If you work for Opendoor, the online real estate platform, you might consider polishing up your resume. The chair of the company\u2019s board recently let it slip that he thinks the firm could stand to lose almost all of its employees.<\/p>\n
During a recent appearance<\/a> on CNBC\u2019s \u201cSquawk on the Street,\u201d Keith Rabois, a former member of the PayPal Mafia<\/a>, told a reporter that he felt that the majority of the people at his company were expendable. \u201cThere\u2019s 1,400 employees at Opendoor. I don\u2019t know what most of them do. We don\u2019t need more than 200 of them,\u201d Rabois remarked. He added that \u201cthe advent of AI and other technologies\u201d made the workforce reduction a \u201csimple problem\u201d to solve.<\/p>\n Rabois\u2019 apparent disinterest in maintaining a majority of Opendoor\u2019s workforce is somewhat humorous given how well the company\u2019s been doing lately. Indeed, the company\u2019s stock is up 500 percent this year. That said, the stock performance appears to largely be the result of a wave of retail investors becoming interested in the firm due to online advice spread by a hedge fund manager. As a result, the company has been dubbed a \u201cmeme stock,\u201d<\/a> which Rabois disputes.<\/p>\n It\u2019s unclear whether Rabois\u2019s ruthless comment was just an effort to inspire confidence in the profitability of the company. After all, if you fire almost everybody at a firm, there\u2019s a much bigger chance you\u2019ll turn a profit.<\/p>\n