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Kraken lays off 30% of staff

blog.kraken.com

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Re: Kraken lays off 30% of staff

#131

Post by jiveturkey »

eloff wrote: post #52

I'm so glad I turned down the job offer at Kraken. The reason I turned it down was because I felt that crypto was a bubble waiting to pop (back in March, but that's been my "wrong" opinion for the last 5 years or more.) The tech stack was nice, the pay was excellent, the product I would have been working on is comparable to Bloomberg Terminal, so it was pretty cool too. But I just thought the job might go away in the…

If you've held that opinion for so long, why did you even apply to Kraken at all? What would have swayed you to accept their offer?

Re: Kraken lays off 30% of staff

#132

Post by suh_dude »

newmac wrote: post #35
aruanavekar wrote: post #17

Strange, LinkedIn shows staff of 500+ https://www.linkedin.com/company/krakenfx/ and the press-release mentioned "1,100 people, or 30 percent". Number do not add up.

Kraken regularly used shell/cover companies to hire employees. They have a pretty complex web of fronts not-called-Kraken. Entire offices are 'employed' by one of these companies.

Interesting, why would they do this?

Re: Kraken lays off 30% of staff

#133

Post by bink »

pb7 wrote: post #15
throw8383833jj wrote: post #5

At least they're handling it responsibly and generously: From their blog: Separation pay: We will pay 16 weeks of base pay for all departing Krakenites inclusive of the paid leave period. Performance bonus: For those eligible, we will pay each departing Krakenite their bonus as determined by their manager. Benefits: We will offer eligible Krakenites 4 months of healthcare continuation coverage inclusive of the paid l…

Severance at most recent layoffs has been very generous. Getting laid off sucks but this is just about the best way to do it.

It's always best to be laid off first in a downturn. These packages start to disappear later in the cycle.

Re: Kraken lays off 30% of staff

#134

Post by syspec »

throw8383833jj wrote: post #5

At least they're handling it responsibly and generously: From their blog: Separation pay: We will pay 16 weeks of base pay for all departing Krakenites inclusive of the paid leave period. Performance bonus: For those eligible, we will pay each departing Krakenite their bonus as determined by their manager. Benefits: We will offer eligible Krakenites 4 months of healthcare continuation coverage inclusive of the paid l…

Krakenites eh?

I was hoping they called themselves Krackheads

Re: Kraken lays off 30% of staff

#136

Post by meroes »

stuckinhell wrote: post #81
woodruffw wrote: post #18

> Since the start of this year, macroeconomic and geopolitical factors have weighed on financial markets. This is an incredible couching of the last 9 months of cryptocurrency market behavior. Does anybody actually operate on their belief that "geopolitical factors," rather than astonishing amounts of fraud , are responsible for the current downturn?

The fraud seems to get political very quickly with FTX. Sam Bankman donated enormous amounts of money to democrats. He was the second biggest donor behind George Soros. He said he also donated an equivalent amount to establishment republicans via dark money channels. Sam Bankman was clearly a smooth political operator.You don't have meeting with Gary Gensler the head of the SEC otherwise.

How could being the second and third largest donor to Dems/Reps respectively at the same time be a good strategy? Genuinely curious.

Re: Kraken lays off 30% of staff

#137

Post by gigatexal »

For a company built on a Ponzi-scheme (crypto) they sure are being good to their employees and that’s laudable.

“Separation pay: We will pay 16 weeks of base pay for all departing Krakenites inclusive of the paid leave period.

Performance bonus: For those eligible, we will pay each departing Krakenite their bonus as determined by their manager.

Benefits: We will offer eligible Krakenites 4 months of healthcare continuation coverage inclusive of the paid leave period.

All Krakenites will continue to have access to counseling services during this period.

Extension of exercise window: We will extend departing Krakenites’ window to exercise their vested stock options.

Immigration support: Kraken will provide dedicated visa and immigration support for those currently on company-sponsored visas.

Outplacement support: We will provide career support for departing Krakenites, including networking opportunities, job search best practices, interview guidance, and more.”

Re: Kraken lays off 30% of staff

#138

Post by woodruffw »

nightski wrote: post #109
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a leveraged bet and a very common vehicle in traditional finance Former options market maker here. Taking leveraged, directional risk with options is textbook reckless trading. That Robinhood found people to swing options and crypto is not representative of traditional finance.

I have an options account with TD Ameritrade. It took a few clicks to get. But it's pretty convenient traditional finance can be redefined when needed.

This doesn't change what the GP said. I have an options account with my bank too, but I had to sign all kinds of disclosures and wait to be approved. I also had to demonstrate a minimum net worth.

What made Robinhood (originally) unique was stripping away those protections, or otherwise automating them away in a mobile app. We have lots of concrete examples of people losing their life's savings on Robinhood, in no small part because of how easy it made leveraging oneself.

Re: Kraken lays off 30% of staff

#139

Post by UncleMeat »

stickfigure wrote: post #83
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like HN should just auto add a comment that says "Why does need employees?" with a follow up comment that explains how large corporations work. It literally comes up in every single layoff announcement or other discussion of company size in some way, and the follow on comments are essentially the same every single time. I'm not saying that a lot of these companies aren't overstaffed (indeed, that's why they ar…

I've come to look at it the other way. "Because that's how large companies work" is a lazy non-answer. An honest answer to this question would break it down: # of engineers, # of ops, # of sales, # of hr, etc. And ideally break it down by business division. Of course that requires some real domain knowledge. I've personally watched morons come in, hire lots of useless employees, and destroy millions of dollars of cas…

I think it is more "that's how growing companies work."

Companies don't hire tons more people to maintain their existing products. They hire more people because they want to build more stuff. If you are happy just having the thing you have and keeping it up, sure. But it is clear that the past five years or so has had a big scramble to try to scoop up as much of the crypto pie as possible so you can exit for billions. That means building new features. That means hiring a lot more people. And sometimes all those new people come in, fuck up in their mission to create more value for the company, and leave it worse off.

It is true that existing product offerings for a ton of companies could be maintained effectively by a subset of their workforce. A large portion of the employees are just working on building new shit.

Re: Kraken lays off 30% of staff

#140

Post by ceejayoz »

meroes wrote: post #136
stuckinhell wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fraud seems to get political very quickly with FTX. Sam Bankman donated enormous amounts of money to democrats. He was the second biggest donor behind George Soros. He said he also donated an equivalent amount to establishment republicans via dark money channels. Sam Bankman was clearly a smooth political operator.You don't have meeting with Gary Gensler the head of the SEC otherwise.

How could being the second and third largest donor to Dems/Reps respectively at the same time be a good strategy? Genuinely curious.

It's twice as many people you can call up and say "remember when I gave a bunch of money to your PAC?"
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