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Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

wsj.com

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Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#431

Post by eek2121 »

bumby wrote: post #426
bastardoperator wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

people gambling their stimulus money because they didn't need it to make ends meet How did you quantify this statement?

One estimate puts it at $170 billion extra flowing into retail investing.[1] Also, it may be reasonable to use the savings rate as a rough proxy. That rate was higher than it has been for decades when the stimulus was active and has since dropped. [2] [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/21/business/stimulus-check-s... [2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PSAVERT

I am willing to bet they didn't factor in the whole meme stock craze.

Zero of our stimulus went into buying said stocks, however I did make a bucket load from GME and AMC prior. Our stimulus went into further "stimulating" our savings account. The money I spent with Robinhood was entertainment money. It just happened to pay off big.

A more conservative estimate places stimulus "meme stock" trading at less than 0.1% of the stimulus.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#432

Post by trixie_ »

llaolleh wrote: post #24

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.

I like Robinhood and I have no problem with them having technical issues when users a flash mobbed a meme stock. In the end they learned what to do next time.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#433

Post by sumedh »

adam_arthur wrote: post #429
strix_varius wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The truth is that a majority of tech companies don't need 50%+ of their employees. Totally agree. The problem is, nobody knows how to tell which ones. On the ground it's obvious. I'm sure everyone here knows who on their team is crucial to their current production stack, and also knows others who would have no impact (or even positive impact!) if they left. One level up - the direct EM - has most of that context to…

No heuristic is perfect, but it's fairly easy to quantify empirically from activity/records. Developers who are productive (actually write and ship large amounts of quality code) tend to be valuable and those that don't, aren't. That being said there are some intangibles, like morale etc. It's possible there are people that benefit the team while having low personal productivity. But anyway, no need to approach in th…

> (actually write and ship large amounts of quality code)

What about Dev leads who mentor/architect stuff instead of writing code day to day. How will you measure that?

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#434

Post by eek2121 »

ab_testing wrote: post #47

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…

You are actually a bit closer to the truth than most. The goal of a CEO is to generate as much hype early on as possible in order to spur growth. They spend early capital on growing employee count to generate even more hype. This raises their own net worth significantly. When the company goes public, they will dump what they are allowed to, navigate the much more "public" waters for a bit, then walk away with a small fortune. It becomes a game of investor bag holding at some point. The C-Suite is almost never left holding the bags. It is always the investor. I'm not sympathizing with investors, mind you.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#435

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

deaddodo wrote: post #371
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more difficult to justify to shareholders paying less, tbh. The risks of a bad CEO are enormous.

And yet, CEOs for decades (the 50s-80s) did just fine at a fraction of wealth disparity compared to today [1]. In fact, in just the last three years; the overall disparity has increased 31% despite corporations failing to properly manage the pandemic or their workforces. 1 - https://www.forbes.com/sites/annefield/2022/05/23/ceo-worker...

Corporate profits are up way more than 31% in that time. So the impact to shareholders is larger.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#436

Post by pc86 »

deaddodo wrote: post #425
BeetleB wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And yet, CEOs for decades (the 50s-80s) did just fine at a fraction of wealth disparity compared to today [1]. And yet, SW professionals did just fine for decades when making anywhere from a quarter to a third of today's FAANG salaries (inflation adjusted).

SWE (and many professional/“white color”) salaries have been stagnant for a decade and a half. In fact, the overall average has been on the decline. Try again.

You can make your point (even a bad one, like this) without being snide.

Do you have a source supporting your comment that SWE comp in 2005 was the same as it is today?

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#437

Post by pc86 »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #318
pc86 wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> $10m a year is still a lot of money In absolute terms, 100% yes it is. In "CEO of a major corporation most people in the world have heard about," it's basically nothing.

> In "CEO of a major corporation most people in the world have heard about," it's basically nothing. Perhaps CEO pay is beyond the pale generally, and these are obscene expectations.

Certainly a point worth making, and I might even be inclined to agree, but I think my point stands. Comparing against similarly noteworthy companies, Intel's CEO doesn't make all that much.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#438

Post by WaxProlix »

JohnBooty wrote: post #418
bastardoperator wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

people gambling their stimulus money because they didn't need it to make ends meet How did you quantify this statement?

In my industry the wave of stimulus definitely caused behavior changes, it was pretty distinct. Obviously, a lot of people did need that money to make ends meet. But it's also obvious that some % of the population was able to treat it as money they were able to play around and have some fun with.

neat, but not a meaningful response to someone asking for hard data.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#439

Post by deaddodo »

pc86 wrote: post #436
deaddodo wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SWE (and many professional/“white color”) salaries have been stagnant for a decade and a half. In fact, the overall average has been on the decline. Try again.

You can make your point (even a bad one, like this) without being snide. Do you have a source supporting your comment that SWE comp in 2005 was the same as it is today?

Considering I’m the only one that has sourced anything in this thread and that the response I was responding to made an easily disproven claim in such a snide/sarcastic manner, it’s hard not to respond in kind.

But sure, from a super simple query on any search engine:

https://insights.dice.com/2018/02/09/tech-pro-jobs-pay-2018/

Feel free to gate your query to anytime between 2003ish to now, the results are all the same with a few exceptions (MLE and DeFi jobs, for instance): stagnant or decreasing.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#440

Post by Spivak »

lopatin wrote: post #408
Spivak wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not my company not my bets. I’m paid to staff a post at a company, the CEO laying people off has no more impact on or responsibility to my livelihood than I do to the workers of food truck I frequent. As a worker I take literally no risk except “one day they might stop paying me.” I am not impacted at all by how the company is doing. And if you’re a stock holder then you should love this move since it’s in your best…

Comparing you frequenting a food truck to a CEO that takes massive risks at the expense of his employees is insane.

> at the expense of his employees

This was the whole point of the analogy. Taking risky bets has cost the employees nothing. The only thing that the employees have lost is imaginary future pay and benefits that could have been taken from them at any point for near any reason. It's hurting the employees that were laid off as much as me choosing not to eat at my local burger stand hurts its owner. Dgmr, it sucks to get laid off, it's a huge PITA and a good number of them were probably depending on that income but they haven't lost anything.

Those cost of those massive risks are actually literally at the expense of the shareholders. Ironically the employees who have some of their compensation in stocks will actually be helped by this move.

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