[HN Gopher] Binance lays off over 1k Employees
___________________________________________________________________
Binance lays off over 1k Employees
Author : jason_zig
Score : 181 points
Date : 2023-07-14 17:06 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wsj.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com)
| resolutebat wrote:
| > _As we prepare for the next major bull cycle, it has become
| clear that we need to focus on talent density across the
| organization to ensure we remain nimble and dynamic. This is not
| a case of rightsizing, but rather, re-evaluating whether we have
| the right talent and expertise in critical roles._
|
| This is some next level PR "major bull" right here. Not only are
| they claiming with a straight face that these are not layoffs,
| but they're saying it's happening because crypto is about to
| rocket to the moon! (As opposed to, say, Binance being currently
| raked over the coals by every financial regulator on the planet.)
| benreesman wrote:
| I haven't paid any serious attention to crypto-type markets in a
| while but historically BTC/USDT was a pretty good number to look
| at if you could only look at one and it's (glances)...whoa back
| above 30k? That's not like peak tulip or even close but
| historically like, high-ish I think. I don't particularly feel
| like reading the entrails of the crypto chicken at the moment so
| I'm going to assume that the crypto market (including the
| perpetual futures and stuff where Binance makes the big bucks)
| isn't lying in ruins. I'm sure someone will let me know if that's
| way off.
|
| 8 thousand people is not a lot for a company doing trillions of
| dollars of transactions in dozens of countries most which have at
| least some regulation. That would be a lot if they were all
| engineers and quants, but even there, an electronic stock market
| is a tricky little devil to build and operate.
|
| So is this a bad outlook for crypto, a serious setback in the
| various regulatory battles, or just another brick in the wall of
| what is increasing looking like Don't Poach Gate 2.0? (Sorry Bond
| Villains, the kids were going to hear about that eventually.)
| acaloiar wrote:
| Everything you need to know about crypto today can be found at
| https://web3isgoinggreat.com/
| tim333 wrote:
| That site focuses on the bad stuff but crypto goes on. Maybe
| check https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoin-obituaries/ for balance.
| vorticalbox wrote:
| > and is definitely not an enormous grift that's pouring
| lighter fluid on our already smoldering planet.
|
| This is actually a worry i have about in regards to crypto,
| the BTC network uses a staggering amount of power.
|
| Ai is next of my power hungry worry list.
| rvz wrote:
| > This is actually a worry i have about in regards to
| crypto, the BTC network uses a staggering amount of power.
|
| Crypto has alternative consensus methods available today
| and a former PoW blockchain (Ethereum) was able to cut
| their emissions by 99.9% by moving to a efficient
| alternative with Proof-of-Stake. For crypto it is possible.
|
| AI (Deep Learning) on the other hand has no efficient
| alternative methods available for training, fine-tuning and
| inference and continues to waste tons of water and consume
| more resources.
|
| > Ai is next of my power hungry worry list
|
| It should be the main concern. The top of your list even,
| hence the aforementioned points today. Deep Learning has no
| efficient solutions to its energy problem which remains to
| this day after decades of its existence.
| nkuttler wrote:
| > the BTC network uses a staggering amount of power
|
| Actually, bitcoin uses a ridiculously small amount of power
| for what it provides. See for example here
| https://www.lynalden.com/bitcoin-energy/ for an
| introduction to clear up this misconception.
| plopilop wrote:
| If you really believe that something that is 1 million
| times less efficient than Visa/MasterCard for a fraction
| of the service, and that miners really use residential
| energy when they are active 24/7 and thus by definition a
| continuous strain on the grid, I have so many scams^W
| interesting products to sell you
|
| https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption
| nkuttler wrote:
| [flagged]
| RestlessMind wrote:
| Comparing Bitcoin network to Visa/MasterCard is as
| pointless as comparing Gold mining to those cc networks.
| Fair comparison would be Bitcoin network vs Gold
| mining/storage/securing/transfer activities.
| plopilop wrote:
| The convertibility between money and gold has stopped in
| the 70s.
|
| Bitcoin allows for instant money transfer, and so does
| Visa.
|
| The fact that bitcoin has no collateral is a whole other
| topic.
| the_gastropod wrote:
| This article is basically like arguing: "Sure, using the
| Infant-Chipper 9000 results in the deaths of infants. But
| it's a rounding error if you consider how many infants
| die in the world every year!"
|
| Bitcoin purposefully wastes lots of energy to provide
| something of extremely dubious value.
| willcipriano wrote:
| It's literally an infant chipper insofar as it enables
| the sale of (and thus the production of) CSAM.
| ardme wrote:
| Yet obviously, some people find it useful. Who are you to
| tell people how to live their lives?
|
| Maybe you should stop flying on airplanes for the rest of
| your life?
| ChainOfFools wrote:
| When how people live their lives depends on them
| shoveling millions of joules s of externalities onto my
| environment and that of my kids, in addition to propping
| up a rube goldberg Ponzi scheme that has a non-zero
| chance of ensnaring people I care about either directly
| or indirectly through financial mismanagement, you better
| believe I'm going to tell you how to live your life.
|
| I'll tell lots of other people how you live your life is
| hypocritically contributing to a massive increase of
| financial leverage on the part of "rationally self
| interested" sociopaths and criminals at everyone else's
| expense( in direct opposition to its putative purpose of
| undermining predatory central bankers, yet is simply
| shifting the power to predatory anon-ish ransomware
| purveyors and sex traffickers and bullshit gambling token
| insta-twit "influencers" seeking to exploit the naivety
| of children for their own financial gain), and generally
| promoting the enshittification of everything that touches
| the internet, and should be mocked and discouraged at
| every opportunity.
