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Coinbase Announces 18% Layoffs

blog.coinbase.com

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Re: Coinbase Announces 18% Layoffs

#441

Post by hudon »

TekMol wrote: post #425

So they scaled from 1000 to 2000 employees in a year because ... There were new use cases enabled by crypto getting traction practically every week. We saw the opportunities but we needed to massively scale our team to be positioned to compete in a broad array of bets. ...yet they have not enabled their users to use the Lightning Network? I wonder why. The LN would enable all Coinbase users to do nearly instant and n…

They make their money from the large cryptocurrency trading market and focus on allowing more speculative tokens to be traded. They probably correctly assess that the market of people who want to use Bitcoin for daily transactions is comparatively insignificant.

Re: Coinbase Announces 18% Layoffs

#442

Post by Namari »

ddeck wrote: post #307
Namari wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

true, they call it gardening leave

That's what I've always known it as. It can be quite long, especially in financial services. My last position was three months.

3 months gardeling leave? That's a long time. Free money for you

Re: Coinbase Announces 18% Layoffs

#443

Post by colinmhayes »

graeme wrote: post #140
gruez wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that say much? They're the biggest buyer because USDT is the biggest stablecoin.

Your logic is backwards. They don’t buy more Tether than other stables. (Well they do but that wasn’t the point) The point is they are Tether’s largest customer. They buy more Tether than anyone else.

They are tethers largest customer because they're the largest exchange and tether is the largest stablecoin. Stablecoins in general were created because offshore exchanges had trouble dealing with traditional banks since the whole point of being offshore is not following US regulations.

Re: Coinbase Announces 18% Layoffs

#444

Post by marcus_holmes »

pge wrote: post #337
UncleMeat wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Friendly, smiley, fake. My father had to lay off a bunch of people in 2008. I am now a manager. He told me that if I am ever forced to do this to not ever do this crap to my team. Tell them that this is bullshit. Tell them that you are upset. Tell them that you haven't slept. Tell them that the are right to be mad, disappointed, and even to hate you for choosing their head to roll. Anything better than fake smiles…

I've participated in a number of layoffs, and while I agree with the advice to be honest, not fake smiley, with you'll-land-on-your-feet platitudes, I would strongly recommend not talking about your own feelings. It's not about YOU (the person doing the layoff who gets to keep his job), it's about THEM (the people losing their jobs who probably earn less than you and have less financial security). Telling them how ha…

This, so much.

I've had to fire people a few times. It's never fun, it's always been a hard decision that I took for the benefit of my team. It's never "bullshit". If it is bullshit then it would be MY job as manager to fix it and stop it being bullshit.

I've never had a negative reaction to the firing from the team members who remain. If anything, the reaction has always been "why did you wait so long?".

But luckily I've never had to do a team downsizing because of budget cuts. I imagine that would be a more difficult process and managing the emotions involved in that would be difficult. I see entirely why Coinbase chose not to take any of those risks and just cut everyone off first and then answer questions later.

Re: Coinbase Announces 18% Layoffs

#445

Post by aetherson »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #398
aetherson wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never laid people off, but I've fired them. It's hard to know what emotional tenor to put on it. On the one hand, of course you're right that upbeat positive optimistic is fake and maybe feels like it's more for you than them. On the other hand, being like, "this sucks and it's bad for you and I hated doing it" feels like kicking people when they're down, making them feel like it's even worse than it already is.…

It's a thin line to walk; never make it sound like you are the victim as well, or that you're even worse off than they are.

Yeah, absolutely. Overly spending time on how difficult it is for yourself makes it sound like, "Well, I'm firing you, but have you considered how it makes me feel?" Which is gross.

Hence, usually going for a somewhat impersonal affect.

Re: Coinbase Announces 18% Layoffs

#446

Post by time_to_smile »

tluyben2 wrote: post #132
oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we're talking Bitcoin: - Early 2014 ($1,000 -> $300) - Late 2018/Early 2018 ($19,500 -> $6,800) - April 2021 ($63,000 -> $35,000) - Nov 2021-Now ($67,000-> $22,000)

This one will probably be a lot larger though; crypto hasn’t seen a real economic recession as such and so many people believe (but in religious way) that it can weather it. If might survive but so far it just crashes together with everything and we will see below 10k this year for btc as people want and need cash and inflation hedges.

In full agreement here. Crypto will really crash when people who have money invested in crypto really need that money.

The past few "crashes" were just emotion driven, but for the most part people had plenty of money on hand (at least the current cohorts invested in crypto). This time we have a lot more everyday people invested and they have much smaller buffers to handle financial crisis.

