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Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

coindesk.com

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Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#111

Post by djbusby »

joering2 wrote: post #86

In my opinion this is what greed does to people. Doesn't matter your background. Armstrong was here on HN pointing out his vision of free exchange of currency at close to zero rates. He wanted to fight "the big guys", including credit cards mafia and PayPal mafia. What A WONDERFUL goal. What he ended up with, is obnoxious exchange rates @ Coinbase (triple what credit cards charge), hundreds of thousands of ruined liv…

"lots of suicides" - that's bold claim. In searches I've only found one related to CB. One is not "lots"

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#112

Post by sokoloff »

halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #69
Johnny555 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People keep pointing to Armstrong's $110M house like it's some sort of injustice. If you think billionaires should exist at all, then that's one of the least-bad injustices imaginable Ok, I'll admit it, billionaires should not exist at all, there should be a heavy wealth tax that makes it hard to become a billionaire. Will a CEO work less hard if he (and his peers) can only ever gain $100M in net worth before a wealt…

Why stop at $100M? Why can't $1M be the most?

Because that provides ~$40K/yr in income during retirement. That seems like...way not enough to hold out as the absolute maximum.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#113

Post by memish »

Johnny555 wrote: post #45
sillysaurusx wrote: post #15

I think if employees feel slighted by being fired, they're fooling themselves. The best mindset is that you could be gone tomorrow. It gives you clarity and purpose. It also happens to be the truth. Coinbase was also extremely generous with severance. 12 weeks plus two for every one year at the company, I think. I've had the experience of being let go without notice and without severance. Devs seem a little more griz…

People keep pointing to Armstrong's $110M house like it's some sort of injustice. If you think billionaires should exist at all, then that's one of the least-bad injustices imaginable Ok, I'll admit it, billionaires should not exist at all, there should be a heavy wealth tax that makes it hard to become a billionaire. Will a CEO work less hard if he (and his peers) can only ever gain $100M in net worth before a wealt…

That's an arbitrary cut off and it's not just about whether they will work less hard or not. It's about effective capital allocation. If they earned their wealth through smart capital allocation, why would you want to remove capital from proven allocators and forcibly move it to the least effective allocators?

TLDR. Elon makes vastly better use of capital than the government does. He turned $180M into SpaceX and Tesla. They turn $180M into some bombs and maybe an unfinished train station if we're lucky.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#115

Post by bluedevil2k »

mrep wrote: post #77
jstanley wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Will a CEO work less hard if he (and his peers) can only ever gain $100M in net worth before a wealth tax on assets kicks in? He'll certainly work a lot less hard after the wealth tax kicks in.

Shit, I'd immediately retire

Yeah, but I’m that’s the attitude that separates you from a billionaire. Billionaires are never satisfied with their net worth.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#116

Post by hooande »

memish wrote: post #113
Johnny555 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People keep pointing to Armstrong's $110M house like it's some sort of injustice. If you think billionaires should exist at all, then that's one of the least-bad injustices imaginable Ok, I'll admit it, billionaires should not exist at all, there should be a heavy wealth tax that makes it hard to become a billionaire. Will a CEO work less hard if he (and his peers) can only ever gain $100M in net worth before a wealt…

That's an arbitrary cut off and it's not just about whether they will work less hard or not. It's about effective capital allocation. If they earned their wealth through smart capital allocation, why would you want to remove capital from proven allocators and forcibly move it to the least effective allocators? TLDR. Elon makes vastly better use of capital than the government does. He turned $180M into SpaceX and Tesl…

buying twitter at $54/share is an effective use of capital?

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#117

Post by planb »

nightski wrote: post #97
qbasic_forever wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can put a wealth tax on billionaires without putting taxes on poverty level workers ($500/month in the US). You're making bizarre nonsensical arguments here--slippery slope, strawman, etc.

Wealth taxes seem so dumb to me. In many cases it's forcing sale of private or public company ownership from those who know the company best often to - you guessed it - institutional investors. It's bad enough how much control institutional investors have, but to force it by law seems even more ridiculous. There has to be a better solution.

You had me for one second with that argument. But if you sell off your company, you would still get rich and be taxed - so why wouldn't you stay on board and your goal is not to get richer, but to create the best business you can?

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#118

Post by Apocryphon »

elefanten wrote: post #94
qbasic_forever wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can put a wealth tax on billionaires without putting taxes on poverty level workers ($500/month in the US). You're making bizarre nonsensical arguments here--slippery slope, strawman, etc.

That was clearly not the point. The point is there's always someone with a different bar for what is excessive wealth. Chances are that 80%+ of the world population would find your income staggering, the same way you consider a billionaire's wealth staggering. So how do you decide who's scale to use?

Stunned that a community of software engineers is forgetting the top-down approach to algorithm design.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#119

Post by memish »

hooande wrote: post #116
memish wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an arbitrary cut off and it's not just about whether they will work less hard or not. It's about effective capital allocation. If they earned their wealth through smart capital allocation, why would you want to remove capital from proven allocators and forcibly move it to the least effective allocators? TLDR. Elon makes vastly better use of capital than the government does. He turned $180M into SpaceX and Tesl…

buying twitter at $54/share is an effective use of capital?

At the time, yes. Today one could get it for a lot cheaper.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#120

Post by kube-system »

DoubleDerper wrote: post #63
Geee wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably customer service. They have about 100 million customers, so 1 employee per 20000 customers.

Coinbase is notoriously poor at customer service, so this doesn't make sense. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27653022

Having a lot of employees does not necessarily make customer service good. Telecoms and large retail banks top the list for the largest number of customer service employees, but often are notorious for bad service.
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