|
| You don't like the free market of ideas when it turns
| against you? tough.
| crtified wrote:
| "When how people live their lives depends on them
| shoveling millions of joules s of externalities onto my
| environment and that of my kids, in addition to propping
| up a rube goldberg Ponzi scheme that has a non-zero
| chance of ensnaring people I care about either directly
| or indirectly through financial mismanagement, you better
| believe I'm going to tell you how to live your life."
|
| This is no defense of Bitcoin/crypto, but the above
| paragraph relatively concisely describes how I feel as
| part of the underclasses in the traditional world. Except
| that all the fears it encapsulates have already occurred
| for my family, generations back.
|
| There are people in this thread who get a yearly payrise
| (which translates to increased selfish expenditure on
| plastic toys and air flights and fancy petrol burning
| machines) that's greater than my entire household's
| income, and I'm just an ordinary person in a western
| country. How many household bitcoin miners does that
| equal, environmentally speaking? For that one person?
|
| The hypocrisy embedded in fervent hatred of crypto, as
| though extravagant & hugely unbalanced wastage of
| resources wasn't practiced by us all daily, implies a
| moral distance that, imo, barely exists. Bitcoin and
| crypto are mere reflections of the wastage that we as a
| species have normalised, and still do, via our
| lifestyles.
|
| It's "industry" and "business" that have fucked this
| world.
| ChainOfFools wrote:
| I'm not advocating for the "industry" side as if it's a
| dichotomic industry against crypto, or banking against
| bitcoin. I'm specifically criticizing crypto and
| especially Bitcoin because the entire ideological mission
| of the project is to disrupt and disintermediate all of
| these well-known predatory Industries, when it has done
| none of this whatsoever. In fact has actually contributed
| both to incumbent disproportionate inequality of wealth,
| as well as creating new classes of disproportionate and
| malignant wealth. It is backfired in the worst possible
| way and all the fallout is on the people that was
| supposed to benefit.
|
| And the and the relative handful of people at the center
| of the so-called decentralized crypto world are well
| aware of this and don't give a flying f**.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| The people finding it useful are overwhelmingly moving
| money illegally, such as how you can peg BTC shifts to
| Xi's anti-corruption crackdowns in China, or MBS in
| Saudi. Or moving drugs. Or hyping something to sell more
| made up money to rubes.
| the_gastropod wrote:
| "Some people find the infant-chipper useful. Who are you
| to tell people how to live their lives?"
|
| <insert improve the world somewhat meme here>
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| What exactly does it provide?
|
| So far it seems that Bitcoin mainstream use is to create
| speculative markets. Any other intended objective is a
| drop in the bucket.
| nkuttler wrote:
| If your country's money and banking works for you I don't
| think I can explain to you why bitcoin is useful, you
| simply have no use for it. That your peers primarily use
| it for speculation says more about them than about
| bitcoin.
| patmcc wrote:
| Give me a ballpark for the relative market share of
| "bitcoin as speculation" vs "bitcoin as currency".
|
| I'd estimate it as...oh...98% speculation, and I think
| I'm being generous.
| RestlessMind wrote:
| What is your estimate about Gold? I say Bitcoin and Gold
| serve roughly the same purpose.
| patmcc wrote:
| Looks like gold mined gets diverted to:
|
| 47% investment and central1 banks
|
| 45% jewellery
|
| 7% tech/industrial applications
|
| See https://www.statista.com/statistics/299609/gold-
| demand-by-in... and https://natural-
| resources.canada.ca/our-natural-resources/mi... - don't
| exactly agree, but close.
|
| (and, importantly, it doesn't require terawatt-hours to
| maintain gold once you've mined it).
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| I would like to hear more about those use cases.
|
| Because I cannot fathom a system where either currency or
| banking does not _work_ , and the preferable alternative
| is to rely on a highly volatile asset that requires vast
| amounts of energy and time to work.
|
| > That your peers primarily use it for speculation says
| more about them than about bitcoin.
|
| We are not in 2011 anymore. Bitcoin did not become a
| widespread vehicle for commercial transactions. Countries
| with defenestrated economies did not find an alternative
| in Bitcoin. Instead, we have whales, among them large
| banks and corporations, controlling over a third of the
| market, and most transactions are made in exchanges with
| arbitrage or speculation purposes.
|
| Suffice to say, I don't consider JPMorgan or Goldman
| Sachs my "peers".
| RestlessMind wrote:
| > I would like to hear more about those use cases.
|
| Here you go, I have compiled some examples for you:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32406095
|
| > Because I cannot fathom a system where either currency
| or banking does not work, and the preferable alternative
| is to rely on a highly volatile asset that requires vast
| amounts of energy and time to work.
|
| May I ask you where you were born and raised? A lot of
| people do actually have to face shitty systems where
| Bitcoin is a godsend.
| acaloiar wrote:
| When that list reaches the length of
| https://web3isgoinggreat.com/web1, a great point will
| have been made.
| nkuttler wrote:
| Bitcoin has absolutely nothing to do with web3, so you
| provided an empty list.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| > Here you go, I have compiled some examples for you:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32406095
|
| Isn't it a bit disingenuous to think that _common people_
| have moved $50bn in Bitcoin out of China? Or have moved
| ~$2.4bn worth of Bitcoin in Nigeria in a single month?
|
| > A lot of people do actually have to face shitty systems
| where Bitcoin is a godsend.
|
| I would say that a handful of examples, of which some are
| highly questionable, constitute anecdotal evidence, at
| best. Some of these scenarios are indistinguishable from
| using any other stable foreign currency, or even
| commodities, with the added difficulty of requiring
| certain technology literacy most people don't have.
