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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

#221

Post by Apocryphon »

chrisseaton wrote: post #204
dylan604 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

with minor blips where the peasants revolt and take out those above them only to settle back under the rule of someone new. it is a minor annoyance to those amassing wealth to keep in mind.

Never really happened in my country. The second tier complained at one point, and peacefully reached an agreement with the top tier (Magna Carta.) Other than that top families basically unchanged 1000 years.

Uh, what about the time that Parliament decapitated the king and established a Puritan dictatorship for a minute

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#222

Post by jjulius »

chrisseaton wrote: post #204
dylan604 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

with minor blips where the peasants revolt and take out those above them only to settle back under the rule of someone new. it is a minor annoyance to those amassing wealth to keep in mind.

Never really happened in my country. The second tier complained at one point, and peacefully reached an agreement with the top tier (Magna Carta.) Other than that top families basically unchanged 1000 years.

>Never really happened in my country.

>Other than that top families basically unchanged 1000 years.

So we've shifted the goalposts from "all of human history" to "in my country" and only for the past "1000 years".

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#223

Post by oh_sigh »

thefaux wrote: post #79
oh_sigh wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just a run of the mill average joe, who has a rock that has been in my family for generations. Turns out some weird little cult likes my rock and wants to buy it for $1B. Should I be forced to sell my rock, because I'm getting a $500M tax bill from the government because some weird little cult said they would pay $1B for it - regardless of whether I want to sell my rock?

Why is the rock yours? How did your family attain ownership of it? If the rock means little to you, why should you have it rather than the cult that actually values it? What if the cult wants to preserve the rock but you want to destroy it even though that will cause great pain to those who care about it? Why should you have permanent ownership of a rock just because your parents had it?

> Why is the rock yours? How did your family attain ownership of it?

The rock is mine because my family bought land a few hundred years ago, and the previous owner thought the rock was ugly and let it for us.

> If the rock means little to you, why should you have it rather than the cult that actually values it?

The rock means a lot to me, because it reminds me of my ancestors. I value it, but I just don't have a billion dollars to attach to it as its value.

> What if the cult wants to preserve the rock but you want to destroy it even though that will cause great pain to those who care about it?

I dunno. I think it is my rock and I can do with it what I want. But I don't want to destroy it, I just want to keep it where it has been for the past 200 years, near my family home's fireplace.

> Why should you have permanent ownership of a rock just because your parents had it?

Because that's how ownership works. If anyone can come take anything from you at any point, then I don't think you can ever be considered to own something.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#224

Post by FabHK »

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?

Why can you only vote/have sex/drink/gamble when you're 18 yrs? Why not at 12, why not at 30?

The fact that there is a gray zone does not mean that no border must be drawn.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#225

Post by ghshephard »

oh_sigh wrote: post #70
DoubleDerper wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

1 employee per 2000 customers seems like it makes perfect sense as to why customer service would be bad.

Particularly as it's actually 1 employee per 20_000 customers.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#226

Post by cute_boi »

ipnon wrote: post #107
john_yaya wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“companies like Amazon and Tesla that have a net positive effect on society” Citation needed.

My claim is that if these companies weren't useful than they wouldn't exist. People hate Bezos but they spend their money at Amazon. Methinks they doth protest too much!

People spend money on Amazon because it is convenient? However, I don't consider it to be net positive in current society. In many countries like India, many mom & pop stores are closed due to Amazon. They are destroyed thousands of business. Amazon is funneling money into its company which would have been distributed to multiple people. Seeing this drastic implications even CCP tried to clamp services like Amazon, Alibaba in China so they won't be too powerful.

So, I think you need to prove how Amazon is net positive in society?

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#227

Post by ghshephard »

dubcanada wrote: post #145
oh_sigh wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1 employee per 2000 customers seems like it makes perfect sense as to why customer service would be bad.

Why? Presumably your product works, so at best you'd only have like 1% (20) customers with issues on any given day. 1 customer service agent should be able to attend to 20 issues in a 7-8 hour shift.

Of course, when that customer service agent has to deal with 1% of 20_000 - 200 issues/day/agent - things start to add up.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#228

Post by higeorge13 »

hardtke wrote: post #154
tuckerpo wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdote: I had an old co-worker who was given 6 month's notice that he'd be let go from a previous job, and his manager at the time helped him look for a new gig + gave him shining reviews and references. After the 6 month period was up, they still gave him several months of severance, even after he had found a new gig. Some companies/managers actually do care about you, and it seems like Coinbase is roughly in that…

I've been chatting with some friends whose company shut down recently, basically with no warning. They are getting recruited like crazy. In my opinion that's much preferable than to being left go as part of the 20% lowest performing employees. This reads like a "culling of the herd because we can use the alleged upcoming recession as an excuse" event. I'm not sure the generous severance makes up for the "you are not…

Layoffs is never about underperforming employees. Whole teams or departments are usually laid off, including top talent.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#229

Post by FabHK »

karpierz wrote: post #163
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…

Lots of hidden assumptions here: 1. The objective of public policy is to maximize the efficiency of capital allocation. 2. Who is efficient at capital allocation is independent of public policy. 3. Efficiency of capital allocation is measured by stock market capitalization. 1) would assume that building a Lamborghini Veneno Roadster is a better allocation of capital than building 10 homes. Or treating 100,000 cases o…

Very good points. Externalities and other market failures are also better addressed by governments than capital markets, as is well understood and was conceded even by Milton Friedman.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#230

Post by googlryas »

Apocryphon wrote: post #80
oh_sigh wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just a run of the mill average joe, who has a rock that has been in my family for generations. Turns out some weird little cult likes my rock and wants to buy it for $1B. Should I be forced to sell my rock, because I'm getting a $500M tax bill from the government because some weird little cult said they would pay $1B for it - regardless of whether I want to sell my rock?

This strawman parable is so elegant in its contrivance that it deserves a Nebula Award.

Can you explain how it is a strawman? I've never seen any kind of wealth tax proposed that takes into account how the wealth was acquired, or what form the wealth was in.
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