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Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

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Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?)

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.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#92

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…

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Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#93
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> as their primary investing platform :%s/investing/speculation/g Very few people use RH as 'investing'. Those will be on boring brokers like Vanguard. I have a Tastyworks account too - the fills are way better than Robinhood's. As expected, since they charge some amount per trade. But that means that the "free" platform will definitely have more users, just because it's supposedly free (even though you pay for it in…

How are you quantifying that the fills are better?

I worked professionally on this problem a while ago and it was very hard to do even with full depth feeds direct from the exchanges.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#94
post #59
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

executives should be compensated for the performance of the company in the future, not the current quarter or year. this is the board's fault for failing to set effective incentives.

Did the board members pay the CEO with their own money? Or some bag holders?

Will the board return their board fees?

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#95
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of execs take "only" $100ks of compensation in salary and the rest in stock.

He's perfectly capable of giving stock to these employees as well.

Looking at Robinhood stock, it might be way less than that now. But I get your point

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#96
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…

I read this as saying "This is not happening because you did a bad job, it's because I did a bad job". An important thing to mention at a layoff.

That's what a layoff is. Otherwise it's a firing for cause

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#97
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hindsight's 20/20? Why would we feel sure that people wouldn't keep up with habits they picked up during COVID? That seems like it could have been similarly likely to me -- someone picks up day trading, gets hooked, and now it's a regular habit.

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.

Day trading has all the meaning and fulfillment of cigarette smoking and slot machines, but with none of the addictive chemicals or flashing lights. So it's not surprising that people didn't hold onto the habit once there were better alternatives.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#98
post #44
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…

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 choose the latter.

It follows that if a CEO were to refuse stock compensation they'd be at risk of being fired by the board of directors, because owning stock is an unspoken qualification for the job.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#99
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not going to try to justify how I would act, or how anyone else should act, were I to have a compensation package putting me easily in the top 0.1% of society, but we can collectively dispense with the notion that certain types of compensation (i.e. stocks) must necessarily be prohibitively harder for a CEO to give up than just money.

Re: Robinhood lays off 23% of staff

#100
post #37
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…

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.

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