|
| > May I ask you where you were born and raised?
|
| I could ask the same, because I haven't found many ardent
| defenders of cryptocurrency outside the tech circles of
| the so called developed world.
| trotro wrote:
| I know this is tongue in cheek, but there's a lot more to
| crypto than the scams and failed projects exposed on
| web3isgoinggreat.
|
| One example is all the amazing new research in zero-knowledge
| proofs, MPC, FHE, and modern cryptography in general, that is
| motivated and funded by cryptocurrency projects.
| dpflan wrote:
| How much do these ideas depend upon the concept of
| blockchain?
| trotro wrote:
| They don't depend on the blockchain, but the fact is that
| most recent research on these topics has come from the
| blockchain/cryptocurrency space.
|
| One interpretation is that crypto companies need security
| and privacy, while big tech doesn't seem to care all that
| much.
| ChainOfFools wrote:
| Yes, I'll acknowledge that there may be a handful of
| capable researchers who are able to progress on some basic
| science by accepting free money from a scam industry which
| is indiscriminately shoveling it at anything that might
| appear to legitimize itself.
|
| Just as, in days of old, those who wished to do legitimate
| (and costly) science had frame their research as supporting
| alchemical beliefs leading to discovery of immortality, or
| means to make gold from lead.
|
| and astronomers who wished to build an observatory had to
| go along with some highly flimsy justification about how it
| could serve as a means to prognosticate the birth of an
| heir or victory in battle for some petty murderous
| strongman.
| spamizbad wrote:
| Just speculating, but I imagine BTC does well because there's
| way less competition sloshing around in the crypto world these
| days. The NFT craze is over, 20 ultra-hyped crypto coins aren't
| being launched every second, there's fewer (illegal) securities
| floating around. So if you want to be in crypto, but things are
| scary, and you're looking for something safe? It's Bitcoin.
| JeremyNT wrote:
| It's bizarre to me too. I think there must be some seriously
| big holders doing wash trading to prop things up on paper.
|
| Anecdotally, all of the normies I know of who were really "into
| crypto" during the pandemic are coming around to thinking of
| the whole thing as a shark pit full of scams. There can't be
| that much new blood out there left to recruit to the pyramid at
| this point.
| davidgerard wrote:
| number is one thing, but volume is through the floor
| automatic6131 wrote:
| Hi David! I love your blog and your twitter
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| How much is it down % wise compared to what period
| previously?
| tippytippytango wrote:
| bitcoin and crypto have long since parted ways, they are
| different things now. even from a regulatory perspective
| bitcoin is the only one that has clarity being defined as a
| commodity and not a security, everything else is in a grey area
| meowkit wrote:
| This isn't accurate.
|
| BTC has the best legal argument for being treated as a
| commodity, but there has been no legislative decision on
| this.
|
| The CTFC sees BTC and ETH as commodities. Gensler pre-SEC
| said BTC, ETC, and LTC are commodities. The SEC and Gensler
| post-SEC says they are all securities, except maybe BTC.
|
| The Ripple decision (Yesterday) says that unless a crypto is
| contractually sold to an investor (e.g. not directly listed
| via an exchange) then its doesn't fall under the Howey test.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-judge-says-sec-lawsuit-
| vs-r...
| [deleted]
| bardak wrote:
| From my view there is room for sustainable crypto businesses
| but they get crowed out by the big unsustainable crypto
| businesses that were entirely relying on huge gains in price.
|
| That being said whatever practical uses there are for crypto is
| entirely detached from the value of crypto.
| RestlessMind wrote:
| The biggest practical use for crypto (specifically Bitcoin,
| as a store of value) is entirely dependent on the value of
| crypto.
| jasmer wrote:
| The price of all crypto is managed. All exchanges have a huge %
| of wash trading to hold up prices, and insiders with giant
| ownership stakes manipulate markets. All exchanges are either a
| scam, or 'implicitly colluding' with shady things.
|
| BTC is ironically not a very free market in that sense,
| moreover, because nobody needs it for anything, it has a buy-
| hold characteristic.
|
| If people needed BTC for things (which would force some
| liquidity ops) then we'd see a price that reflected something.
|
| Crypto markets are essentially 'schemes' of one kind or
| another, they serve no purpose other than to be a hustle.
|
| If people want to play dumb games, that's fine, as long as they
| are doing it legally and it doesn't rope in a lot of external
| players.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| > All exchanges have a huge % of wash trading to hold up
| prices
|
| Even "knowing this" (I mean, none of us have really any proof
| just at what scale it's happening at and... the same things
| happens in the S&P500 with high frequency trading
| algorithms/bots trading back and forth, hedge funds,
| institutional investors, etc.) I don't feel like I can
| confidently explain who/how many people really dollar cost
| average into Bitcoin that can prop it up to $10k, $20k, $30k,
| etc.
|
| Where/who are the buyers? How many people across the world
| are actively STILL investing directly into BTC to the point
| where it's up 80-90% YTD?
| jasmer wrote:
| Finance is _extremely_ regulated even if there are
| shenanigans, Crypto is just an excuse to do finance without
| oversight, which means it 's mostly shady.
|
| Every attempt to peel away the onion layer reveals mass
| problems.
|
| It's like saying 'we have no hard proof that all this Mafia
| gangs revenue came from illegal activity!'.
|
| What I'm saying is, the point of crypto is hustle, there is
| no real economy, and the players are all shady as can be.
|
| Literally nobody knows where the Binance guy even is!
|
| Why would the Binance guy want to hide from global
| authorities?
|
| Regular bank CEO's don't.
|
| It's mafia-adjacent the whole way down, with a lot of small
| dupes and kids playing with some amount of money.
