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Coinbase’s chief product officer will leave with a $105M payday

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Re: Coinbase’s chief product officer will leave with a $105M payday

#191
post #175
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This philosophy of praising exploitation is actually one of the things I liked least about America and one of the things I found most refreshing when I emigrated. It's pervasive through American society that pulling the wool over the eyes of shadowy entities (large corporations, the government etc...) is a virtue but every time it's done it pulls a lot of money out of the hands of people that could use it more and fu…

There's two ways to succeed (oversimplification): being conniving and being smart. In an environment like the USA (where many of the world's smartest tend to flock and extreme wealth is relatively achievable), being conniving is rarer than being smart, so that's what people value.

I hope rarity is not your only marker for value. Otherwise I do have a rag to sell you which I've been using for 5 years now. Totally unique, nothing else like that.

Re: Coinbase’s chief product officer will leave with a $105M payday

#192
post #37

Headlines from last week: > It was announced on Jan. 10, 2022 that Coinbase would be slashing its workforce by about 20% (which translates to 950 employees) in an effort to reduce overall operating expenses by 25%. > This is the second round of layoffs for the crypto exchange, as they laid off 18% of the workforce last June as the crypto winter sets in and the space attempts to recover from the disastrous year. why e…

[dead]

Re: Coinbase’s chief product officer will leave with a $105M payday

#193

I'm always intrigued at people's carriers and where exactly the inflection point was. Looking at Surojit's career, it went something like this: BS in CS at Kharagput, something like a US T2 university MS in CS at Buffalo, something like a T2 univeristy, Spend some years at IBM and Oracle as a developer/senior developer 200k/year ? MIT Sloan MBA T1 world class PM/Senior PM at Symantec for a year 200-300k/year? Head of…

Good question. My gut says his all in comp for Google including stock would likely be a lot higher but who knows.

Re: Coinbase’s chief product officer will leave with a $105M payday

#194

Full time employment is rigged. For everyone. Tech workers are just now waking up to the reality that they are the same disposable peasants like all the rest. Seeing this kind of compensation and thinking .. oh well that guy must have done hell of a job must be some kind of delusion.

Everybody is free to start their own businesses or to get hired as a CPO at a booming startup. I see a lot of people complaining, but not that many actually using those very simple rigged opportunities to make 100M fast.

There are vanishingly small number of these positions in the world, and a vanishingly small percentage of that vanishingly small number are hiring. These positions are also gated by things that commoners do not have access to, like prestigious educational backgrounds and well-connected networks of executives. Same for becoming a founder. Unless you bootstrap, the minute you want to raise funding, you're more often than not going to be blocked by those same gates.

This is a class issue, not a "seize the opportunity" issue.

Re: Coinbase’s chief product officer will leave with a $105M payday

#195
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This philosophy of praising exploitation is actually one of the things I liked least about America and one of the things I found most refreshing when I emigrated. It's pervasive through American society that pulling the wool over the eyes of shadowy entities (large corporations, the government etc...) is a virtue but every time it's done it pulls a lot of money out of the hands of people that could use it more and fu…

Generally I agree but this is crypto. Crypto is 100% zero-sum or negative-sum. The whole space is predicated on trying to take money from other participants rather than actually creating value. Creating at best the illusion of value is the goal. This guy nailed it. It's not like he took $100M from an orphanage or something.

I agree that crypto is 100% negative-sum in my experience. (Especially the ones that are proof of work which literally destroys our one biosphere through wasting electricity.)

Most recently, I got a "legitimate" (doxxed, "real") job offer via HN, got hired and scammed, wasted hours of my time. Crypto is scamsville.

Re: Coinbase’s chief product officer will leave with a $105M payday

#196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Balaji pulled off a heck of a heist himself. Partner at A16Z, spin out some bizarre crypto oil-cooled mining company, pivot like 4-5 times, and then have Coinbase, the company with your VC partners on the board "acquire" your failed startup for 10 figures after it's already burned through over $100M of investor money. These dudes just begging the SEC to get involved in VC deals.

How many of this industry’s thought leaders are similarly scummy?

Let's see: Chris Dixon (a16z crypto), Chamath (pump and dump extraordinaire), and basically everyone on https://twitter.com/VCBrags .

Especially:

https://twitter.com/VCBrags/status/1588954788334800896 and https://twitter.com/VCBrags/status/1572301007383851009

https://twitter.com/VCBrags/status/1608178902664642561

Re: Coinbase’s chief product officer will leave with a $105M payday

#197
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This philosophy of praising exploitation is actually one of the things I liked least about America and one of the things I found most refreshing when I emigrated. It's pervasive through American society that pulling the wool over the eyes of shadowy entities (large corporations, the government etc...) is a virtue but every time it's done it pulls a lot of money out of the hands of people that could use it more and fu…

For what it's worth, I think GP was being sarcastic.

Oh I'm not being sarcastic. The lemmings at the top of most tech companies are highly overpaid and continually fuck up Their One Job. The rare person who manages to trick them into paying a lot for little-to-no services has figured out the game and deserves some praise.

Re: Coinbase’s chief product officer will leave with a $105M payday

#198

All I can say is, damn, props to him. Tricking the coinbase execs into giving him one of the highest paying packages for any product exec in history and delivering so little value in return is the kind of heist we should all aspire towards.

Doesn't sound like any trickery was involved. Relatively standard high profile options package. He got really, really, really lucky in terms of timing and mechanics.

Re: Coinbase’s chief product officer will leave with a $105M payday

#199
post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's two ways to succeed (oversimplification): being conniving and being smart. In an environment like the USA (where many of the world's smartest tend to flock and extreme wealth is relatively achievable), being conniving is rarer than being smart, so that's what people value.

I hope rarity is not your only marker for value. Otherwise I do have a rag to sell you which I've been using for 5 years now. Totally unique, nothing else like that.

I'm not sure how to respond.

I don't think being conniving is better than being smart, just sharing an observation.

Do you disagree with the premise?

Re: Coinbase’s chief product officer will leave with a $105M payday

#200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. They can also complain now. And forevermore if they want. None of us, you included, is obligated to protect grifters from the criticism of people who suffer while they walk away laughing.

They can complain now but it reeks of jealously instead of actual anger at the “grift.” When conditions were different nobody cares this dude got a ton of equity because they got equity as well.

It might be jealousy. But it also could be that they're just now realizing how they got taken, and to what extent.

Which would be unsurprising, as plenty of startups puff up expectations and take advantage of the young and naive. I have relatively little sympathy for Coinbase employees, as I think the whole thing was a scam built on scams, so it was always a question of who gets screwed. But I have some sympathy for the ones who were early enough in their careers that they didn't really have the chance to learn how rotten the world can get in spots.

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