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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

#541

Post by moneywoes »

sacrosancty wrote: post #518
ausbah wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. sorry but this reads like you drank the whole bowl of US corporate kool-aid. the insecurity and stress the comes from not knowing if you'll have a job tomorrow in literal insanity. 14 weeks severance shouldn't be seen an…

You still have your career and can get another job somewhere else. If your whole industry has collapsed so you have no alternatives, then that's a risk to prepare for in your general life plans. The world doesn't owe you comfort and security but you can easily create it for yourself if that's what you want. Also, obviously don't work at a crypto startup if you want that either! I've done this for myself. I can't be f…

Any suggestions for getting this done? In a similar boat looking for some safety net. Are you describing overworked?

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#542

Post by googlryas »

owisd wrote: post #475
googlryas wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain how it is a strawman? Someone else accused it of being a strawman, but then could only claim that it is "contrived", which is not the same as a strawman. So where's the strawman? Would the person in this scenario not be affected by a proposed wealth tax? Also, I don't really get how it is "simping for billionaires" in the slightest. If I said that billionaires shouldn't be pulled from their mansions a…

It's not a straw man, I believe a better idiom would be 'the tail wagging the dog', i.e. you're using an extreme edge case to argue against the big picture proposal. A real tax would include the small picture details: payment plans, equity swaps, valuation tribunals, etc to cover the oddball cases. But none of that would matter, you would sell it and net the $500M.

Even with payment plants ,equity swaps, valuation tribunals, it would still be the case that someone with more money than me can force me to sell anything I own to them, by placing a value higher than I can pay on it?

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#543

Post by tastyfreeze »

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…

I would like all levels of wealth to be treated the same. Why do we penalize people for being successful? If I knew you and, by some stroke of luck, you happened to become monocle and top hat wealthy I would congratulate you on your success. I would even buy you dinner to celebrate. I would not demand a share of your wealth just because you have a lot of money.

There are some systemic issues that cause wealth inequality. We should focus on fixing those issue to enable more people to enjoy success. Not trying to take from the most successful individuals in the grand game of life.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#544

Post by smsm42 »

whimsicalism wrote: post #467
fallingknife wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 60% of all wealth in the US is inherited Source? This fails the sniff test, as the amount of wealth has grown at such a rapid rate this seems almost impossible.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2019/02/06/people-l...

As I suspected, it counts dollars. Moreover, it attributes any subsequent income for somebody that received an inheritance as "inherited" (up to certain exponential boundary). I.e. if you received an inheritance of $1000, spent it, and in 30 years since you became a millionaire, then the amount of wealth you have up to what you could have if you invested $1000 at certain rate would be still counted as "inherited". I am very far from being qualified to understand the dense math in the underlying article (http://www.piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/AlvaredoGarbintiPiketty2...) but with such assumption, I imagine we could arrive at 60%. But it doesn't mean what you think it means.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#545

Post by sytelus »

joering2 wrote: post #139
djbusby wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

you don't know cryptocurrency took a lot of lives?? https://twitter.com/JohnBrownlow/status/1524375188426702849

You can't attribute suicides of people investing in crypto to Armstrong. I think Armstrong had a great vision and ok execution (I would give grade D but not F). Overhiring was irresponsible. Out of control costs were unneccessory. But you have to understand that founders in this space have enormous pressure to grow, try new ideas and new products as they are constantly at risk by other players (Cashapp, Paypal etc).

Before Coinbase, investing in crypto was super murkey even without all the volatility. They were able to make crypto accessible and provide marketplace that is not full of scams (so far). For people who controlled their risk by not exceeding crypto investment beyod 1% of their networth, it was great way to get in the market. If Ukrain war + COVID didn't exist, they had a decent chance realizing vision. If they can survive the storm, I think they would still be the most trusted crypto marketplace.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#546

Post by its_ethan »

hourago wrote: post #180
tomcam wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of people in the world who would think that anything over $500/month is way more than enough for one person. Should your compensation be reduced to that amount? Does someone earning more than you hurt you? Also… do billionaires employ people? Do you want their employees to have their jobs seized from them when the johny555 tax goes into effect?