|
| There is no 'there there' in the value creating sense that
| we might want to see.
|
| If you told me BTC was 95% regular people using it for
| business and 5% shady, I'd say we need to work on that
| problem. But it's only 5% 'useful' and the rest is just
| layers of scam and fraud.
|
| We need to dump crypto, and if we want to try that
| experiment again - because I think there might be value
| there - we can give it a new name and keep it clean from
| the start.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Precisely this. It's like being pleased about the value of
| your Madoff holdings. Looks great, on paper, until too many
| people try to cash out at once.
| pfisch wrote:
| I mean you could say that about any stock or bank. If
| everyone tries to cash out it goes to 0.
| rurp wrote:
| That's not really true, assuming it's a real company/bank
| with assets and revenue. If the stock is based on
| something with actual value there will many parties
| willing to buy the stock even if all of the current
| shareholders want to sell.
| ksherlock wrote:
| Behind a stock you've got a company with cash flow and
| assets. If nothing else you can sell off the office
| furniture. Crypto is backed by ... a prime number written
| on a piece of paper (minus the paper)?
| moralestapia wrote:
| Banks shouldn't ... in principle.
| anonporridge wrote:
| Fractional reserve banks (which is all modern banks)
| should in principle.
|
| The whole point of fractional reserve banking is to
| leverage people's trust in banks to try to generate
| faster growth and profits.
| hiq wrote:
| One thing though is that is unlikely that everyone would
| cash out below a certain price for a stock can be sold
| for parts. There would be at least some people realizing
| that they might as well hold, liquidate the company and
| make a profit out of it. So in practice there's a floor
| for the stock price (as long as assets > liabilities or
| similar).
|
| That's not the case of BTC. Its value is completely
| depends on confidence. At no price can you be sure that
| you'll make a profit, you can only guess that it'll go
| back up, so there's no such floor.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| There's substantial difference between a bank run and a
| Ponzi collapsing.
| charcircuit wrote:
| In both cases current assets < current liabilities. Both
| require getting a loan to pay out the depositors. Both
| make no sense to loan money to as they will have no way
| to afford the payments to be worth loaning to over
| someone else.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > In both cases current assets < current liabilities.
|
| That there are _some_ things the same does not make them
| _the_ same. You and I are both humans, but we are not the
| same person.
|
| In a Ponzi collapse, _all_ assets are typically < even
| current liabilities, let alone all of them. Unlike a bank
| run involving _temporary_ liquidity issues, a Ponzi is
| never going to be able to pay everyone out.
| charcircuit wrote:
| To the customer it's the same. People don't want to be
| told that they will get their funds in a few years, they
| want it now. Liquidating all your assets is going to
| reduce the total value of all of your assets to
| potentially below your liabilities. If it doesn't good
| job, that means the bank is safe against bank runs, but
| if not they aren't.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| That's an absurd assertion. No, to a customer, a bank run
| is rapidly dealt with via the FDIC; we just had a great
| example of this with SVB. Madoff's victims were not so
| lucky.
| pid-1 wrote:
| Stocks have value because they are cash flow generating
| assets, so if you sell low enough it will make economic
| sense for someone to buy, except for some liquidity
| catastrophe.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| The SEC just lost its case against Ripple, so I don't know
| what's happening on the regulatory front.
| raesene9 wrote:
| It didn't lose the whole case, it lost certain summary
| judgement issues, and prevailed on others, the real case
| there is still to come.
|
| It was overall a bit of a win for ripple but far from the end
| of the game.
| treyd wrote:
| The ruling published yesterday was just summary judgements
| which can be appealed. The actual trial hasn't even happened
| yet.
| monero-xmr wrote:
| The trial isn't interesting. The summary judgment says it's
| legal to sell cryptocurrencies if you do so anonymously on
| retail exchanges, and the tokens also are not securities.
| Very interesting outcome. The appeals are likely to fail
| from my reading of various analyses.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://archive.is/j50GA
| busterarm wrote:
| Not even a whole month since the last layoff...
| moneywoes wrote:
| Interesting I recall them mentioning how they were resistant to
| the market turmoil that caused Coinbase to conduct their layoffs
| ansible wrote:
| Well, they're also being sued by the SEC...
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| It's pretty insane that they have this many employees to start
| with.
|
| > Before the layoffs, Binance had a global staff of 8,000.
|
| The whole thing is self-evidently a massive scam! There are still
| 7,000 people working there!
| SamReidHughes wrote:
| Binance is a crypto exchange. Where's the scam?
| thrwbin wrote:
| [flagged]
| zeitgeistcowboy wrote:
| The article says a spokesperson said they "need to focus on
| talent density." Talent density is a new buzz word to me!
| cozzyd wrote:
| sounds like they need smaller offices.
| pzo wrote:
| Seems like easy to optimize for it - just keep only the best 1
| talent and fire everyone else!
| bink wrote:
| Congrats to the most talented. You're now doing the work of 5
| people.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| Man, that seems like a heck of a send-off for those employees.
|
| There's no fig-leaf such as "they killed entire projects" or
| "they pivoted".
|
| Just the spokesperson saying that, if you're one of the laid-
| off employees, it's because you lacked talent.
|
| Not sure that's a company I'd want to work for.
| kodah wrote:
| I worked for a large fintech firm that used this as reasoning
| to layoff 700-some employees years ago. They cited their
| changing needs and the talent of those engineers juxtaposed
| to their needs changing. I had seven friends among those
| engineers, only one of which I would consider in a grey area
| with respect to the skills he possessed that were relevant to
| the times. The company refused to release a full list of
| employees that were let go so we used Slack to create a list
| of users deactivated between certain time periods (this gets
| tricky with EU). What we learned is that most of them were
| tenured employees with higher wages. Their wages (likely)
| predated a movement that caused average wages at the company
| to go down so that everyone on every team with the same title
| made the same amount. These were basically the people left
| over who didn't quit but stopped getting raises because they
| were above pay bands for their level.
