Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 842 posts

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

#361

Post by smrtinsert »

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…

Can I push to production anytime I want? I can run 10000 agents then no problem. I'll just move fast and break things and I'll get massive cheers because its AI.

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

#362

Post by securicat »

bombcar wrote: post #159
prewett wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this is about as good of a layoff email as he could have sent. Except for that tone-deaf part at the end, where right after he talks to the people who "will be leaving" (that is, the people getting kicked out), he says that Coinbase will be stronger and healthier for this. Which makes it hard not to draw the conclusion that the people "leaving" are part of the unhealth. The CEO probably does not even think that, an…

It would be amusing but counterproductive to have a layoff email talk about how they’re firing their best and smartest employees.

So just leave it out.

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

#363

Post by dekayed »

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.

We already have these in the industry. They're Staff+ Engineers and Architects. It's generally the norm to not be cranking out code at this level, but they make sure everyone is moving in the right direction, assisting managers, and mentoring juniors.

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

#364

Post by missedthecue »

archagon wrote: post #294
missedthecue wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like this would just select for business leaders that take zero risk.

I don’t think I’ve heard of a single tech CEO resigning for massively fucking up. They only “take responsibility” to the extent of saying those magic words.

Well there's the several billion of severance expense. I mean do we want to hang someone every time there are layoffs?

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

#366

Post by atonse »

pron wrote: post #341
randallsquared wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

And if the trend doesn't continue? I understand that a company with Coinbase's performance has little to lose and not many options, but many companies are in a better position. The problem is that executives could take the 15-20% productivity boost and be content, but they read stuff like this, get greedy, and they don't understand the risk they're taking.

Even if the trend doesn’t continue, the current models are very very good. They’re better than the average programmer in the industry, already.

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

#367

Post by alexandre_m »

blizdiddy wrote: post #330
alexandre_m wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's ridiculous. You're making it sound like they were working for Nazi Germany. Have some empathy for people losing their jobs because of upper management’s incompetence.

I forgot that all criticism is reserved for… Nazis? Chill Have some empathy for the misled retail investor that gambled their savings to thieves?

I’m genuinely curious what the hell you’re talking about.

Did I miss some news where Coinbase literally stole people’s money, or at least did something that could reasonably be called evil?

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

#369

Post by giancarlostoro »

voncheese wrote: post #358

To put the 14% into some context, per Google, Coinbase headcount has had the following headcount each year + 2021 | 3,730 employees + 2022 | 4,706 employees + 2023 | 3,416 employees + 2024 | 3,772 employees + 2025 | 4,951 employees + 2026 | 4,250* *Estimated following May 2026 layoffs. So the reduction gets them closer, but still higher than where they were in 2024. Given the fact that the crypto business doesn't see…

Every company is going back to pre-COVID employee headcounts because they all had to overhire due to all the turnover which has stabilized to pre-COVID era levels.

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

#370

Post by techblueberry »

bix6 wrote: post #354
pron wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about caring how it works. It's about caring that it keeps working at all even after you add stuff to it for a year or three (and nearly all software written by companies is software they evolve).

And who’s to say it won’t? It’s working now. I’m adding stuff and it’s still working. Why won’t that continue in year 3?

Because the API’s it uses will change? Nothing in tech is static. And that’s just going to get worse re: this whole AI thing.
Post reply on HN