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Today I've made the difficult decision to reduce the size of Coinbase by ~14%

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Re: Today I've made the difficult decision to reduce the size of Coinbase by ~14%

#101

Post by apple4ever »

tmaly wrote: post #68

Publicly traded companies get their stock price punished if they just announce layoffs, whereas if they say it is because of AI, they do not see the same treatment. If you look at Coinbase in 2020 they had roughly 1,200 employees. By 2022 they had roughly 4,500 employees. They over hired and now they are pairing back, this is all it is.

That's exactly right. Bad leadership got them here. Of course they won't suffer, but their employees will. But only because they announced it as AI related. So the investors don't care.

Re: Today I've made the difficult decision to reduce the size of Coinbase by ~14%

#102

Post by cloche »

draftsman wrote: post #91
cloche wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Geeks who didn't even stand near professional sports should really shut up about anything sport related, lol. I would really like to see professional, established coach running around with young prodigies on a peak of their biology. Player-coach used to be a thing in professional sports a long, long time ago. There's a reason you don't have it anymore. A coach can't be expected to take the long-term view while also…

Your comment reminded me that this still happens in the NBA. At 43 years old, Udonis Haslem seldom played minutes towards the end of his 20 year career with the Heat. But they kept him on as a “player-coach,” in that he was a mentor to the younger players and assisted in their coaching. Kyle Lowry is another current example of this “player-coach” role, currently on the Sixers.

Thanks for the examples. I didn't realize this still happened. I don't follow basketball much - more hockey for me with some baseball. It sounds like those examples jive though - they're players in the twilight of their career who still bring a lot of value being in the locker room but maybe aren't ready to fully retire or move to coaching full time.

Actually, these scenarios happen in hockey as well. Teams will pick up character guys who have been through it all who are expected to contribute more off ice than on it. Corey Perry is one who comes to mind lately but they're never given a "coach" title. It's entirely possible though that these players may be expected to be a go-between guy between the coach and younger players to help them manage the pressure or to help with encouragement. They're definitely not getting prime minutes though.

I guess that would possibly be the same expectation of a manager who still codes. I can't see them doing anything critical. It's likely picking up some minor bugs or nice-to-have, low priority feature work. I was a manager before and while I didn't reach 15 reports, I was up to 12 at one time. There's just really no focus time that you need for coding. Maybe that's a bit different with AI but even then you still need to find time to make changes and validate. And that's time that takes away from other higher impact things that you could be doing for the team.

Re: Today I've made the difficult decision to reduce the size of Coinbase by ~14%

#103

Post by htrp »

draftsman wrote: post #91
cloche wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Geeks who didn't even stand near professional sports should really shut up about anything sport related, lol. I would really like to see professional, established coach running around with young prodigies on a peak of their biology. Player-coach used to be a thing in professional sports a long, long time ago. There's a reason you don't have it anymore. A coach can't be expected to take the long-term view while also…

Your comment reminded me that this still happens in the NBA. At 43 years old, Udonis Haslem seldom played minutes towards the end of his 20 year career with the Heat. But they kept him on as a “player-coach,” in that he was a mentor to the younger players and assisted in their coaching. Kyle Lowry is another current example of this “player-coach” role, currently on the Sixers.

Haslem played 72 minutes the entire 82 game season. That's like the Engineering manager who ships a PR once a year.

Re: Today I've made the difficult decision to reduce the size of Coinbase by ~14%

#104

Post by henryfjordan »

chrsw wrote: post #45
Saline9515 wrote: post #35

The reality is that Coinbase earns on trading volume, and since we are in a crypto bear market, revenue is down. So they have to cut to keep the company profitable (or in line with what the investors expect). While AI is likely a productivity boost, the underlying reason is not AI.

Yes, I'm not buying this story about layoffs due to AI. It's a convenient excuse, which these companies seem to be getting away with too. And something else I don't get about these AI related layoff announcements: if AI was a productivity boost wouldn't you hire more engineers and technical staff to capture the value? Or else you're basically saying "we're a tech company that has no idea what to do with more super-en…

The layoffs being "due to AI" is usually about freeing up the budget to build a couple datacenters and buy GPUs. And they have to layoff 14% of their workforce because they are buying those GPUs at many times the normal price thanks to the zeitgeist.

They aren't saying that they don't know what to do with the AI productivity boost, but rather they think it worth taking a huge productivity hit right now so they can invest in the future. Whether their vision of the future is realistic...