| throwaway5959 wrote:
| Sounds like something straight out of the end of Margin
| Call.
| slt2021 wrote:
| are they bashing people they laid off, assuming that 1k people
| were less talented than the rest?
| WinstonSmith84 wrote:
| No offence, but that's usually how capitalism works, the
| least talented are the first to go - unless we're talking
| about Twitter and then it's about showing off at the office.
| yourapostasy wrote:
| In larger companies, for some values of "talented" that
| comprises non-technical factors like political acumen, yes.
| If the "talented" label is meant as a shorthand for some
| kind of meritocratic scale, then I have my doubts about
| that.
|
| I've long since lost my astonishment at the revealed
| preferences in layoff selection criteria. It isn't a
| complete Machiavellian free-for-all, but merit and fine-
| grained logic usually don't prevail at the top of the
| criteria list in the trenches.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I've heard people claim this, but I've never actually seen
| it happen in practice.
| [deleted]
| tuckerpo wrote:
| If your statement is true, then the inverse must also hold:
| hiring is based on merit, which we all know to be untrue.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| I highly doubt that's true. It may be what you want in an
| ideal world, but in reality, very few, if any, companies of
| this size have any internal ranking system that can
| accurately identify the 1000 least talented people company-
| wide. More likely, they're laying off the last 1000 hired
| if they want to optimize for losing the least institutional
| knowledge, the first 1000 hired if they want to optimize
| for immediate labor cost savings, or just laying off all
| the people that are part of teams working on projects that
| got scrapped, who happened to be in the wrong place at the
| wrong time.
| adamredwoods wrote:
| Never in any layoff I've been a part of, have the least
| talented workers been let go first. It's usually by
| category: contractors, age (early-retirement), department,
| or job description.
| loeg wrote:
| This is the fundamental conceit of stack-ranking layoffs,
| which Microsoft did annually for many years.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Don't forget "most talented people who accept the
| severance pay and get another job" from the pre-layoff
| voluntary departure.
| lanstin wrote:
| I have seen a lot of layoffs over the years and I would
| put the main targets into here buckets:
|
| 1. People with bad relationships with he boss and bosses
| boss. 2. People with higher salaries. 3. Unlucky folks
| where an entire line of business or corporate department
| is shut down.
|
| Number 1 is the vast majority of the cases. Make sure
| your boss smiles when they see you and you can sleep well
| at night.
| renewiltord wrote:
| You can do early-retirement by age but if you do lay-offs
| by age that's going to be an age-discrimination problem
| if you target >40.
| WinstonSmith84 wrote:
| I've seen some layoffs and the first to go where the
| people the most "unproductive". So, there were sale
| people (which were actually pretty decent, but they
| "cost" money and had to go), and then there were also
| people who were just "less" good. Less senior, more
| junior and could not do things autonomously.
|
| But I can agree that it's always very subjective and of
| course the one who is friend with the boss ABC will have
| more chance despite maybe performing less good...
| account-5 wrote:
| Sound like that's exactly what they're doing.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| yes
| tikhonj wrote:
| Implying you'd have to be pretty dense to work at Binance.
| ehnto wrote:
| Only the densest talent available made the cut. Part of this
| new talent push was upgrading the chairs, to handle the
| increased talent density. Our people are 90% tungsten and it's
| something we are really proud of.
| ineedasername wrote:
| The next big crypto scandal headline:
|
| _"Authorities Investigating <DeFi Corp> as Evidence that
| Depleted Uranium Propped Up Dense Talent, Actually Empty
| Inside"_
| stubybubs wrote:
| Osmium devs are the new 10x devs.
| FreshStart wrote:
| Stalionstatues.. Each and every ounce.
| [deleted]
| RyanAdamas wrote:
| We just need a law that bans cryptographic exchanges and
| transfers in the USA. They are not assets, they provide no real
| utility, they are just speculative devices that no longer
| function as originally intended; as a replacement for fiat
| currency. So, it simply needs to be outlawed and all the money
| repatriated into whatever currency it came from; most of it
| dollars.
| menus wrote:
| Seems like a knee-jerk reaction. Why is the opinion always to
| ban or abolish a broken system instead of improving it?
| imchillyb wrote:
| That's the opposite direction the federal government has moved.
|
| You're currently spewing nonsense.
| Zpalmtree wrote:
| stop running code I don't like :(((
| 1-more wrote:
| This isn't outlandish. Many things are illegal to run on your
| computer.
| RyanAdamas wrote:
| Stop exchanging code for dollars and pretending it provides
| any social or economic utility.
| 1-more wrote:
| how would you get the money back? Wouldn't that tank the price
| of everything? Not saying I'm categorically opposed to that but
| you'd essentially be confiscating the crypto since it'd be
| impossible to sell it for anything close to what you paid,
| right?
| RyanAdamas wrote:
| It would be a US law so they can get their money back in
| foreign currencies since its cryptographic and can be
| transferred to other exchanges internationally, and if they
| want dollars they can exchange it on the open market.
| Thankfully, that would increase the demand for dollars and
| continue to strengthen a currency weakened by a massive
| speculative market primed through international drug
| trafficking.
