Coinbase is rescinding already-accepted job offers • Hacker News Board

Re: Coinbase is rescinding already-accepted job offers

#161

Post by scottLobster » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 5:23 PM UTC

kodah wrote: post #139

toddmorey wrote: post #17

"While we did not make this decision lightly..." Yes but you aren't doing it humanely, either. I've been through the dot com crash and several hard economic downturns. It really puts your company's humanity on full display. It's the real test. Preserving cash flow is important. But you also have to do things carefully, openly, and with genuine care for the people who've believed in your vision. People will respect th…

The worst part is that Coinbase's interviews are difficult. If I'd spent months studying, rejecting other (good faith) offers, and then had this happen I'd not only be in a bad spot (without a job entering a recession) but I'd be furious at the inequality of input and output. I've been interviewing for the past month and I made a rule that I won't be doing any algorithm interviews. I didn't have time to study; some f…

A decade and a half of easy money leads to a lot of bullshit. I imagine many of those firms are your typical SV startup or wannabe SV startup that only exists due to easy money and doesn't yet have to make actual profit to survive. So they can tell themselves leetcode performance matters and get high on their own supply.

In my experience the higher quality non-FAANG firms who aren't wildly popular places to work and also need to turn a profit to survive tend to be more appreciative of qualified applicants and waste less time getting them started

Re: Coinbase is rescinding already-accepted job offers

#162

Post by whimsicalism » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 5:23 PM UTC

carlivar wrote: post #119

erehweb wrote: post #89

LinkedIn should set up a code of practice that bans this. Rescind offers? Then you can't advertise on LinkedIn for the next 5 years, and we won't host your job posts either. That would change the calculations at these companies and make the jobs marketplace better, at little cost to LinkedIn.

LinkedIn (a subsidiary of Microsoft Corporation) has the worst "activity feed" algorithm I have ever seen. It is a dopamine-poking, engagement-optimizing mess. So I have very little confidence they would do anything for ethical reasons over money.

what makes it worse than others with algo feeds?

Re: Coinbase is rescinding already-accepted job offers

#163

Post by FearTheTrees » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 5:23 PM UTC

chromejs10 wrote: post #91

Companies that are rescinding offers are just terribly managed companies. If you're in that bad of shape, then you should have done a hiring freeze months ago and there shouldn't have been any offers left to rescind (sure, there are odd ones where maybe they accepted 3 months early).

In addition to bad management, the contrast of the CEO buying a $133 million compound in Bel Air while throwing employees out on the street is just too stark.

https://therealdeal.com/la/2022/01/03/pawson-designed-bel-ai...

Re: Coinbase is rescinding already-accepted job offers

#164

Post by jstummbillig » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 5:25 PM UTC

toddmorey wrote: post #17

"While we did not make this decision lightly..." Yes but you aren't doing it humanely, either. I've been through the dot com crash and several hard economic downturns. It really puts your company's humanity on full display. It's the real test. Preserving cash flow is important. But you also have to do things carefully, openly, and with genuine care for the people who've believed in your vision. People will respect th…

Ominous, grandiose, hard to object to, impossible to act upon.

Re: Coinbase is rescinding already-accepted job offers

#165

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 5:25 PM UTC

mlyle wrote: post #151

paraph1n wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think distributed ledgers are here to stay What exactly makes you think that? As far as I can tell, it's still unclear if distributed ledgers are really effective tools for much of anything. What real problems have they solved?

Non-repudiation is an important problem. Some things we can rely upon trusted third parties, but all kinds of things we rely on imperfect systems with notaries and trusted third parties can be more effectively solved with ledgers. A whole lot of the interesting applications are non-monetary-- proving that a record was produced and made available before a certain time and has not been tampered with since. As a world e…

[deleted]

Re: Coinbase is rescinding already-accepted job offers

#166

Post by swingbrother » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 5:26 PM UTC

smilebot wrote: post #114

Probably an unpopular opinion here but I think they handled it in a classy way. Severance and assistance with your job search? That’s very nice of them. Other companies like Meta rescinded too, I’m not sure if they offered severance. Maybe just a generic email?

Meta did not really rescind in general. It was only a couple of very specific cases, such as not winning the H1B lottery they did rescind the offer.

Re: Coinbase is rescinding already-accepted job offers

#167

Post by elzbardico » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 5:27 PM UTC

In a civilized country with decent labor laws, this would be unthinkable

Re: Coinbase is rescinding already-accepted job offers

#168

Post by IncRnd » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 5:29 PM UTC

lordnacho wrote: post #97

baby wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you do it humanly? If it were me I’d rather get an email

When I was an underboss in a firm that was going down, I just told people. Informally, in person. I wasn't supposed to, but they were putting two and two together themselves, and it would have been wrong to leave them with an inaccurate idea of how the firm was doing. Don't hire me if you need me to lie to your staff.

> When I was an underboss in a firm that was going down, I just told people.

Other than in the mafia, what is an underboss? [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underboss

Re: Coinbase is rescinding already-accepted job offers

#169

Post by fma » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 5:29 PM UTC

smilebot wrote: post #114

Probably an unpopular opinion here but I think they handled it in a classy way. Severance and assistance with your job search? That’s very nice of them. Other companies like Meta rescinded too, I’m not sure if they offered severance. Maybe just a generic email?

I didn't hear about Meta rescinding so I googled a bit. A few sources came up and it looks like it was a pretty specific scenario(s) about contractors, visa etc...but regular straight up offers are still good.

This summarizes a few other searches I found: https://www.teamblind.com/post/Is-meta-really-rescinding-off...

I could be wrong but that's what I found.

Re: Coinbase is rescinding already-accepted job offers

#170

Post by fullshark » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 5:29 PM UTC

cato_the_elder wrote: post #45

Aren't a lot of job offers accepted by email these days? So what's the problem with rescinding them by email? This is not like firing someone who has a established relationship with a company and might see his coworkers as friends etc. over email.

You can't get unfiltered answers to any follow up questions, taking that away from the applicant isn't great but yeah a lot of this is basically confusing proper behavior within business transactions with standard expectations of decency/behavior between friends or colleagues.

These companies, and your manager, and that recruiter is not your friend. Stories like these just pull back the veil and show that the mutually accepted delusion between employee/employer disappears when the bad times come.