They're going to want to get their money out of crypto, not because they're nervous about the price, but because they have other bills to pay. My guess is that will lead to the ultimate crash of crypto where it will return to a hobbyist activity for a few curious technical people.

Re: Coinbase Announces 18% Layoffs

#447

Post by 999900000999 »

ghaff wrote: post #360
mytailorisrich wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firing someone is the result of poor performance or unacceptable behaviour. In many jurisdictions (not in the US I suppose), before firing someone for poor performance they must be told that their performance is inadequate and be given a chance to improve. Bottom line, in general being fired is fully on the person being fired so no need to sugar-coat or to feel bad.

>In many jurisdictions (not in the US I suppose), before firing someone for poor performance they must be told that their performance is inadequate and be given a chance to improve. Performance Improvement Plans are a thing at larger companies. That said, once someone is on a PIP, the handwriting is almost certainly on the wall. I've also worked with people who were incredibly oblivious about the quality of their wor…

I'd argue PIP is meant to give you a chance to find another job.

For legal reasons most employers will only verify dates of employment. 2 months of so of PIP is more than enough to find a new role.

This is another reason to not get too attached to any job. I come to work for money, not to feel apart of something.

You WILL get fired if your in this industry. Hell, I've quit several jobs since the manager sucked.

Demanding salary employees work nights regularly is good way to get em to quit.

Imagine if America had a NHS style system, vs the horrific employer provided system. Then more people would be free to quit bad jobs.

Let's say you have an abusive manager, but your husband has an expensive to treat illness. You just need to suffer since if you leave your husband won't have access to treatment

Re: Coinbase Announces 18% Layoffs

#448

Post by frays »

I assume engineers will be part of these layoffs. Won't that mean there's a huge loss of knowledge if they're cutting their access right away?

Even 2 weeks of notice often isn't enough for people to finish knowledge transfers.

Re: Coinbase Announces 18% Layoffs

#449

Post by Closi »

ivan_gammel wrote: post #418
Closi wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK, if you place an employee on garden leave immediately there is a legal argument during tribunal that the redundancy was predetermined (and thus unfair). You mentioned that "they are entitled to learn why and what has been done to try to keep them", but actually it's much further than that - they are entitled to be part of the conversation and to propose alternatives to the dismissal which the company is leg…

Maybe only a few countries allow to terminate and put on garden leave immediately, I'm not talking about them. There's always some procedure that ensures that dismissal is fair and justified: when this procedure is concluded and there's no other option found but to fire, the employee should not be entitled to work until contract is terminated - they can be put on the garden leave and in that case their access should…

It's quite common in the UK for an employee to work their notice period after redundancy has been announced / consultation has been concluded (e.g. to allow for a handover of the role to respective teams).

Garden leave is not a necessity (particularly if you have structured your company so a single employee cannot go too rogue regardless - if a single bad-apple employee can take down coinbase then they have bigger systemic risks!).

Re: Coinbase Announces 18% Layoffs

#450

Post by mguerville »

pge wrote: post #337
UncleMeat wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Friendly, smiley, fake. My father had to lay off a bunch of people in 2008. I am now a manager. He told me that if I am ever forced to do this to not ever do this crap to my team. Tell them that this is bullshit. Tell them that you are upset. Tell them that you haven't slept. Tell them that the are right to be mad, disappointed, and even to hate you for choosing their head to roll. Anything better than fake smiles…

I've participated in a number of layoffs, and while I agree with the advice to be honest, not fake smiley, with you'll-land-on-your-feet platitudes, I would strongly recommend not talking about your own feelings. It's not about YOU (the person doing the layoff who gets to keep his job), it's about THEM (the people losing their jobs who probably earn less than you and have less financial security). Telling them how ha…

I agree wholeheartedly, it's definitely not the right moment to make it about you. I have had to layoff people several times, and was laid off myself once, and the best thing to do in my opinion is to be direct succinct and stick to a script. You can still be authentic and kind, and offer them an opportunity to reach out (to you or HR) afterwards for follow up questions (about the process, not the reasons or anything sensitive). You will feel like shit doing it, and they'll be able to tell, there's no need to say it and pull the attention towards your gainfully-employed feelings at the same moment you're telling someone they're losing their financial security blanket.

I've reached out to some afterwards and offered help (serving as a reference, reviewing resumes, connecting to people, etc.) but in _that_ moment you should say as little as possible give them space to process emotions however they will.

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