| 1-more wrote:
| I see I read exchanges not as "marketplaces" but as
| "transfers of crypto in exchange for money" like you were
| going to have the government forcibly compel everyone in
| the US holding crypto to sell it for a flat USD value and
| thusly divest themselves. So your idea would be that they
| can keep holding crypto or they can sell it for otherd-
| than-USD-fiat in non-US exchanges. Makes sense.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| First provide me with a universal, legal definition of asset,
| before we argue about whether or not something is an asset.
| Nevermind that I'm sure if I pried into the particulars of your
| life, I would find something cryptographic or digital that
| belongs to you, which you would be disappointed to live
| without, even if it's meaningless to most people. And as a
| lover of liberty, I would never wish to deprive you of the
| right to own it and transfer it to whomever you wish under
| whatever acceptable terms you both come to.
| RyanAdamas wrote:
| First, provide me with a universal definition of liberty. I
| would hate for you to infringe on other peoples and so would
| need you to clarify a valid and sound method for determining
| in all cases where yours begins and others ends. Then, apply
| it to the functions and limitations of a democratic system
| for determining those boundaries and from there we can begin
| to unravel the complexity of bad faith arguments and red
| herrings.
|
| You can have my cryptokitties.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > I would find something cryptographic or digital that
| belongs to you, which you would be disappointed to live
| without
|
| That "or digital" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. You are
| effectively claiming that crypto has to be allowed or digital
| photos with friends are right behind.
| arbol wrote:
| This seems pretty out of touch. They're the first challenger to
| fiat currencies ever. Outlawing them will stifle any innovation
| that arises from their development.
| Tao3300 wrote:
| > the first challenger to fiat currencies ever
|
| Except they fail at that. Any further innovation will be more
| of the same: grift.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > They're the first challenger to fiat currencies ever.
|
| Direct commodity and commodity-representational currencies
| were the first challengers to fiat currencies, and for about
| the first millenium after the first know fiat was introduced,
| generally _won_.
|
| Cryptocurrency is not the "first challenger to fiat currency
| ever".
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Nothing is ever "won". The world remains as dynamic as
| ever. Pride comes before fall, as they say.
|
| Also, until the 70s, USD was backed by gold.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Nothing is ever "won".
|
| Yes, the simple past ("for the first millenium after the
| 10th century introduction of fiat, commodity currency
| alternatives mostly won") has different meaning than the
| past perfect ("commodity currencies have won the battle
| with fiat currencies"), and I choose which one I used for
| the exact meaning intended.
|
| > Also, until the 70s, USD was backed by gold.
|
| Yes, the US dollar until recently was most of the time a
| commodity (either direct in coins traded for their
| metalli1a13@c value, or representational in redeemable
| notes) currency, part of the millenium of triumph of
| commodity over fiat.
| mehlmao wrote:
| The only notable innovation to come from cryptocurrencies is
| the rise of ransomware, a drain on the global economy that
| funds terrorists and dictatorships.
| tlb wrote:
| There was ransomware in the 90s. For small amounts, they
| often requested prepaid gift cards or for you to call
| premium phone numbers. For larger amounts, wire transfers
| to countries with weak law enforcement.
|
| Cyberextortion rings still operate out of countries with
| weak law enforcement or tacit approval of their
| governments, so I don't know if disappearance of
| cryptocurrency would hurt them much.
| RyanAdamas wrote:
| Outlawing Cryptographic exchanges and transfers are not
| outlawing distributed ledger technology nor networks with
| tokens not denominated or traded in US dollars.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _Outlawing them will stifle any innovation that arises from
| their development._
|
| _This_ seems pretty out of touch.
|
| I own some crypto. Mostly BTC, some ETH and even a bit of XRP
| I've held onto. I can see the utility, maybe. But, what
| innovation is happening in this space? It's mostly scam after
| scam.
|
| There are literally _thousands_ of coins on CoinMarketCap.
| What are they all doing?
| glerk wrote:
| > we just need a law
|
| Who is "we"? How would this "law" be compatible with the US
| constitution? How would this "law" be enforced? This must be
| the most naive take in this entire thread.
| vegasbrianc wrote:
| The federal courts disagree with your opinion today
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-07-13/what-d...
| RyanAdamas wrote:
| No, they didn't. They disagreed with a federal agency's
| attempt to regulate. They didn't overturn a law banning
| cryptocurrencies.
| ot wrote:
| > It was not easy saying no to Super bowl ads, stadium naming
| rights, large sponsor deals a few months ago, but we did. Today,
| we are hiring for 2000 open positions for #Binance.
|
| https://twitter.com/cz_binance/status/1537013824666095617
|
| Jun 2022, didn't age well.
| jdjdjdhhd wrote:
| Aged not too bad I would say
| koolba wrote:
| > Jun 2022, didn't age well.
|
| A public statement lasting a year in the Wild West that is
| crypto isn't the worst.
|
| Though that's primarily due to the lowness of the bar.
| arp242 wrote:
| Knew someone who worked at Binance, as support. I'm sure he's
| competent enough at his job, but he has no special skills or
| anything. He made more money than I did as a senior software
| dev at the time. It seems not only did they hire a lot of
| people, they also paid them an ungodly amount of money.
| ethanbond wrote:
| Probably mitigates the risk of whistleblowers, if you can
| keep it up.
| arp242 wrote:
| I guess that's a possibility, ut my bet is they just had
| more money flowing around than sense.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Typically it's more growth than money/sense.
|
| Growth without proper management papers over a lot of
| stupid hiring decisions, 'because we need more people
| ASAP'.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| It sounds like he didn't make that much money for long.
| Better to have a real career where you're making good money
| every year, year after year.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| I don't think those exist. It is much, much better to
| continually hop when the raises are 20% or more for doing
| so.
