Robinhood Could Lay Off 9% Of Employees Due To Slow Growth

Robinhood could lay off 9% of its employees because of slow growth but the trading company is still hiring for other crypto roles so let’s read more in today’s latest cryptocurrency news.

The brokerage app Robinhood could lay off 9% of its workforce according to a statement from its CEO Vlad Tenev. He called the decision necessary due to a change in the customer behavior. Tenev added:

“We’re anticipating and being responsive to changes in the way our customers invest—especially during this time of global conflict, economic uncertainty, and high inflation.”

He also stated that Robinhood is prioritizing internal opportunities for automation wherever possible and that there are many at the company that has duplicate roles and job functions. From 2020 to mid-2021, Tenev added that Robinhood went through a period of growth due to the COVID pandemic, low-interest rates, and stimulus checks. With so many people bored at home, it was quite easy to spend some money on the Robinhood app. Now as the world begins to get back to normal, Robinhood’s growth is slowing down, and during the last quarter of 2021 with the most recent reporting period and tallied $363 million in total revenue which is down from the previous two quarters. However, Robinhood said it has a plan to increase profitability:

“We will continue to accelerate our product momentum through 2022 and will introduce key new products across Brokerage, Crypto, and Spending/Saving.”

Even though in the range of 300 to 350 are being laid off, it is still listing a number of open positions as well as 12 different crytpo-related roles listed across the compliance, engineering, marketing, operations, and product teams. The news came a few weeks after Robinhood announced it will add Lightning Network support for BTC transactions. Robinhood added a number of new coins to the platform allowing users to purchase Solana, Compound, MATIC, and SHIB which all saw prices surge after getting listed on the platform.

As to which departments or roles at Robinhood suffered from layoffs, some in the company’s HR and Learning and development teams all shared that they are getting let go. With most employees still hiring, some ex-employees could not be out of the work for too long. A number of financial companies, as well as crypto companies, chimed in to share open roles like Block’s Square, Kraken, and Uniswap Labs.