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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%

#461

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.

They can always announce they work in AI now and change nothing.

Or maybe they have to start designing shoes first, IDK.

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

#462
post #413
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…

The only successful Player-Coach that comes to mind was Eric Cantona as player-manager of the France national beach soccer team after leaving Manchester United aged 30. He won the 2004 Euro Championship, the 2005 FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup along with a number of top 4 places over his 15 years as player and/or coach.

Bill Russell. Won 9 championships as a Boston Celtic under legendary coach Red Auerbach, and alongside Hall of Famers like Bob Cousy. Then became the coach and starting center for 3 more years and won two more championships.

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

#463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am an engineer. I hire other engineers. I run a company that ships usable software for small businesses. We do this every day. I'm sorry to say, we are indeed shipping in days what used to take weeks.

As a software engineer who also hires other software engineers, I’m curious about the disconnect in our experiences. I do systems programming. Before AI feature development roughly went like, design, implement, test, review with some back edges and a lot of time spent in test and review. AI has made the implementation part much faster, at the cost of even more time spent testing and reviewing, though still an improve…

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

#464
post #407

From some of the previous decisions taken by Brian, and the quality of his discourse on twitter, it feels like he has succumbed to something that afflicts a lot of rich people with frail egos: surrounding themselves with yes-men, they rarely engage with the reality as-is and instead with a make believe one. Elon Must also suffers from this as do the founders of AirBnB. It wasn't that long ago that, in SV, the dominan…

> "as do the founders of AirBnB."

This resonates but I can't put my finger on why for the founders of AirBnB. Do you have examples? Obviously true for Elon.

It seems like the previous generation of founders were always paranoid that their companies could/would fail in an instant, which led to the management styles of Andy Grove, Gates, Jobs etc (and I'd argue Larry and Sergey as well). That mindset meant they knew they couldn't afford to be surrounded by yes man and their egos were secure enough when challenged by their underlings.

Despite the intensity of all three, you hear stories of how Gates only respected people who could credibly argue back against him, Jobs empowered his team, etc. The current generation of founders seem to believe their own mythical BS to such an extent that anyone who disagrees with them is culled from the organization, resulting in a natural selection effect of only the yes-men survive.

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

#465
post #145
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…

Reminds me of how kings used to (I think, I'm bad at history) actually fight the battles themselves. Now the head of state, the head of government and the other top people don't fight themselves. Even the admirals only plan and command, AFAIK.

Less fight, more be present on the battlefield as a show of confidence.

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

#466

> - 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…

I don't get it either. LLMs put the enshittification of software engineering into overdrive. The job is less fun (reviewing AI slop, sometimes even produced by entirely non-tech people like managers), the expectation of increased productivity, the expectation that we can now do the job of multiple people and salaries will decrease as well. I don't understand how so many software engineers I know cheer for this technology.

Do they not see that this will drastically change their lives for the worse? I'm in Europe, none of them has ever earned "fuck you" money.

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

#467

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.

It's a nice spin. The AI is so productive that we can cut people. Not "revenue is down, so we have to cut people"

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

#468
post #334

> - 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…

what is happening to crypto that is causing this? I was thinking with the recent conflicts crypto would thrive, if anything.

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

#469

> - 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…

I would really like to see professional, established coach running around with young prodigies on a peak of their biology.

Bill Russell is (was) the guy you’re looking for and he is arguably the greatest basketball player of all time.

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

#470
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Hockey also has Captain (e.g. Mark Messier) and Alternate Captain roles, in addition to the Corey Perry types who aren't titled.
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