Re: Today I've made the difficult decision to reduce the size of Coinbase by ~14%

#105

Post by FerretFred »

>I’ve watched engineers use AI to ship in days what used to take a team weeks. Non-technical teams are now shipping production code

Good luck to those (human) teams when the briefness stuff hits the fan thanks to an AI hallucination... oh wait, the Active Individually-contributing leaders will be there to lend a hand, right?

Re: Today I've made the difficult decision to reduce the size of Coinbase by ~14%

#106

Post by jqbd »

chrsw wrote: post #45
Saline9515 wrote: post #35

The reality is that Coinbase earns on trading volume, and since we are in a crypto bear market, revenue is down. So they have to cut to keep the company profitable (or in line with what the investors expect). While AI is likely a productivity boost, the underlying reason is not AI.

Yes, I'm not buying this story about layoffs due to AI. It's a convenient excuse, which these companies seem to be getting away with too. And something else I don't get about these AI related layoff announcements: if AI was a productivity boost wouldn't you hire more engineers and technical staff to capture the value? Or else you're basically saying "we're a tech company that has no idea what to do with more super-en…

This assumes they had a deficit of engineers pre-AI. What if they had as much as they needed?

Re: Today I've made the difficult decision to reduce the size of Coinbase by ~14%

#107

Post by tracker1 »

alexandre_m wrote: post #92
StilesCrisis wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So, a manager who's managing 15 people AND expected to ship Right?? I saw that too. My first thought is that any good managers left will be racing for the exit. You can't fake "managing 15 people" with AI. You have to actually have the 1:1s and do the performance calibrations. How are they going to have time left for IC work??

They'll have to reduce these 1:1s and any formal meetings to a minimum (e.g. once a quarter), and deal less with career growth and people conflicts. They'll switch to async communications for everything, and ideally have a bot that answers Mm-humm like a psychologist on his chair. More seriously, the solution is to move to a flatter org, but that's a drastic change with unknown consequences for most companies.

I think you'll have to work it out with your peers and collaborate... we here at $BigCo believe in individual ownership of the process.

Re: Today I've made the difficult decision to reduce the size of Coinbase by ~14%

#108

Post by xdavidliu »

draftsman wrote: post #91
cloche wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Geeks who didn't even stand near professional sports should really shut up about anything sport related, lol. I would really like to see professional, established coach running around with young prodigies on a peak of their biology. Player-coach used to be a thing in professional sports a long, long time ago. There's a reason you don't have it anymore. A coach can't be expected to take the long-term view while also…

Your comment reminded me that this still happens in the NBA. At 43 years old, Udonis Haslem seldom played minutes towards the end of his 20 year career with the Heat. But they kept him on as a “player-coach,” in that he was a mentor to the younger players and assisted in their coaching. Kyle Lowry is another current example of this “player-coach” role, currently on the Sixers.

I think the CEO was more talking in the line of Bill Russell or Maximus from Gladiator, not final-year Haslem

Re: Today I've made the difficult decision to reduce the size of Coinbase by ~14%

#109

Post by ManuelKiessling »

chrsw wrote: post #45
Saline9515 wrote: post #35

The reality is that Coinbase earns on trading volume, and since we are in a crypto bear market, revenue is down. So they have to cut to keep the company profitable (or in line with what the investors expect). While AI is likely a productivity boost, the underlying reason is not AI.

Yes, I'm not buying this story about layoffs due to AI. It's a convenient excuse, which these companies seem to be getting away with too. And something else I don't get about these AI related layoff announcements: if AI was a productivity boost wouldn't you hire more engineers and technical staff to capture the value? Or else you're basically saying "we're a tech company that has no idea what to do with more super-en…

Reading only the parts of the post that are not about AI does not instill the sense that Mr Armstrong is the kind of person who would hesitate to say that people are let go because the company wants/needs to save money.

Re: Today I've made the difficult decision to reduce the size of Coinbase by ~14%

#110

Post by tracker1 »

tmaly wrote: post #68

Publicly traded companies get their stock price punished if they just announce layoffs, whereas if they say it is because of AI, they do not see the same treatment. If you look at Coinbase in 2020 they had roughly 1,200 employees. By 2022 they had roughly 4,500 employees. They over hired and now they are pairing back, this is all it is.

That seems to be the case with a lot of companies with a significant number of tech workers... I think every tech manager/leader needs to read The Mythical Man Month and pass a test on the content without benefit of AI. I know Twitter/X was lambasted when Musk took ownership and made deep cuts, but my own opinion is it was probably for the best and would be healthier as a company after.

I mean, I want to work... and I absolutely despise the push to keep dev wages down, even at higher levels. But the reality is, at least from my own experience, that most software orgs and projects are actually over-staffed and would operate better with fewer, more experienced staff. Rather than filling hundreds of butts in seats.

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