> Does someone earning more than you hurt you? The economy is not a zero sum game. But billionaires are getting all the growth while middle class and the poor see their share of the economy shrink. This is not about my neighbour earning more than me, it's about corporations that take over big chunks of the economy.

> billionaires are getting all the growth while middle class and the poor see their share of the economy shrink.

In your own sentence you had to use specific words "their share of the economy shrinks" can be true, while their wealth increases. The economy is not a zero sum game. The middle class could see their share of the economy increase while also having standard of living, total wealth, etc. all decreasing.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#547

Post by slickrick216 »

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…

How wealthy are you? If you don’t like me asking a question then it’s a bit hypocritical to make comments about others wealth. If your net worth is over 100k USD I think you should only have 10k and the rest be stripped away from you and give the needy? You don’t like that tough your freedom isn’t yours.

I’m honestly not trying to be confrontational but you shouldn’t just impinge on peoples freedom to acquire wealth. Those who do shouldn’t have any. Those who have some level and wealth and try it. Well they are just pulling up the ladder behind them.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#548

Post by ineptech »

ipnon wrote: post #84
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…

Billionaires are highly correlated with millionaires, which don't seem to be beyond the pale for critics of wealth inequality. Countries with billionaires rank much higher on quality of life than those without. It hurts to see Bezos and Musk in yachts but the side effect of their wealth is companies like Amazon and Tesla that have a net positive effect on society in terms of products and employment.

This isn't about yachts, it's about sensible policy. Corporations aren't a naturally occurring phenomenon whose autonomy we must respect; we wrote laws to allow them to exist because we thought they would be good for society. They mostly do, but when unfettered capitalism leads to bad outcomes, it needs to be fettered.

So it comes down to: is a handful of pseudo-randomly selected[0] people having wealth on the scale of billions a good outcome or a bad one? Personally I think it's pretty obviously the latter, and if you agree then I struggle to see why a wealth tax isn't the obvious solution.

0: "It isn't random, they worked harder than everyone else!" Where would Microsoft be if Gates' mom wasn't friends with IBM's John Opel? Where would Amazon be if Bezos had been born 5 years earlier, or later? Etc.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#549

Post by SahAssar »

daenz wrote: post #419
alphabetam wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

c) European.

According to this[0], the absolute most generous package is the Netherlands, which offers 1/3 of your monthly salary for each year of employment. To receive 14 weeks of salary, you'd need to work at a company for 10 years. Coinbase was founded in 2012. Other "European" countries have much worse severance packages. So what Coinbase offered seems to be better than even the best country in Europe. 0. https://www.claimsa…

Different countries have different laws, but at least in sweden it is common to be part of an income guarantee program (a-kassa, usually via a union but can also be outside of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unemployment_funds_in_Sweden). You get around 80% of your income for the first two thirds-ish of a year (200 days) and 70% for the rest of the year.

It's obviously good that this is handled outside the employers control.

After that you get the normal unemployment benefits from the state which is capped at a low but livable level.

It is (in sweden) abnormal (and illegal) for companies to just fire people without cause, and the valid causes are pretty restricted. One of the few valid causes are lack-of-work (arbetsbrist), but even that triggers negotiations between the employer, the employee and the union, and is usually a last-in, first-out thing. The employment contracts are always including a fixed notice (I think it's 3 months regulated by LAS, can be lower if your on a trial employment up to 6 months).

As an example, the klarna downsizing was major news in sweden a second time because of their obviously illegal way of handling firings.

> Other "European" countries have much worse severance packages.

Please give me a source.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#550

Post by Johnny555 »

smsm42 wrote: post #500
xapata wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (and probably some luck) I'd reverse the skill and luck relationship. Success at that magnitude is almost entirely luck (and probably a little skill).

When one becomes rich because of one IPO that went right - ok, let's say it's luck. When one creates several successful businesses in a row - no, sorry, I can't say "it's just dumb luck" anymore, it's more realistic to assume there's something else involved.

Yeah, after the first successful IPO, the traveling IPO CEO has contacts at investment banks, media houses, etc and is on a first-name basis with many key analysts. That's why they keep getting brought in to help a company IPO, after you've done one, the subsequent ones are easier.
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