Binance lays off over 1k Employees

https://www.wsj.com/articles/binance-lays-off-over-1-000-employees-d59ff6ad

by jason_zig • 3 years ago

218 213 3 years ago

wsj.com

toomuchtodo• 3 years ago

https://archive.is/j50GA

WestCoastJustin2• 3 years ago

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.

javajosh• 3 years ago

In some corporate cultures, headcount is its own reward.

alfalfasprout• 3 years ago

To be fair, exchanges are pretty complicated. That said, it seems like a pretty high number.

bdcravens• 3 years ago

They have around 100M registered users, so approximately 1 employee for every 100k users seems reasonable.

WestCoastJustin2• 3 years ago

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.

loeg2• 3 years ago

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.

tempsy• 3 years ago

you need a lot of operations people like customer service for an exchange. not really surprising.

UniverseHacker• 3 years ago

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.

sonicshadow2• 3 years ago

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.

Guvante2• 3 years ago

I mean feel free to make the next Twitter with a single Engineer if you think it is possible.

julianeon• 3 years ago

An exchange is not simple tech. It isn't a simple problem.

jacquesm• 3 years ago

Simple tech at scale rarely stays simple.

WinstonSmith843• 3 years ago

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

atraac• 3 years ago

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.

mvdtnz• 3 years ago

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.

ecshafer• 3 years ago

NYSE has around 2000 employees. So I think this is more than they need.

1-more5• 3 years ago

OTOH NYSE operates in NY and US jurisdictions right? Binance tries to operate everywhere.

busterarm• 3 years ago

Not even a whole month since the last layoff...

moneywoes• 3 years ago

Interesting I recall them mentioning how they were resistant to the market turmoil that caused Coinbase to conduct their layoffs

ansible• 3 years ago

Well, they're also being sued by the SEC...

zeitgeistcowboy• 3 years ago

The article says a spokesperson said they "need to focus on talent density." Talent density is a new buzz word to me!

slt2021• 3 years ago

are they bashing people they laid off, assuming that 1k people were less talented than the rest?

account-5• 3 years ago

Sound like that's exactly what they're doing.

whimsicalism• 3 years ago

yes

WinstonSmith843• 3 years ago

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.

tikhonj• 3 years ago

Implying you'd have to be pretty dense to work at Binance.

ehnto• 3 years ago

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.

FreshStart• 3 years ago

Stalionstatues.. Each and every ounce.

ineedasername• 3 years ago

The next big crypto scandal headline:

”Authorities Investigating <DeFi Corp> as Evidence that Depleted Uranium Propped Up Dense Talent, Actually Empty Inside”

stubybubs• 3 years ago

Osmium devs are the new 10x devs.

cozzyd• 3 years ago

sounds like they need smaller offices.

CoastalCoder• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

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.

pzo• 3 years ago

Seems like easy to optimize for it - just keep only the best 1 talent and fire everyone else!

bink• 3 years ago

Congrats to the most talented. You're now doing the work of 5 people.

ot• 3 years ago

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.

koolba• 3 years ago

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.

arp2423• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

Probably mitigates the risk of whistleblowers, if you can keep it up.

CydeWeys2• 3 years ago

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.

justapassenger• 3 years ago

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.

brycelarkin• 3 years ago

Cash comp or was he also compensated in tokens?

gumby• 3 years ago

Hope for their sake they were paid in actual money.

rvz2• 3 years ago

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.

Canada• 3 years ago

Did they really pay him a high salary, or did he take his salary in BNB which then massively increased in price?

jdjdjdhhd• 3 years ago

Aged not too bad I would say

musicale• 3 years ago

saying no to ... stadium naming rights

That has actually aged well.

benreesman• 3 years ago

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.)

davidgerard2• 3 years ago

number is one thing, but volume is through the floor

MuffinFlavored2• 3 years ago

How much is it down % wise compared to what period previously?

automatic6131• 3 years ago

Hi David! I love your blog and your twitter

jasmer2• 3 years ago

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.

ceejayoz4• 3 years ago

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.

