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Coinbase is rescinding already-accepted job offers

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Re: Coinbase is rescinding already-accepted job offers

#431

Post by gitfan86 »

chowchowchow wrote: post #384
darkteflon wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s just “value”. People use the term “underlying value” as a proxy for “real value”, in opposition to “not real value”. You can verify that by looking at any example of its use in this thread. I’m saying it’s a rhetorical crutch that doesn’t lead to meaningful discussion or insight. If people acknowledged in these threads that “value” is way more complex and nebulous than these facile comparisons make it out to…

I think it’s clear people are distinguishing value based purely on speculation in a scarce asset and value based on demand (and still maybe speculation) for some underlying good which has utility. Be that a house, a car, or stock of a SaaS business, a retail operation, whatever.

This is the point that crypto people are trying to avoid. "Don't talk about underlying value. It is very complex".

It reminds me of the mortgage backed securities fraud. "You cannot criticize these complex financial derivatives, they were created by MIT PhDs."

Re: Coinbase is rescinding already-accepted job offers

#432

Post by chowchowchow »

gitfan86 wrote: post #431
chowchowchow wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s clear people are distinguishing value based purely on speculation in a scarce asset and value based on demand (and still maybe speculation) for some underlying good which has utility. Be that a house, a car, or stock of a SaaS business, a retail operation, whatever.

This is the point that crypto people are trying to avoid. "Don't talk about underlying value. It is very complex". It reminds me of the mortgage backed securities fraud. "You cannot criticize these complex financial derivatives, they were created by MIT PhDs."

Yeah I see what darkteflon is saying but he is clearly wrong. And condescending about it to boot. There is a meaningful and discussion worthy difference between “value” (price, really), driven by speculation and hope versus price driven by demand for scarce goods which have utility.

Re: Coinbase is rescinding already-accepted job offers

#433

Post by mlyle »

hiq wrote: post #419
mlyle wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I used to sympathize and engage with the theoretical arguments; but at this point a more productive approach is: if the advantages are such and such, Distributed ledgers are being used for real business cases in banking. Realizing these full benefits will take a very slow process of societal adoption and legal/evidentiary recognition. I said "not going away". These use cases are going to slowly grow and become ubiq…

To quote Bruce Schneier: > Private blockchains are completely uninteresting. (By this, I mean systems that use the blockchain data structure but don’t have the above three elements.) In general, they have some external limitation on who can interact with the blockchain and its features. These are not anything new; they’re distributed append-only data structures with a list of individuals authorized to add to it. Cons…

> (By this, I mean systems that use the blockchain data structure but don’t have the above three elements.)

Liink appears to have all three elements Schneier describes-- an immutable ledger distributed over many participants that any of the participants can read; the ETH consensus algorithm; and the third is a US-dollar backed stablecoin.

> In general, they have some external limitation on who can interact with the blockchain and its features.

Yes, there's a limited number of participants with varying degrees of mutual trust. So this criticism is accurate, but I don't find the actual mechanism you get worthless.

In any case, note that what I said was not that blockchain was here to stay, but distributed ledgers. So even if one got rid of the specific consensus algorithm and the value token, you'd still have a distributed ledger.

Re: Coinbase is rescinding already-accepted job offers

#434

Post by hiq »

mlyle wrote: post #433
hiq wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To quote Bruce Schneier: > Private blockchains are completely uninteresting. (By this, I mean systems that use the blockchain data structure but don’t have the above three elements.) In general, they have some external limitation on who can interact with the blockchain and its features. These are not anything new; they’re distributed append-only data structures with a list of individuals authorized to add to it. Cons…

> (By this, I mean systems that use the blockchain data structure but don’t have the above three elements.) Liink appears to have all three elements Schneier describes-- an immutable ledger distributed over many participants that any of the participants can read; the ETH consensus algorithm; and the third is a US-dollar backed stablecoin. > In general, they have some external limitation on who can interact with the b…

As the other commenters have pointed out already, it seems to be a permissioned blockchain if anything, exactly what Schneier describes as already having existed for decades, nothing new, just marketing.

In particular it's not about having many trusted participants, it's about being public without any trust (from the blog post: "This ledger is public, meaning that anyone can read it").

