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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%

#331

Post by ChaseMeAway »

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…

Perhaps it is time to unionize.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unionization_in_the_tech_secto...

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

#332

Post by davesque »

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.

Yeah AI is the perfect scapegoat for layoffs recently to soften the impact on stock price and investor confidence. Coinbase is obviously doing layoffs because they are strongly tethered to a stock market that is rattled by political conflict and economic uncertainty.

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

#333

Post by tootie »

kenferry wrote: post #326

> 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's the theory on this? It seems to be common conclusion, but I don't understand why AI changes the situation here. I understand that AI means you can do more with fewer people. Fewer people means less coordination overhead an…

Getting rid of middle managers has been the game plan for every headcount reduction for the last 50 years. They always seem expendable until a few months later when senior managers get overwhelmed and staff get confused and they end up making the same org they just destroyed.

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

#334

Post by 827a »

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…

You have to look past literally everything their leadership is saying and at the heart of the matter: This is a dying company, and they physically will not have the capital to pay paychecks if they don't do this. Everything else is window dressing to try to keep investors on-board, but they aren't buying it, and neither should you.

The crypto market winter that started in Q4 last year led to Coinbase's ~worst quarter ever ($667M loss). Crypto has not recovered. Coinbase has done nothing to stem the outflows. That same quarter HOOD showed a net profit of $605M; and showed a $346M profit last week. COIN and HOOD are two very similar companies.

COIN's earnings are in two days. They preceded the earnings call with layoffs, which is always a bad sign. And HOOD's net income has dropped by like 40%, though they're still at least profitable. You should be prepared for COIN to announce a similar drop; except, COIN wasn't even profitable before. Its going to be a bloodbath.

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

#335

Post by tokioyoyo »

pron wrote: post #310

> Over the past year, I’ve watched engineers use AI to ship in days what used to take a team weeks. No, you didn't. You watched engineers use AI to ship in days something that looks like what used to take a team weeks. After enough rounds of feature evolution, you'll realise that what they actually shipped isn't at all the same. Anthropic's C compiler, which also seemed like a good start that would have taken people…

I commented this yesterday, I’ll repeat it again - what do you guys think organizations that have heavily leaned into AI are shipping nowadays?

Most devs aren’t working on cutting edge, low level, mission critical systems. AI is great for that. Every company I personally know have been fast shipping features that are being used daily by millions of people for the past 7 months.

We have the same thing on my team, and we also understand the limitations of AI generated code. If you’re more or less experienced, you can easily see the “good” and “bad” sides of it. So you kinda plan it out in a way that you can “evolve AI generated software”. I wouldn’t say the same thing in 2025 January, but it’s much different times now. Things are already working.

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

#336

Post by senordevnyc »

cheema33 wrote: post #324
l0gicpath wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fail to see how this is specific to a crypto company. You’re drawing a correlation that’s not backed up by any empirical evidence. The GP post describes a common problem in _most_ workplaces in the market today. It’s not specific to crypto, AI, or anything in between.

> I fail to see how this is specific to a crypto company. It is not specific to a crypto company. But the element of it being a crypto company cannot be ignored. Crypto companies are not like ordinary businesses. They have very unique qualities to them. Same with crypto industry as a whole. Ever been to a crypto conference for example? I have read about and have seen the videos. These things have the highest concentr…

Ever been to a crypto conference for example? I have read about and have seen the videos.

Actually, it sounds like you’re the one who hasn’t been to a crypto conference :)

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

#337

Post by hadlock »

ChaseMeAway wrote: post #331
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…

Perhaps it is time to unionize. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unionization_in_the_tech_secto...

Unions can't fix the fact that crypto didn't survive it's first real Flight to Quality and is suffering against gold.

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

#338

Post by randallsquared »

pron wrote: post #310

> Over the past year, I’ve watched engineers use AI to ship in days what used to take a team weeks. No, you didn't. You watched engineers use AI to ship in days something that looks like what used to take a team weeks. After enough rounds of feature evolution, you'll realise that what they actually shipped isn't at all the same. Anthropic's C compiler, which also seemed like a good start that would have taken people…

> In a year or so

Look at the best models from Spring 2025, and compare with now (and similarly for Springs 2024 and 2025). Armstrong and lots of others are betting that this trend will continue, and if it does, the LLMs will ship code the LLMs understand, and whether any human specifically understands any particular part will mostly not matter.

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

#339

Post by pron »

tokioyoyo wrote: post #335
pron wrote: post #310

> Over the past year, I’ve watched engineers use AI to ship in days what used to take a team weeks. No, you didn't. You watched engineers use AI to ship in days something that looks like what used to take a team weeks. After enough rounds of feature evolution, you'll realise that what they actually shipped isn't at all the same. Anthropic's C compiler, which also seemed like a good start that would have taken people…

I commented this yesterday, I’ll repeat it again - what do you guys think organizations that have heavily leaned into AI are shipping nowadays? Most devs aren’t working on cutting edge, low level, mission critical systems. AI is great for that. Every company I personally know have been fast shipping features that are being used daily by millions of people for the past 7 months. We have the same thing on my team, and…

> If you’re more or less experienced, you can easily see the “good” and “bad” sides of it. So you kinda plan it out in a way that you can “evolve AI generated software”.

If you're truly "managing fleets of agents" there's no way you're able to sift through the good and the bad in the output. If your AI-generated code is evolvable (which is hard to tell right now) then you're not writing it with "fleets of agents". If you are writing it with fleets of agents, I would bet it's not evolvable; you just haven't reached the breaking point yet.

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

#340

Post by gordian-mind »

Markoff wrote: post #82
baal80spam wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as European I would say this is fairly standard I must live in a different Europe then. I'd say this would be EXTREMELY generous for Europe.

well, everyone has different experiences, but just to make it clear, I was calculating ordinary salary during notice period into severance pay since in many companies it's essentially severance pay: 1. you get fired with 2 months notice period and they will tell you, you don't need to bother to come anymore = 2 months of severance, you can sit at home, look for job for 2 months with full salary 2. on top of this you…

The European model will never be better than the U.S. one for productive workers like in tech. Tech workers in the U.S. have the same benefits as EU ones for three times the salary.
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