MuffinFlavored2• 3 years ago

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?

tippytippytango2• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

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...

spaceman_20202• 3 years ago

The SEC just lost its case against Ripple, so I don’t know what’s happening on the regulatory front.

raesene9• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

The ruling published yesterday was just summary judgements which can be appealed. The actual trial hasn't even happened yet.

acaloiar2• 3 years ago

Everything you need to know about crypto today can be found at https://web3isgoinggreat.com/

vorticalbox• 3 years ago

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.

tim333• 3 years ago

That site focuses on the bad stuff but crypto goes on. Maybe check https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoin-obituaries/ for balance.

trotro2• 3 years ago

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.

bardak• 3 years ago

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.

RestlessMind10• 3 years ago

The biggest practical use for crypto (specifically Bitcoin, as a store of value) is entirely dependent on the value of crypto.

spamizbad• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

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.

simple-thoughts2• 3 years ago

There’s been a lot of advancements during this bear market (which is the longest bear market in crypto history). Most of the interesting advances have been along the decentralized application front, although there’s also been a lot of more fundamental advances as well. For instance Bitcoin now has ordinals that allow the inscription of altcoins and nfts on the chain. The more interesting applications are not on Bitcoin since the block time is too slow and expense is too high for the general public.

Applications that have seen major technical advancements since 2020 include identity, gaming, money markets, trade routing, anti fraud, derivatives, concentrated liquidity, token launchpads, smart nfts, social media, and cross chain communication.

My opinion is that of these blockchain gaming will likely be the most successful in the next bull cycle. Axie and cryptokitties from the previous cycle were extremely limited and unfun, with axie also having issues with design centralization that led to the huge North Korean hack. These issues will probably still exist but there are now technical solutions.

RyanAdamas6• 3 years ago

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.

arbol• 3 years ago

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.

Tao33002• 3 years ago

the first challenger to fiat currencies ever

Except they fail at that. Any further innovation will be more of the same: grift.

dragonwriter3• 3 years ago

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”.

itsoktocry• 3 years ago

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?

mehlmao• 3 years ago

The only notable innovation to come from cryptocurrencies is the rise of ransomware, a drain on the global economy that funds terrorists and dictatorships.

RyanAdamas6• 3 years ago

Outlawing Cryptographic exchanges and transfers are not outlawing distributed ledger technology nor networks with tokens not denominated or traded in US dollars.

vegasbrianc• 3 years ago

The federal courts disagree with your opinion today https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-07-13/what-d...

RyanAdamas6• 3 years ago

No, they didn't. They disagreed with a federal agency's attempt to regulate. They didn't overturn a law banning cryptocurrencies.

menus• 3 years ago

Seems like a knee-jerk reaction. Why is the opinion always to ban or abolish a broken system instead of improving it?

imchillyb• 3 years ago

That’s the opposite direction the federal government has moved.

You’re currently spewing nonsense.

1-more5• 3 years ago

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?

RyanAdamas6• 3 years ago

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.

chrisco2552• 3 years ago

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.

RyanAdamas6• 3 years ago

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_143• 3 years ago

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.

Zpalmtree• 3 years ago

stop running code I don't like :(((

RyanAdamas6• 3 years ago

Stop exchanging code for dollars and pretending it provides any social or economic utility.

1-more5• 3 years ago

This isn't outlandish. Many things are illegal to run on your computer.

glerk• 3 years ago

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.

simple-thoughts2• 3 years ago

Most cryptocurrencies are designed to survive exactly this situation. An attenpted USA ban on crypto has been expected from the very beginning, since blockchains transfer power from the elites like you to everyone else.

ForOldHack• 3 years ago

How did they have 1000 people in the first place?

peschu2• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

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.

ElevenLathe• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

Binance is a crypto exchange. Where's the scam?

theusus• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

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.

throwaway59592• 3 years ago

Contractors on the Death Star.

resolutebat• 3 years ago

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.)

michelb• 3 years ago

I deleted my Binance account last month but still get service email (because I'm a 'client') without the ability to unsubscribe or turn it off (I have no account). All contact is ignored. Great company.

Binance lays off over 1k Employees

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