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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

#711

Post by epicide »

Johnny555 wrote: post #509
epicide wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps part of the problem is that we incentivize high-risk ideas too much.

I think it's the opposite. I'm not talking about "Let's start a social media app for Aardvarks!" kind of ideas, but actual scientific research. We used to have pure research orgs like Bell Labs, but companies aren't funding pure research any more, so we need more investment from government. Not every idea should have a path to monetization before it's funded.

I should clarify, as I think we're saying the same thing in different ways.

I don't equate "skunkworks" with high risk. To me, that's not "risk" as much as "I don't care about monetization in the first place", like you're saying. I agree that research without promise of a payout is sorely missing these days.

When I say "maybe we should have less high risk", I'm thinking of fly-by-night companies that do make a social media app for aardvarks, spend a bunch of money on slick marketing so they can pump their IPO, and then pull the rug with them when they bail.

But billionaires don't become billionaires by doing skunkworks projects. They often do the latter.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#712

Post by derefr »

myle wrote: post #497
derefr wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone could come along and ruin your life by framing you for some morally-awful social-presumption-of-guilt crime. Or a nuclear war could start tomorrow with a strike on your city. Or a tiny little meteorite could happen to fall directly on you. Or God could stop+terminate the VM containing the universe mid-run. The insecurity and stress are the human condition, my friend. That's what it means to be sentient.

You are arguing that because very negative but also very unlikely events that we can't control, may happen, we shouldn't as society try to improve the conditions of our lives?

No? What I'm saying is that there is no such thing as true security; and so you've just got to learn to live with the feeling of insecurity, regardless of what social safety nets you put into place. Even in a much better world, you will be fundamentally insecure.

Let me rephrase my original post: "We all die someday — and potentially sooner than you expect. There's no guarantee that any particular person will survive the next 24 hours. Even living in a bunker in the middle of nowhere, you could still have a heart attack!"

This is entirely distinct from the question of whether you should advocate for societal policies that make quality-of-life more robust/fault-tolerant to small upsets. I'm all for that.

My point is more that even if you do achieve a social-welfare utopia, you'll still likely be insecure and stressed, because mortality.

And, therefore, "insecurity" and "stress" aren't good indicators of anything other than having an overriding awareness of one's own mortality. So it's not sensible to base policy decisions on trying to lower them. Base your policy positions on rational utility-maximization, not on trying to achieve personal emotional well-being. You want emotional well-being? Go to therapy.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#713

Post by guelo »

smsm42 wrote: post #487
guelo wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> has nice hair and is able to conceal his rampaging cocaine habit long enough to make himself too big to fail? You are indoctrinated into believing that democracy cannot work and good government is impossible.

I am indoctrinated by the reality I am observing daily. And before you are tempted to tell me "oh, it's because $not_my_favorite_political_party prevents $my_favorite_political party from achieving its true potential as the paragon of democracy" - this happens regardless of your tribal squabbles.

$not_my_favorite_political_party_1 wants to destroy government besides police and military. $not_my_favorite_political_party_2 wants to increase welfare spending. Neither party is focused on good government. Mostly that is because voter dissatisfaction with government is channeled into the two competing ideological camps so that obvious, practical improvements never happen.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#714

Post by lumost »

bojangleslover wrote: post #517
tschellenbach wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does seem insane to me that healthcare is tied to employment.. that's just crazy

It's not. You can buy (and deduct) it on healthcare.gov. Ask any self employed person. You're also paying it out of your salary with employer. There's no such thing as "employer match."

There is such a thing as employee and corporate bargaining power. Many SV companies adopt gold plated health insurance policies on top of competitive wages. I suspect hat this extra bit of health insurance helps prevent the perception the employer is overbidding on labor.

Similarly large corporations can negotiate to get better insurance rates, and larger insurance providers negotiate to get more cost effective care.

(One of) the problems with the health system in the US is that once you exit this negotiation scheme, prices go insane. A hospital might list a procedure for 2 million dollars only to take home 50k from the insurance provider. I don't believe anyone has a handle on what the true cost of any health procedure is.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#715

Post by stevenjgarner »

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…

Well every one of us has earned $68 billion more than Elon this year. "Tesla stock is down roughly 44% year to date, causing Musk's fortune to drop from $270.1 billion in January to just $201 billion as of Friday." [1]

[1] https://fortune.com/2022/05/24/elon-musk-jeff-bezos-mark-zuc...

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#716

Post by ceejayoz »

notyourwork wrote: post #372
kajecounterhack wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some companies/managers actually do care about you, and it seems like Coinbase is roughly in that court. Do they really tho? They rescinded offers to many foreign students on OPT visas who had turned down Ph.D programs and such, putting them in a pickle. And they did it over email.

At-will employment is "at will" of both parties.

What's legal and what's ethical aren't always the same thing.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#717

Post by [deleted] »

Aeolun wrote: post #643
sharkweek wrote: post #618

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a big fan of 100% taxation on anything above 999M, but my continuation here is that anyone that earns more than that gets a trophy for every additional 1B they earn put on display in a big museum in a city of their choice (Museums selectively scattered around the US).

I’m a firm believer in a maximum of like 50% tax on income. Anything more just feels like a punishment for working.

[deleted]

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#718

Post by karpierz »

ajhurliman wrote: post #667
uncomputation wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let’s be conservative and say Armstrong has just a net worth of the house he bought: 150,000,000. If the average employee’s salary is 150,000, Armstrong makes 1,000 times more than them. Does this seem fair? Does he deserve higher compensation for his entrepreneurial skills? Absolutely. But 1,000? It’s hard for us to imagine the scale of 1,000 times greater than something but it seems excessive (and remember, this is…

If it's really that unfair, why don't you just become an entrepreneur?

If winning the lottery is so great, why don't you just become a lotto winner?

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#719

Post by wskinner »

boc wrote: post #588
sytelus wrote: post #503

I don't understand why Coinbase is feeling such a crunch. They are just middleman in buying and selling. Their advantage is supposed to be that they make money whether crypto goes up or down. How can they screw this up?

USDC. They see something really bad on their books that's separate from their core business. Just like how Lehman Brothers was a profitable bank that got shredded by one risky trading strategy. These stablecoins have been devoured one by one, and each time they fall more people start trying to get their money out. USDC will experience a run and it might not be survivable without liquidating user account holdings, whi…

“These stablecoins” lumps together some very different implementations of “thing that is always worth $1”.

USDC: fully collateralized by cash or cash equivalents held in US banks - basically a money market fund

Terra: partially collateralized by crypto assets + algorithmic magic

Tether: like USDC but not held in US banks, and the actual collateral may be partial or of lower quality

Dai: overcollaterelized by crypto assets + algorithmic magic

These are really distinct things and your risk model for each of them should be different.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#720

Post by __pache__ »

karpierz wrote: post #686
imdsm wrote: post #647

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people seem to be in the mindset that it'll never be them so it should never be anyone else. It's not just in the US, here in the Uk we have the same mindset too. A lot of people dislike/hate Elon Musk for example, and usually they focus on two things: his tweets, and his wealth. Conveniently forgetting that prior to his work at SpaceX and Tesla (which he's driven) reusable rockets weren't a thing and EVs we…

> For anyone who thinks this wealth shouldn't appear, let me ask this: if someone could discover a cure for all cancers — how much should they be allowed to earn for it? Say 50 million? > I.E. What price would you put on the cure for all cancers? 100 billion? You've asked two separate questions there, but you're implying that the answer to one is the same as the other. Just because you are capable of extracting a cer…

So if I make a pill that cures cancer, _it_ is worth 100bn, but I am only worth 50m?

how does that make any sense?

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