Re: Coinbase is rescinding already-accepted job offers

#435

Post by bingohbangoh »

beej71 wrote: post #372
bingohbangoh wrote: post #221

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…

> Companies that have high standards are far more interesting places to work at and with more interesting colleagues. I have quite high standards when I hire, which is why I don't use leetcode to assess. :) I can get much better data more quickly without it. And, indeed, the best places I've ever worked with the smartest people I've ever known have not used these types of problems in the interview. I've personally so…

> I have quite high standards when I hire, which is why I don't use leetcode to assess. :)

How would you go about checking if somebody is qualified in an interview?

Using his past experience may help but too often it can be embellished or flat out lied about. That's why these algorithm interviews became popular in the first place, to my knowledge.

Re: Coinbase is rescinding already-accepted job offers

#436

Post by bingohbangoh »

Apocryphon wrote: post #280
bingohbangoh wrote: post #221

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…

> 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. The industry is at a point where there are plenty of clueless cookie cutter companies cargo culting Leetcode just because those interesting companies engage in it. As far as interesting companies that don't require that, there's at least Stripe, famously, an…

Within that link under Stripe:

> Programming/debugging phone screen + on site with your own laptop/setup and full access to internet, systems design discussion and talk with hiring manager about team alignment.

That seems to me to be a technical interview. I'm not sure what makes this different from a Facebook or Google.

Re: Coinbase is rescinding already-accepted job offers

#437

Post by shanusmagnus »

gitfan86 wrote: post #425
shanusmagnus wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anytime someone talks about how xx "isn't backed by anything, like gold" I know they haven't actually put in a modicum of intellectual work on the topic. Granted, figuring out that money of every stripe is nothing more than a belief coordination mechanism is kind of a mindfuck. Even so, you'd think smart people would at least begin down the road. But nope.

Everyone is well aware that the USD is just a worthless piece of paper. No one is suggesting that owning gold is the path to riches. We are just pointing out that investing is crypto is no different than investing in Enron or Bernie Madoffs funds.

The point I'm making, and that parent is making, isn't about gold as a path to riches. It's about where value comes from. Gold is a convenient illustration.

Re: Coinbase is rescinding already-accepted job offers

#438

Post by mlyle »

hiq wrote: post #434
mlyle wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (By this, I mean systems that use the blockchain data structure but don’t have the above three elements.) Liink appears to have all three elements Schneier describes-- an immutable ledger distributed over many participants that any of the participants can read; the ETH consensus algorithm; and the third is a US-dollar backed stablecoin. > In general, they have some external limitation on who can interact with the b…

As the other commenters have pointed out already, it seems to be a permissioned blockchain if anything, exactly what Schneier describes as already having existed for decades, nothing new, just marketing. In particular it's not about having many trusted participants, it's about being public without any trust (from the blog post: "This ledger is public, meaning that anyone can read it").

Again, I never said "blockchain is here to stay"-- just distributed ledgers. And, yes, distributed ledgers have existed forever, but their use by market participants at arm's length is new, as are many new tools we can use to build useful distributed ledgers (including blockchains!).

Re: Coinbase is rescinding already-accepted job offers

#439

Post by HFguy »

oceanplexian wrote: post #229
mathattack wrote: post #184

Let’s ask “Why are they doing this?” I will start by saying most indications are that the management is very rational. Sometimes companies use downturns to get rid of people that they haven’t managed properly. It’s lazy, but cutting the bottom 10% in a layoff can be less short term work than performance reviews. They avoid the PR issues by saying “everyone is doing it.” This isn’t what Coinbase did. If companies are…

> So why are they doing this? My sense is they see what’s coming. I think this vastly overestimates how efficiently corporations are actually run. I've been in meetings with executives at several public companies. When the topic of adjusting HC or spending money comes up, usually those conversations happen in a ratio of 50% politics, 40% wild-ass opinion, and 10% data. And almost always, the "data" are completely che…

Ive been in these types of meetings at public companies. I think this is too pessimistic. The bigger issue is even with reasonable intentions and data, their ability to predict the future is limited.

I.e., general rule, don't assign to malice which can be explained by incompetency.

Re: Coinbase is rescinding already-accepted job offers

#440

Post by HFguy »

scarface74 wrote: post #343
Hydraulix989 wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yet somehow half the people seem to be surviving in SF making that and less.

The number doesn't jive for me either. You would have to go through how the median income number is formulated. It may not be how you think. I can't tell you the number of times I've seen this with broad statistics.
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