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Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

wsj.com

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Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#361

Post by deaddodo »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #322
bumby wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not scientific and maybe inaccurate, but a quick Google search showed the average Intel employee makes $100k. The shift in social norms where 100x the average employee (of a tech firm, which skews towards high salaries) is considered “basically nothing” is something worth talking about.

Intel employs 121k people. If you're in charge of managing 121k people - 10x the average salary seems like a minimum. 100x seems in the realm of reasonable. If the CEO's salary is distributed to all employees, they would get a ~0.05% raise. If distributed to the shareholders, it would increase profits by ~0.01%. Yet this person's decisions can have much bigger consequences to both employees and shareholders.

> If you're in charge of managing 121k people - 10x the average salary seems like a minimum. 100x seems in the realm of reasonable.

Except, that’s not a CEO’s job. Even remotely. At best they “manage” a few department heads who each manage a few middle managers who each manage a few direct managers who then manage the workforce.

Even then, that’s a misrepresentation however. They are in charge of managing and directing overall company strategy in the interests of the board. The COO (and, sometimes, the CTO; in tech firms) is usually (indirectly) in charge of managing people.

I think it’s a valid point that they bring large value to a corporation, but it would be very difficult to quantify that value to be anywhere near 100x any other non-Csuite employee.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#362

Post by ericd »

V__ wrote: post #42
paxys wrote: post #29

> 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…

If you crash a company against the wall resulting in such a disaster and having to cut so much staff, resigning isn't enough. CEO's should have to pay back big parts of their compensation.

Do you want it to be very hard to fire people? If you make it that way, then companies become much more reluctant to hire people, and tend to start hiring on contracts instead of full time. My understanding is that that's been the effect in France, at least. And if you think about it, it's a completely rational response to essentially making it riskier to hire.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#363

Post by bobthepanda »

alecbz wrote: post #177
thaumasiotes wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you'd ask the question "why weren't they doing it before?". If the answer is "they didn't know about it", you might expect them to keep doing it. But not otherwise. Day trading has had a lot of popular awareness for a long time.

Even if you know something exists, you might just have never tried it for some reason until something causes you to, at which point you might realize you enjoy it. E.g., I got a bike over COVID, found I liked biking a lot, and have been doing it a lot more now.

That's just one data point though, and the issue is whether or not things would stick for the population as a whole.

In a related sense, Peleton did really well during the pandemic and now they're doing really poorly.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#364

Post by zeroonetwothree »

yuan43 wrote: post #102
this_user wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. https://hbr.org/2013/04/does-money-really-affect-motiv

The current economy is not "shedding jobs". The current unemployment rate is around historic lows.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#365

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

deaddodo wrote: post #361
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intel employs 121k people. If you're in charge of managing 121k people - 10x the average salary seems like a minimum. 100x seems in the realm of reasonable. If the CEO's salary is distributed to all employees, they would get a ~0.05% raise. If distributed to the shareholders, it would increase profits by ~0.01%. Yet this person's decisions can have much bigger consequences to both employees and shareholders.

> If you're in charge of managing 121k people - 10x the average salary seems like a minimum. 100x seems in the realm of reasonable. Except, that’s not a CEO’s job. Even remotely. At best they “manage” a few department heads who each manage a few middle managers who each manage a few direct managers who then manage the workforce. Even then, that’s a misrepresentation however. They are in charge of managing and directi…

It's more difficult to justify to shareholders paying less, tbh.

The risks of a bad CEO are enormous.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#366

Post by ericd »

paxys wrote: post #105
Spivak wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

He's personally lost hundreds of millions of dollars in equity value from this production issue. So I'd say he's "given up some pay".

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#367

Post by fleddr »

mananaysiempre wrote: post #345
fleddr wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's different types of unions, those in Europe tend to be different from the unions the US used to have (and perhaps still have). Unions in my country (Netherlands) do not protect the individual. You do not get hired via a union (free job from a "friend") nor does the union protect you from getting fired. The union is only there to protect collective interests. For example, a massive degradation in contract terms…

And then you get to France. Several hours late, because there is an SNCF strike once again :)

I actually respect he French attitude and willingness to stand up for their rights and way of life. We can endlessly debate whether they take it too far but in the backdrop of the rest of the world doing fuck all, I see it as a positive.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#368

Post by bsuvc »

chii wrote: post #355
alex_young wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely valid point. The same document points out that the CEO and CCO (both co-founders) each realized more than $168M in compensation in 2021. That's the number to talk about I think.

Their compensation being high is not really relevant imho. It's the hidden assumption that if only the CxO compensation was lower, those workers could've been saved (aka, instead of redundancy, the CxO takes a pay cut to pay for the wages of those workers). Is this a valid argument? I dont know, but i feel that it isn't.

I'm trying to understand your point of view.

Are you saying executive compensation should be orthogonal to company performance?

Overpaid executives failed, so workers lost their jobs, but the executives get to keep theirs all the while saying things like "I take responsibility for this" when it is objectively false that they are taking responsibility.

Does that seem right to you? Is that a good way to run a business, to keep failed leadership?

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#369

Post by sooheon »

blargey wrote: post #348
actually_a_dog wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Only $10M." Right. In a country where the median full time, year round worker makes $56k per year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_...

In more hackernewsian terms, $10 million sitting in an investment account will outearn most software developers. Their salary has a higher salary than you.

That's a hilarious way to put it, thanks.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#370

Post by tedunangst »

alain94040 wrote: post #356
peanutz454 wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow! $168M/(3800 employee / 100*23 layoff) = $192,219 per layed off employee Not that I am suggesting he should pay the layed off employees from his personal kitty. Just trying to understand the numbers. Edit: OP said CEO and COO each. So $192K x 2 ~= $384,000.

Your math makes no sense. The fewer the employees laid off, the more the dollar per employee will be. What does that mean? If a company lays off only one employee, then all of the CEO's salary could have gone to one person?

Obviously they should have laid off more employees until the CEO salary per layoff drops below $1000.
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