Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Coinbase Announces 18% Layoffs

blog.coinbase.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 616 posts

Re: Coinbase Announces 18% Layoffs

#161

Post by bko »

greatpostman wrote: post #75
llamaimperative wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you make of Sam Bankman-Fried describing his business as a literal Ponzi scheme on Odd Lots podcast? The commentary isn’t necessary to see the insanity but here’s fastest way to get to the relevant content: https://youtu.be/C6nAxiym9oc Edit: To clarify, though not sure how much a mitigation this is, yes SBF is describing much of the underlying activity he takes commission on as a Ponzi scheme. Sure, he’s not…

I listened to that, he even predicted the Luna crash in that interview. When that guy talks, it’s very clear he understands markets. Very different approach to Bryan Armstrong, who’s more of a Bitcoin “believer”. I think the blatant description of a ponzi scheme was a rare window into an insiders thoughts.

What FTX does is introduce financial products that could potentially put downward pressure on a lot of these scam coins. To be fair, he also introduces products that allow people to play around w/ crazy amount of leverage, but it could theoretically be done without as much counterparty risk and interconnections that caused the 2008 financial crisis.

Re: Coinbase Announces 18% Layoffs

#162

Post by carnitine »

llamaimperative wrote: post #62
greatpostman wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. FTX people clearly know a lot more about market making and how exchanges work. Makes coinbase look like amateurs. Coinbase hired their CPO with a 650 million dollar pay package. They should have spent that money on 2 - 5 million a year hft programmers and traders

What do you make of Sam Bankman-Fried describing his business as a literal Ponzi scheme on Odd Lots podcast? The commentary isn’t necessary to see the insanity but here’s fastest way to get to the relevant content: https://youtu.be/C6nAxiym9oc Edit: To clarify, though not sure how much a mitigation this is, yes SBF is describing much of the underlying activity he takes commission on as a Ponzi scheme. Sure, he’s not…

He’s not describing his business at all, but yield farming, which is performed using decentralised applications.

Re: Coinbase Announces 18% Layoffs

#163

Post by kamyarg »

a_chris wrote: post #131
nemo44x wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty standard to not let terminated employees hang around. It feels cold but it’s just the way it has to be. Sone places will even do this when an employee submits a resignation on good terms. Just a way for the company to cover themselves.

This is absolutely untrue. In Europe we work several days/weeks after the layoff notice. You can fire people from the night to the morning only in US

I have seen people fired in the morning and their access cutoff by noon and them being asked to go on "gardening leave" in Europe.

This is rare but depends on your manager, if they don't want you around. You will still be paid for the remaining of your "employment" but will not be working.

Re: Coinbase Announces 18% Layoffs

#164

Post by ikt »

rvz wrote: post #138
llamaimperative wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you make of Sam Bankman-Fried describing his business as a literal Ponzi scheme on Odd Lots podcast? The commentary isn’t necessary to see the insanity but here’s fastest way to get to the relevant content: https://youtu.be/C6nAxiym9oc Edit: To clarify, though not sure how much a mitigation this is, yes SBF is describing much of the underlying activity he takes commission on as a Ponzi scheme. Sure, he’s not…

> What do you make of Sam Bankman-Fried describing his business as a literal Ponzi scheme Strawman. He described DeFi yield farming as a ponzi scheme. [0] Not his own business. Nice try though and thanks for playing. [0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-25/sam-bankm...

HN is about as informed on crypto as some random off the street I've found.

I actually wouldn't mind if mods here removed non-technical crypto discussions.

Re: Coinbase Announces 18% Layoffs

#165

Post by Melting_Harps »

atlasunshrugged wrote: post #71

> If you are affected, you will receive this notification in your personal email, because we made the decision to cut access to Coinbase systems for affected employees. I realize that removal of access will feel sudden and unexpected, and this is not the experience I wanted for you. Given the number of employees who have access to sensitive customer information, it was unfortunately the only practical choice, to ensu…

> Brutal. Not even the quintessential mass zoom call?

Bravo, Armstrong just put himself in good company of uncouth CEOs: I hope now no self-respecting person EVER applies to CONbase ever again and they die a slow irrelevant death.