| NSMutableSet wrote:
| My annual comp increases at FAANG are not 20%, but they
| have been consistent increases of roughly $45,000 a year,
| for little effort. I suppose it is a trap, but I am still
| content.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| Huh? You don't think real careers making good money
| exist? I don't know what to tell you.
|
| But the main issue here is that someone without any
| special skills ended up making a shitload of money as a
| fluke by working at Binance for a short period of time.
| It's very unlikely they're going to be able to get
| another job even nearly that good, let alone more jobs
| 20% better, because they don't actually have real
| marketable skills and it was just a fluke.
| operatingthetan wrote:
| >Huh? You don't think real careers making good money
| exist? I don't know what to tell you.
|
| They were talking about how wages at most jobs stagnate
| if you are a long-term employee. Which I find to be true
| as well.
| rvz wrote:
| Right. so Binance over-hired and over-paid for roles just
| like the rest of the tech industry in 2021 - 2022 then, as
| the free money and zero interest rate mania came to an end.
| brycelarkin wrote:
| Cash comp or was he also compensated in tokens?
| arp242 wrote:
| Knowing myself I probably asked if he got paid in real
| money or monopoly money, but I don't recall the answer.
| It's a friend of a friend I've spoken to a few times over
| the last ten years, and the last time was a little over a
| year ago (when we talked about his job, among other
| things).
| Asparagirl wrote:
| Important point -- many of these employees were "paid" at
| least half of their salary in the company's own scrip, a
| shitcoin, and with extra social pressure to not convert it
| to real money.
| gumby wrote:
| Hope for their sake they were paid in actual money.
| victords wrote:
| They did pay their bonus in some Binance crypto coin, but
| at least their base salary was relatively high.
| justapassenger wrote:
| High salaries are part of the grift.
|
| Makes you look really successful (they pay a lot, so they
| must be super profitable!) and helps, at least partially,
| select employees who won't be asking questions, just do their
| job and collect paychecks.
| MrYellowP wrote:
| Yeah, in contrast to all the other companies where people
| ask questions all the time, don't simply do their jobs like
| they should and don't collect paychecks.
|
| Paying high salaries! Wow! So evil!
|
| Do you not know that your comment makes you sound like a
| wacko who invents nonsense just for the silly attempt of
| shitting at them? No? Well, now you know.
| justapassenger wrote:
| "It is difficult to get a man to understand something,
| when his salary depends on his not understanding it." is
| not a quote I've invented. Now apply that to getting way
| above the market salary.
|
| Yes, most of the people don't question how ethical their
| jobs are. But you make them even less likely to do that
| if you throw money at them.
| natpalmer1776 wrote:
| I'm sure there are other ways you could have phrased this
| to not come off as a personal attack on someone's
| character.
| FormerBandmate wrote:
| Do you not ask questions at your job? That sounds
| terrible
| baby wrote:
| Your comment makes no sense to me
| ThalesX wrote:
| If I sell you a book on how to be succesful, and am not
| succesful, I have to fake success to get you to buy. So
| maybe I'll rent a sports car, overspend on my rent, go to
| holidays I can't afford, etc. because enough people might
| be fooled to allow me to actually afford these things.
| justapassenger wrote:
| Tons of "financial influencers" have constant videos of
| them with lambos and other expensive toys. It's basically
| the same thing - image is everything in speculative parts
| of the financial market.
| [deleted]
| TrainedMonkey wrote:
| High salaries makes people want to work there which
| creates competition which in turn drives prestige.
|
| Not asking questions is a little facetious, however it is
| plausible that things like questionable business
| practices are easier to overlook when working / applying
| for a job because $$$. In other words, it's very hard to
| explain a concept to someone if his livelihood depends on
| him not understanding it.
| ForOldHack wrote:
| How did they have 1000 people in the first place?
| peschu wrote:
| The article saysthat they had 8000 before layoffs started...
| What are all these people doing at an exchange? Maybe they work
| with orders on paper in the background? :D
| retube wrote:
| They operate in 100 countries, have 30m users, support
| trading in 360 coins PLUS a load of derivatives on top and
| process $15bn of trades per day. And they are not just "an
| exchange". They are also custody, clearing and settlements.
| Frankly I am amazed they are only 8,000.
| john_max_1 wrote:
| Companies don't hire people.
|
| Managers do.
|
| If I am a Director of Engineering with 5 reports and you are a
| Director of Engineering with 10 reports then you are going for
| the VP of Eng role on next promotion.
|
| Like it or hate it that's why every company bloats up over
| time.
|
| Company pays salaries.
|
| And you enlarge your status.
| theusus wrote:
| I remember getting an interview opportunity a couple of months
| ago. And the hiring manager said they are going fine. _Didn 't
| age well_
| robocat wrote:
| Off topic, but Binance UI and onboarding is a complete tipster
| fire.
|
| A binance user asked me to pay USD40 using binance: I went
| through the process of signing up - it was incredibly difficult
| with significant roadblocks at every step - horrific UI choices.
|
| A company that fails to onboard a paying user is not going to do
| well.
|
| The only reason I made it through the onboarding was that I was
| very stubborn and I have sufficient knowledge to eventually work
| past the worst UI blocks. It was an extremely frustrating and
| confusing process.
|
| Even once I had passed the KYC compliance and got money deposited
| (more nightmare), the UI is still a shitfest of unclear
| usability. So many obvious failures at every step.
|
| Also they had an incentive system to refer someone, but it
| appears to be completely broken so even their signup incentives
| are a failure.
|
| I have _never_ had such a poor experience trying to give a
| company some money.
| mythrwy wrote:
| Their trading platform used to be awesome though although I
| haven't been on it since they banned US users 5 or 6 years ago.
| It was very well done in my opinion.
