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Coinbase is rescinding already-accepted job offers

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Re: Coinbase is rescinding already-accepted job offers

#321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Email is _a bit_ similar, but the analogy doesn't work too well. While email might be a decentralized protocol, participation in the protocol requires quite a bit of technical effort. Whereas in crypto (e.g., Bitcoin) you can participate by just downloading a simple client and sending transactions via a nice little UI. In your example, Google actually provides a pretty huge value add by abstracting the complexities o…

It's even weirder than that, it's like if Google received your messages for you and bundled them up with everyone else's, then allowed you to read your share of the bundle but never actually delivered them to you as far as the protocol is concerned. The email protocol isn't complicated though. Back before spam was a thing, lots of people could just open a port and manually talk SMTP (you could send messages as Santa,…

With the accessibility of ML these days, I'm less convinced that spam protection is that hard, if you have a little bit of patience. The spam I get is repetitive and bad, and I get enough of it that I think I could get a workable model simply by using Gmail's spam tagging to train it.

Re: Coinbase is rescinding already-accepted job offers

#322
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are so many proper applications of blockchain that could improve humanity and provide value to customers and instead these shitheads create NFTs. I wholeheartedly agree. I can’t wait until “web3” moves past the whole fintech thing and people start realizing the true value of Web3 technologies: the fact that you no longer need a third party to mediate interactions between individual users on the internet.

web3 is nothing but intermediaries. Everyone from the developers to the miners to the exchanges are intermediaries looking to get their cut

You’re talking about crypto. I’m talking about p2p.

There’s some overlap, but it’s very much the latter that I find interesting and worthwhile.

Re: Coinbase is rescinding already-accepted job offers

#323
post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A developer in SF is not in the upper quintile.. they can't even afford a starter house. Big cities add huge costs that start making sense with home ownership but will leave a renter worse off. Good advice on the other points.

The median household income in SF is $92K. https://sf.curbed.com/2019/2/25/18239828/report-middle-class... The average software developer in SF makes more then twice that. https://www.builtinsf.com/salaries/dev-engineer/software-eng...

That just doesn't make any sense. You can't even rent an apartment for less than $3,000 in SF, let along think about buying the average $2M house. What is the discrepancy? Maybe these folks all ended up buying their houses 30 years ago?

Re: Coinbase is rescinding already-accepted job offers

#324
post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sentiment seems common on Hacker News but I'm not sure its wise. Companies that have high standards are far more interesting places to work at and with more interesting colleagues. They all require whiteboards and leet code. It's definitely true that not all companies that use these algorithm interviews are worth working for. But, at least in my experience, companies that don't require them at all are pretty awf…

I have advised, consulted for, or worked full time at 20+ companies, interviewed at too many to think about counting, and conducted technical interviews at 10+. Without exception the companies that weighted academic algorithm skills over practical architecture skill and implementation experience had some of the most confident and brazen mistakes in security or scalability and some of the poorest work-life balance.

This is easy to say, but it is harder to convince others without showing us your data. Even a small table with anonymized company names and a few columns assessing their security foibles and work life balance would go a long way.

I understand most people will say "this is too much work". The problem is that it is all too easy for someone to say "in my experience, X is correlated with Y" ... but that isn't very believable if the observer didn't even write things down.

I don't like asking for everything to be quantified, but it does seem in this case you probably have the data in your head and just need a nudge to write it down.

Re: Coinbase is rescinding already-accepted job offers

#325
post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's not difficult to infer what OP metaphorically meant from the tree diagram in your linked article.

Re: Coinbase is rescinding already-accepted job offers

#326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Management is often not privy to these details. I doubt more than two dozen people knew about the news internally before they publicly disclosed it.

Smells like some expensive lawsuits are a comin'

There's no grounds for a lawsuit for the at-will employment contracts you typically see with West Coast tech companies.

Re: Coinbase is rescinding already-accepted job offers

#327
post #324
post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have advised, consulted for, or worked full time at 20+ companies, interviewed at too many to think about counting, and conducted technical interviews at 10+. Without exception the companies that weighted academic algorithm skills over practical architecture skill and implementation experience had some of the most confident and brazen mistakes in security or scalability and some of the poorest work-life balance.

This is easy to say, but it is harder to convince others without showing us your data. Even a small table with anonymized company names and a few columns assessing their security foibles and work life balance would go a long way. I understand most people will say "this is too much work". The problem is that it is all too easy for someone to say "in my experience, X is correlated with Y" ... but that isn't very believ…

And yet the person he was replying to had just as little data, full of "in my experience, X, Y".

But it was his comment you chose to "suggest he show the work".

Re: Coinbase is rescinding already-accepted job offers

#328
post #7

Coinbase tried to recruit me last summer. I politely told the recruiter that I felt it was all bubble speculation mania. Also the amount of equity sold by the CFO at the public listing indicated little confidence in the long term prospects. I guess I was right? Not trying to brag or anything. Just a tip to everyone job hunting I guess. Watch what executives do (not what they say). Well, and human history of speculati…

I honestly don't get the point of Coinbase. Isn't it a centralized system to manage what is supposed to be decentralized and that kinda defeats the purpose? I may be dumb.

It's a brilliant strategy in the DeFi/CenFi space.

Re: Coinbase is rescinding already-accepted job offers

#329
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are so many proper applications of blockchain that could improve humanity and provide value to customers and instead these shitheads create NFTs. I wholeheartedly agree. I can’t wait until “web3” moves past the whole fintech thing and people start realizing the true value of Web3 technologies: the fact that you no longer need a third party to mediate interactions between individual users on the internet.

> the fact that you no longer need a third party to mediate interactions between individual users on the internet. Could you explain this more? Like how you no longer need your ISP, or the blockchain systems run by third parties? It seems to me like just playing semantic games if the third party is supposedly no longer a third party if it's distributed. Maybe I missed something concrete about "web3"'s promises?

You’re thinking of blockchains, but I’m thinking more broadly of p2p systems. But even blockchains have the potential to satisfy the ideal that I have in mind. For example, I’ve often thought web2 SSO (sign in with Google/Facebook/etc) to be ripe for disruption by some open standard for wallet based authentication. I think I’ve even seen a few projects that come close to this.

At any rate, this is the part I find interesting. The money games are a huge distraction IMHO.

I have quite a few disorganized thoughts on the subject… maybe I should write an essay…

Re: Coinbase is rescinding already-accepted job offers

#330

The cruelest part of this: https://twitter.com/TeamBlind/status/1532769735393169410 2 weeks ago they sent out emails saying "we will not be rescinding the offers of any employees who have already signed or have received an offer from us". They then proceeded to rescind offers from people who received this assurance. 2 weeks is long enough that people signed leases, resigned from jobs, moved cities. And yet it's also…

Isn't this a promissory estoppel?

Would someone with legal experience care to weigh in?
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