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Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

wsj.com

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Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#21

Post by georgeecollins »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #14
civilized wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should have been obvious to anyone that people would do less day trading once they had anything better to do.

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.

This happened in 1998-1999 too. People got online trading accounts, did great and then decided to try to invest for a living.

You should not take investment advice from people who have been doing it less than a decade. It takes time to sort out the lucky from the smart.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#22

Post by dcolkitt »

bushbaba wrote: post #11
rossdavidh wrote: post #7

"Last year, we staffed many of our operations functions under the assumption that the heightened retail engagement we had been seeing with the stock and crypto markets in the COVID era would persist into 2022..." We are now at the point when we will find out which of the changes to behavior (financial and otherwise) that came about with the onset of the covid-19 pandemic are going to be lasting, and which are not. I…

There prior earnings had substantial revenue from crypto. That’s mostly dried up. Then you’ve got the GME reputation hit. Meanwhile fidelity who avoided crypto and has a great reputation saw & continues to see growth

What? Fidelity has a huge digital assets division and literally added Bitcoin as a 401(k) option

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#23

Post by redredrobot »

88840-8855 wrote: post #5

What they write: "As CEO, I approved and took responsibility for our ambitious staffing trajectory – this is on me. " What he totally forgot to mention: "I also take a pay cut to reduce the opex burden on the company and to retain as many FTE as possible"

Are you complaining that when they cut their pay from 400k to 32k that wasn’t enough? Or are you complaining that they didn’t cut their 32k salaries down further?

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#24

Post by llaolleh »

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.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#25

Post by analyst74 »

civilized wrote: post #9
88840-8855 wrote: post #5

What they write: "As CEO, I approved and took responsibility for our ambitious staffing trajectory – this is on me. " What he totally forgot to mention: "I also take a pay cut to reduce the opex burden on the company and to retain as many FTE as possible"

swinging the ax I take full responsibility for this

"One who passes the sentence should swing the sword"

If it's good enough for a lord, must be good for the CEO.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#27

Post by mumblemumble »

civilized wrote: post #8
rossdavidh wrote: post #7

"Last year, we staffed many of our operations functions under the assumption that the heightened retail engagement we had been seeing with the stock and crypto markets in the COVID era would persist into 2022..." We are now at the point when we will find out which of the changes to behavior (financial and otherwise) that came about with the onset of the covid-19 pandemic are going to be lasting, and which are not. I…

It should have been obvious to anyone that people would do less day trading once they had anything better to do.

To any one person, sure. But, as the saying goes, "None of us is as dumb as all of us."

Once you start move into the realm of group decisionmaking based on hypothetical future demand for $OUR_WORLD_CHANGING_PRODUCT, positivity culture starts to take over. Plenty of people in the room where the decision is made may be thinking, "But what if this is a passing fad and people don't really love our product in any sort of durable way," but nobody wants to be the one to actually say it.

I would even go so far as to say that those whose temperament would allow them to say something like that out loud in the boardroom generally don't get promoted into the kinds of positions that get you invited to boardroom meetings.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#28

Post by mumblemumble »

georgeecollins wrote: post #21
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.

This happened in 1998-1999 too. People got online trading accounts, did great and then decided to try to invest for a living. You should not take investment advice from people who have been doing it less than a decade. It takes time to sort out the lucky from the smart.

I would even argue that a decade isn't necessarily enough time. The decade in question might have been the 1990s.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#29

Post by paxys »

> 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 millions by the SEC and other regulatory bodies, and saw its share price drop by 90%.

At this point "taking responsibility" would mean resigning and letting someone more competent fix his messes.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#30

Post by [deleted] »

bushbaba wrote: post #11
rossdavidh wrote: post #7

"Last year, we staffed many of our operations functions under the assumption that the heightened retail engagement we had been seeing with the stock and crypto markets in the COVID era would persist into 2022..." We are now at the point when we will find out which of the changes to behavior (financial and otherwise) that came about with the onset of the covid-19 pandemic are going to be lasting, and which are not. I…

There prior earnings had substantial revenue from crypto. That’s mostly dried up. Then you’ve got the GME reputation hit. Meanwhile fidelity who avoided crypto and has a great reputation saw & continues to see growth

[deleted]
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