Re: Coinbase Announces 18% Layoffs

#166

Post by FabHK »

golergka wrote: post #70
hftthrowaway22 wrote: post #26

It’s been pretty interesting watching YC backed Coinbase get absolutely crushed by FTX, which has a higher % of crypto trading volume despite having less than 10% of the headcount. Crypto is a zero sum game, and the old Paul Graham essays and other tired VC dogmas really only work in positive sum games. FTX was founded by traders which is valuable when the ultimate purpose of the crypto industry is to separate uninfo…

> Crypto is a zero sum game How come? The same network effects that work for social networks work here, as more people and businesses use crypto, it's value proposition raises quadratically.

Gains from trading are zero sum - whatever anyone takes out (when selling), someone must put in (by buying). More specifically, it is a negative sum game, since exchanges and miners want their cut.

So, the assertion that crypto as a whole is zero sum hinges on the assumption that for the vast majority of people, the utility of crypto comes from capital gains (buying and selling for a higher price), rather than, say, the utility of buying drugs or paying off ransomware.

Re: Coinbase Announces 18% Layoffs

#167

Post by eganist »

samwillis wrote: post #128
Barrera wrote: post #60

> If you are affected, you will receive this notification in your personal email, because we made the decision to cut access to Coinbase systems for affected employees. I realize that removal of access will feel sudden and unexpected, and this is not the experience I wanted for you. Given the number of employees who have access to sensitive customer information, it was unfortunately the only practical choice, to ensu…

To be honest this is the more concerning thing in that quoted statement: > "Given the number of employees who have access to sensitive customer information" Surly they should have very very few employs that have access to that type of information?

> Surly they should have very very few employs that have access to that type of information?

It depends on the nature of the information. If we're talking anything that directly affects liquidity, I'd be surprised if that number was large. But if we're talking regulated or contractually protected consumer information (e.g PCI), that number's probably a bit bigger.

Re: Coinbase Announces 18% Layoffs

#168

Post by go_elmo »

puranjay wrote: post #102
atlasunshrugged wrote: post #14

It is fascinating just how quickly sentiments can change (both in the broader market but in crypto it seems to be exacerbated). That said, it's obvious that companies like these dramatically overhired and overspent on talent and were growing far beyond what the market could bear except in an extremely bull run subsidized by government largesse. Now that investors are losing their shirts on crypto and retail people wh…

Case in point: OpenSea's monthly volume: https://dune.com/rchen8/opensea There's no hiding on the blockchain. Monthly volume has gone down from a peak of nearly $5B in January to $372M in June so far.

oooof.

Re: Coinbase Announces 18% Layoffs

#169

Post by nemo44x »

bambax wrote: post #52
nojito wrote: post #12

>If you are affected, you will receive this notification in your personal email, because we made the decision to cut access to Coinbase systems for affected employees. I realize that removal of access will feel sudden and unexpected, and this is not the experience I wanted for you. Given the number of employees who have access to sensitive customer information, it was unfortunately the only practical choice, to ensur…

Wow. The language is nice but the behavior is horrendous. Also illegal in many parts of the world: IDK if they have employees in Europe but if they do it will be a big mess. Suddenly cutting off an employee from a company, with no way to even say goodbye to their former colleagues, is despicable. It really shows who you are. Let's hope they will have a hard time hiring back anyone in the future. Edit: as pointed out…

It’s totally normal here and done to protect the company. It’s one of the reasons Americans are paid considerably more than Euros. Companies can take on more risk and pay more because they aren’t burdened with strict employee relationship laws.

What Coinbase is giving in severance is quite generous. They don’t have to do that but it’s really nice and I’d say it improves their reputation. These types of things (layoffs) happen and they’re taking care of their ex-employees.

Re: Coinbase Announces 18% Layoffs

#170

Post by pid-1 »

cj wrote: post #38
jstx1 wrote: post #3

If we follow the weekly updates: 1. First a hiring "slowdown". 2. Hiring freeze and rescinded offers. 3. 18% layoffs. What's the reason behind announcing it in stages? Don't they receive much more negative publicity this way? Or are they really making decisions from one week for the next?

Just 3 months ago many people thought the markets could potentially bounce back (e.g. if the ukraine conflict didn't escalate and if inflation came down on its own - neither of which happened). Not so long ago, CNBC was still talking about the probability of a recession a quoting probability percentages less than 50%. I think the reality is that 2-4 months ago, very few people thought things would get as bad as they…

Hedges started shorting the S&P 500 in 2021. Surely if you are a high level executive, your data shouldn't come from CNBC.
Post reply on HN