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

451–460 of 616 posts

Re: Coinbase Announces 18% Layoffs

#451

Post by aetherson »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #355
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.…

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.

I have had lots of employees who I think had poor performance but weren't bad people and I don't like the thought that they're in bad financial situation or just feeling emotional distress over being fired. Every manager I've known has felt terrible while firing people.

That doesn't mean the firing shouldn't happen, but it does mean that everyone feels bad.

Re: Coinbase Announces 18% Layoffs

#452

Post by danuker »

CydeWeys wrote: post #333
timmg wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those charts look way less dire than I would have expected. June isn't halfway through yet. So I'm not sure what to think of that. But prior to June, they had been doing ~$200M in "fees" monthly -- fairly consistently, for almost a year. That's more of a "business" (and more stable) than I would have guessed.

Most of those $200M in fees are Ethereum gas fees that are being burnt on-chain. Those aren't income for OpenSea, they're costs incurred by all parties as part of doing business.

I suppose those fees would be the lower limit of the subjective value provided to the participants.

Otherwise they wouldn't trade.

Re: Coinbase Announces 18% Layoffs

#453

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Coinbase Announces 18% Layoffs

#454

Post by hnbear »

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…

There's a lot of commentary on this, but people seem to be conflating a couple of points - namely that this cut all access - everything, and emailed to personal email and not just access to "secure" systems. That is pretty unusual, and not something I've seen.

Typically access to sensitive systems is cut, but cutting everything and notifying to personal email seems unusual. Sensitive information should always be segregated and subject to tight controls, which is easy to sever, and then leave regular email and video conferencing in place - ie. the bare minimum necessary to communicate over a work device.

Re: Coinbase Announces 18% Layoffs

#456

Post by bogomipz »

chrisseaton wrote: post #37

> Coinbase has survived through four major crypto winters I don't understand - has crypto been around long enough to have winters? When were they?

I read that and had the same thought. "Winters" at least in the context of AI which is where I believe the term in this context originated has been closer to 10 years [1]. It seems as though downturn would be more appropriate. Perhaps "winter" is becoming the preferred nomenclature because it's less alarming sounding?

[1] https://www.actuaries.digital/2018/09/05/history-of-ai-winte...

Re: Coinbase Announces 18% Layoffs

#457

Post by iamacyborg »

Closi wrote: post #364
iamacyborg wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This assumes that the employee has been working for the company for more than 2 years. If it's less than that, they have no such protection and can be fired for any reason whatsoever.

> This assumes that the employee has been working for the company for more than 2 years. If it's less than that, they have no such protection and can be fired for any reason whatsoever. There are some protections, but yes, they are much more limited (in particular, anything that would generally be classified as automatic unfair dismissal is still protected, for instance for whistleblowing, joining a trade union, firi…

Yep definitely, but if it's just a case of the business isn't doing well and they need to cut headcount then they absolutely can do that without going through a redundancy process.

Re: Coinbase Announces 18% Layoffs

#458

Post by nemo44x »

ausbah wrote: post #427
nemo44x wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 (layoff…

most US companies wouldn't be giving severance anywhere like this, much less severance at all

Right, which is why I said it improves their standing for future employees who know that if something goes south, they'll take care of them.

Re: Coinbase Announces 18% Layoffs

#459

Post by Kstarek »

bushbaba wrote: post #320
bko wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

lots of exchanges provide crazy amounts of leverage. Kucoin lets you have a margin loan that's 10x your capital. I'm not sure this is unique to FTX. The exchange itself doesn't need 1000s of people. Coinbase went on a hiring spree in 2021, but it didn't seem to have a clear strategy for all that headcount.

No post body was provided.

Re: Coinbase Announces 18% Layoffs

#460

Post by jstx1 »

pachico wrote: post #412

Still, he doesn't mention the ultimate reason for all this, which is that crypto is not sustainable and is a glorified vaporware that pretentiously tried to convince the world that it was a solution while, in reality, became simply a different problem. I don't think we are now in a better position than before crypto. I honestly think that we wouldn't miss it if it was gone. Sorry, I had to finally vomit my frustratio…

Is that really relevant to Coinbase's business though? They're a fee collector - they can do great as long as they're collecting more in fees than it costs them to run the business, and that's true regardless of the net societal value of cryptocurrencies.
Post reply on HN