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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%

#311

Post by vidro3 »

butterlesstoast wrote: post #158
azinman2 wrote: post #136

"Non-technical teams are now shipping production code" Boy that's scary for a company that's effectively fintech...

I respected the "No Pure Managers" part. That's similar to what happened at our org. The question remains, if there are no pure managers, then is this CSM / Sales shipping production code? If yes, then it's indeed scary... > No pure managers: Every leader at Coinbase must also be a strong and active individual contributor. Managers should be like player-coaches, getting their hands dirty alongside their teams.

what a weird thing to emulate. player coaching is super rare and there were very few good ones in the last 40 years.

why not, managers should be like left handed specialist relievers, they come in for a short time to handle a specific issue and otherwise let the team alone

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

#312

Post by orochimaaru »

cloche wrote: post #87
wiseowise wrote: post #41

> - No pure managers: Every leader at Coinbase must also be a strong and active individual contributor. Managers should be like player-coaches, getting their hands dirty alongside their teams. 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 bio…

> 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…

I think Netflix started the sports team analogy for their hiring (and firing). But they don't put forth a "you're a part of the Netflix family". They're open about the work culture you're going to be stepping into.

And I don't think they're trying this thing that Coinbase is trying either.

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

#313

Post by keyle »

ne0flex wrote: post #123
wiseowise wrote: post #41

> - No pure managers: Every leader at Coinbase must also be a strong and active individual contributor. Managers should be like player-coaches, getting their hands dirty alongside their teams. 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 bio…

"They don't even count people, just see them as numbers to reduce/scale up." I'm remember of when I went out for drinks with a startup consultant friend and she mentioned one founder she spoke with refer to his staff as "biological units" when addressing use of proceeds to hire additional staff.

This is sickening. People that don't realise that companies are made of people are in for a surprise. Once they go public, they forget that, and it shows.

A company_is_ the sum of its people, their talents and aligned behind a mission statement.

This is so far misguided, I can't help but think this 'biological unit' of a founder won't last long.

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

#314

Post by Arainach »

claytonjy wrote: post #221
paulhebert wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a sad way to think about other people

It is, but it’s the only way for a company to succeed and scale over time. A pet approach works well in the early days, but you can’t become a VC-backed success without drastically reducing bus factors throughout the company. That could be an incentive to keep companies small, but high-scale companies do have unique benefits to society.

> It is, but it’s the only way for a company to succeed and scale over time

This is absolutely not true. It never has been at any point in history. Not even CEOs would claim such a thing until the 1980s, and they were wrong then as now.

Even today, Costco and other businesses are thriving.

Stop drinking the Koolaid.

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

#315

Post by keithnz »

reverend_gonzo wrote: post #268
scottlamb wrote: post #213

> We’ll be concentrating around AI-native talent Is this code for "we're firing all the old people"? As I understand it, I can say I'll only hire proficient English speakers (a "bona fide occupational requirement"), but I can't say I'll only hire native speakers, as that would discriminate against various protected groups. This seems like the same thing—proficiency may be a bona fide requirement, but expecting they l…

I would disagree. I am among the oldest on our team and also the most in tune with AI. I see AI-native as those who have embraced it, and are learning to leverage it appropriately.

Same, I've been coding for 40+ years, and other people I know of similar length of time also seem real quick to adopt AI. I'm constantly having to show the young devs how to get the most out of their AI agents and also adapting my workflows regularly as things changes. Weirdly its some of the youngest who are most resistant, I think because they are learning coding skills, and just have got the hang of coding such that they are productive, and AI is coming in and taking that away from them largely, they are still keen to code. While I've enjoyed coding, realistically it's always been the bottleneck in creating software. A lot of the process is about how to effectively manage that bottle neck, now a lot more options are available. Iterating quick, trying different things, experimenting. Much easier to throw something away when you have better ideas.

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

#316

Post by Cyclone_ »

londons_explore wrote: post #219

AI is the next big hype. Crypto was a big hype of last decade. Every year that goes by there are fewer people interested in an old hype, and therefore a smaller and smaller market for coinbase. Coinbase is on a path to death. It might take 20 years, but the decline has already begun.

I would have to agree. It seems like most of the new funding is going to AI at the expense of crypto.

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

#317

Post by tylervigen »

wiseowise wrote: post #41

> - No pure managers: Every leader at Coinbase must also be a strong and active individual contributor. Managers should be like player-coaches, getting their hands dirty alongside their teams. 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 bio…

The player-coach analogy is very common in role definitions, and it is real concept in sports: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player-coach

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

#318

Post by orochimaaru »

wiseowise wrote: post #41

> - No pure managers: Every leader at Coinbase must also be a strong and active individual contributor. Managers should be like player-coaches, getting their hands dirty alongside their teams. 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 bio…

>>> And AI clowns will cheer and applaud this, not seeing that they're now doing the job of 5(!) people with the same salary. Why is nobody talking about this?

I don't think anyone is applauding this. The only people applauding stuff like this are the CEO's of Anthropic (because that means more tokens/profit). Most other CEO's in big tech have toned down the rhetoric big-time.

The job of 5 people being done with the same salary is a function of the job market. It's an employers market now. So stuff like this happens. If you had an employee's market this wouldn't happen.

fwiw - and this is a separate topic. If health insurance were de-linked from employment most people would flee the job market on their own.

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

#319

Post by strken »

lkbm wrote: post #150
turtlebits wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who cares? If you're getting laid off, the only thing that really matters is the severance package. Its all lip service - either AI generated or hand written.

> If you're getting laid off, the only thing that really matters is the severance package. I don't think this is true. Humans typically prefer "thanks for the hard work, here's your severance" to "you suck, here's your severance, loser." Humans like being treated with respect, and words are a big part of that. Money is nice, but it's not the only thing we care about.

The difference between the "thanks" email and the "loser" email is that the second one is intentionally disrespectful.

I'm not convinced a polite but AI-written email hits the same note. At the very least it's unintentionally disrespectful, which isn't a direct challenge. Your boss doesn't care enough to write an email by hand, but also doesn't care enough to burn bridges and insult you.

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

#320

Post by Raidion »

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.

As a manager with 10-15 reports at a company you've probably heard of, I think the main question is how much they will need to contribute. I put up a PR or three a week, usually in non-critical path flows or system support, and its honestly fine. I could barely contribute to the productivity level of even one of my junior engineers, but I can debug production issues and ship code AND be a good manager (with a decent work life balance).

I feel like managers should be able to contribute. Managing a good team isn't that hard, though managing a bad team (or a good team in the midst of a ton of bad processes) is a nightmare.

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