| WestCoastJustin wrote:
| > Binance had a global staff of 8,000
|
| A 12.5% reduction. Also, they are way larger than I thought with
| 8k employees. I don't know what's involved with running an
| exchange but they must be into lots of things with that many
| folks.
| bdcravens wrote:
| They have around 100M registered users, so approximately 1
| employee for every 100k users seems reasonable.
| WestCoastJustin wrote:
| Yes, totally. They probably have tons of support, sales, etc.
| I'd imagine they have tons of contractors too with that many
| users. Makes sense now.
| loeg wrote:
| That figure seems implausibly high. 1 in 80 humans on Earth
| are not only participating in crypto but specifically have an
| account on Binance? It certainly cannot be the number of
| active users.
| schmichael wrote:
| It has been reported that CZ had 300 accounts himself, so
| like most things in crypto the 100M number is to be taken
| with a grain of salt.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| If its indeed true, the gap between onchain and offchain
| users is even more immense.
|
| On chain, there are not more than 100k users across chains
| daily. Real users across all EVM chains is probably around
| 20k/day. Major airdrops like Optimism and Arbitrum went out
| to like 600k wallets (and most have multiple wallets).
| OpenSea has like a few thousand daily active users.
|
| Which makes you wonder - all these billions in funding for
| serving just...100k real users? Because if its not onchain,
| it might as well be a database.
| [deleted]
| tempsy wrote:
| you need a lot of operations people like customer service for
| an exchange. not really surprising.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| I don't know if I'm just naive, but I'm always confused when I
| see such a high headcount for companies with such simple tech,
| the staff of Twitter (even after mass layoffs) confuses me
| also.
|
| I feel like these companies are solving a relatively simple
| problem, and a single skilled engineer working full time could
| probably make and maintain a decent scalable solution.
| Guvante wrote:
| I mean feel free to make the next Twitter with a single
| Engineer if you think it is possible.
| Tao3300 wrote:
| Twitter is a weird example. The next Twitter has to be at
| least as good as Twitter without the growing pains. The
| initial product didn't scale well and probably was written
| quickly by very few people.
| [deleted]
| julianeon wrote:
| An exchange is not simple tech. It isn't a simple problem.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Isn't it "an exchange _at scale_ is not simple tech ". I'd
| imagine I could build an exchange to handle 100 users
| pretty quickly.
| [deleted]
| jacquesm wrote:
| Simple tech at scale rarely stays simple.
| sonicshadow wrote:
| True sign of the arrogant software engineer, believing they
| can single-handedly recreate an entire company just because
| they went to school in one subject for 4 years.
| rognjen wrote:
| Such vitriol! It's safer to assume they're inexperienced
| than arrogant.
| sonicshadow wrote:
| Pretty much the definition of arrogance, being
| inexperienced and still thinking they can do the work of
| a hundred people
| 8n4vidtmkvmk wrote:
| I work at one such company and I still think most of us
| aren't needed. I swear it's 90% red tape and BS holding
| everyone back. I know I can build things 30x faster outside
| of work, but I will also confess that it might not meet at
| the accessibility guidelines and i18n and be user tested
| and so forth.
| [deleted]
| RugnirViking wrote:
| every profession does this. Have you ever spoken to
| marketers about how important marketing is? or accountants?
| most people have a massively outsized idea of their own
| role to the point they wonder what other people even do.
|
| The only difference with engineers is they can believe at
| least in theory they could create the backbone of some
| services, so they could have a shoddy mvp made in a few
| days which they assume just needs a "little" work to top it
| off, whereas others can't start without tech help, but
| massively underestimate how much tech work is required for
| their ideas.
|
| If you dont believe me, hang around a startup space and see
| how people talk about trying to find technical cofounders
| ecshafer wrote:
| NYSE has around 2000 employees. So I think this is more than
| they need.
| 1-more wrote:
| OTOH NYSE operates in NY and US jurisdictions right? Binance
| tries to operate everywhere.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| > Binance tries to operate everywhere.
|
| Under which legal jurisdiction does Binance operate? It's
| not "all of them". I'm not sure that it's "any of them".
| 1-more wrote:
| Fair cop, haha. It has designs on operating aboveboard I
| think everywhere on earth right?
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| And I have designs on flying to the moon by flapping my
| arms.
| [deleted]
| WinstonSmith84 wrote:
| There are dozens of protocols they need to integrate with and
| keep up to date. Plus, those protocols change constantly. And
| there are also new ones, and those which disappear... And then,
| there is their whole infrastructure.
|
| The support must be massive too. And the legal aspect must also
| keep people busy from having to enforce various regulations to
| having to answer to various governments...
|
| So let's take a comparison: - facebook: 50k employee. What has
| changed on Facebook for the last few years? So yes, there is
| probably some support, the content enforcement of course must
| keep a lot of people busy, but then?..
|
| - snapchat: 5k employee. Well, for a social media platform
| which is not changing at all and actually losing in revenue,
| that's a big number
| mvdtnz wrote:
| You're assuming (in both the Binance and Facebook cases) that
| the majority of headcount comes from product development
| teams. Not true. The majority of that 8k/50k figure comes
| from areas like sales, compliance, finance, HR and
| management.
| atraac wrote:
| > facebook: 50k employee. What has changed on Facebook for
| the last few years?
|
| What do you mean? Facebook changes literally every day. Every
| single day a piece of UI randomly stops working.
| javajosh wrote:
| In some corporate cultures, headcount is its own reward.
| alfalfasprout wrote:
| To be fair, exchanges are pretty complicated. That said, it
| seems like a pretty high number.
| throwaway5959 wrote:
| Contractors on the Death Star.
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