Robinhood, stands as a no-fee brokerage with its headquarters based in Northern California. While the brokerage has had a fair bit of controversy, it’s now opening up new offices both in Seattle and New York. This comes thanks to millions of retail investors surging to its platform after a massive spike in retail investing.
Pushing Into The World’s Finance Centers
The startup made it clear that it expects hundreds of additional hires eventually, with the intent being to serve customers from one of the largest financial hubs the world has to offer. At the same time. Robinhood’s security, infrastructure, and privacy will be developed through its Seattle offices, as well.
According to Robinhood, these two new locations were a natural fit for it, citing a diverse, highly skilled talent pool in both states. Both its Seattle and New York offices are already recruiting new workers, with the brokerage’s career page showing the various available jobs.
Brokerages Gaining From COVID
In many sectors, the COVID-19 has either slowed or outright halted various hiring campaigns since they were losing substantial amounts of money. The same can’t be said for brokerages, however, as they managed to gain big thanks to the rampant volatility within the trading space.
Robinhood’s mandatory public statement highlighted that it’s trying to bring in new employees in order to reduce response times in general. Another key goal is to fill the gaps between various key functions, such as product operations, engineering, research, design, compliance, and marketing.
Surabhi Gupta stands as the Vice President of Engineering at Robinhood, and gave the mandatory public statement, as well. He highlighted that the new offices would allow Robinhood to scale up to meet the ambitious goals it’s laid down for itself. Another key selling point in joining the Seattle and New York communities is to bring more offerings to their respective customers. He expressed delight in these new office developments, eager to welcome in the diverse talent roster these two states can provide.
Robinhood Making Strange Moves
While COVID-19 restrictions are easing, Robinhood has opted to adopt a new hybrid work model through to August of 2021. This model will have its employees work from both the offices and from home, splitting the labor between them. Robinhood has been making use of remote setup with its employees scattered across the map since 2020, moving away from the office-based workforce.
Robinhood had taken a heavy hit in sentiments thanks to its actions during the great Gamestop short squeeze. The exchange, in antithesis to its name, opted to stop trading against the Gamestop stock and others, but only in terms of buying shares. Users could sell their stocks, driving the price down, but the exchange had manipulated its market by way of forbidding the price from going higher.