perfectly capable of giving stock to these employees as well.
It's simple to say we'd be more charitable if we had incomes 1,000x or more our current annual compensation, but I do genuinely wonder if I'd be different. Would I be greedy, would I care about doing right to the laid off employees-- it's hard to imagine how crossing that bridge might change people.
Is it charitable to accept responsibility for the consequences of your mistakes, and compensate those you've harmed? Or is it just common decency?
Why not cut pay across the board? I know this is not the cultural norm, but I am curious how long this norm can persist. Without the ability to cut pay, layoffs are the only option for companies burning cash and losing altitude. That locks pay increases at the same inflated point that the bubble supported but which reality does not. To go one step further, is there a single advanced economy in which pay cuts, rather…
Because then you'd still have more people than you need, except now everyone is poorly motivated, and your best people will just leave. Germany does actually have a model called "Kurzarbeit" (literally "short work") to reduce hours across the board while some of the wage losses are being offset by payment from the unemployment insurance system. The idea is to avoid layoffs during times of recession etc. which would a…
> ... your best people will just leave.
Where is the evidence for this?
I get that it seems like what would happen, but where are the cases proving that's what happened? Especially in an economy shedding jobs, there may not be many other places to go.
Also, studies seem to find that money doesn't motivate people to perform at a higher level.
There are talks of "late stage capitalism" all over the place - I think CEO compensation is one of the biggest hallmarks of it. Capitalism is supposed to naturally reward value creation to incentivize further value creation - somehow we've found ourselves in a situation where folks on the bottom of the pyramid aren't going to get incentivized for efficient labour no matter how much value they create - while folks at…
My own theory is that executive compensation serves a purpose that generally isn't said out loud. Usually compensation comes mostly in the form of stock, and the real reason for the large amounts is to reassure investors that if the executive finds him or herself in a situation where they have to make a choice between what's good for employees or what's good for shareholders, they'll be strongly incentivized to choos…
Yep, talk is cheap. Of course he's responsible, whether he admits it or not. If not willing to step down, then give up pay.
Good lord, if I resigned every time I caused a production issue my resume length would triple. You are allowed to admit you made a mistake without publicly self flagellating. This is some straight puritanical shit.
Does your company also do mass layoffs whenever you cause a production issue?
Somehow I feel that all these VC backed firms just add employees for the sake of adding employees. I use Tastyworks - another free online brokerage that it almost at feature parity with Robinhood. They have stocks, options, futures and even some selective crypto. They also make money using PFOF just like Robinhood. However on Linkedin, their employee count is less than 100 (99 to be precise) On the other hand, Robinh…
Sure, but also, none of my (investing) friends use Tastyworks, and almost all of them are using RH as their primary investing platform! Companies in hyper-growth stages may hire/fire differently than others.
Tastyworks was founded by the founders, CTO, and CFO of Thinkorswim. I worked on thinkorswim institutional desk for several years back in the mid-2000s. Not great brand recognition but a company built for traders by traders.
> As CEO, I approved and took responsibility for our ambitious staffing trajectory—this is on me Reminder that Vlad Tenev received $800M in compensation in 2021. In the same year the company made terrible bets on crypto and banking, took an irreversible reputation hit among its core user base because of the GME fiasco, had multiple user data breaches, was subject to several investigations and was fined hundreds of mi…
No one’s forcing those employees to stay working there. If he’s that bad people can just leave and work for a company that they like.
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.
That's not really true, at least not in the same way being discussed above. Jobs already owned millions of shares in Apple stock, so yes, he profited from the stock but AFAIK that was only from the appreciation of existing stock, not from new grants.
> As CEO, I approved and took responsibility for our ambitious staffing trajectory—this is on me Reminder that Vlad Tenev received $800M in compensation in 2021. In the same year the company made terrible bets on crypto and banking, took an irreversible reputation hit among its core user base because of the GME fiasco, had multiple user data breaches, was subject to several investigations and was fined hundreds of mi…
I realize it's not something that happens, but I would say "taking responsibility" would mean taking, oh, I dunno, $50M of that $800M in compensation in 2021, and distributing it to those laid off? (How the hell is your life different with $750M instead of $800M anyway?)
It's the difference between having only one or even no helipad on your floating gin palace or two.