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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%

#541

Post by happymellon »

keithnz wrote: post #315
reverend_gonzo wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

I've been coding for 25 years now, and it's not that I see AI as evil, but more that it doesn't solve any of my problems or looking back, any problems I had at previous roles.

It's always been someone higher up the ranking wants meetings, training or something dumb because his golf buddy sold him on Kafka support contracts in inappropriate situations, or an architect needs to shoehorn some tech in so they can have it in their designs ready for their next job role. I spend probably more time in meetings than doing coding.

Why can't I have an AI that takes my meetings for me?

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

#542

Post by dwd »

rossriley wrote: post #504
dwd wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Kenny Dalglish for Liverpool too, winning the double whilst a player-manager.

And kicking the goal in the final match that secured the Premiership. Definitely counts as being a "professional" league.

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

#543

Post by duskdozer »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #383
mooreds wrote: post #51

I'll probably get some flack for this, but this is about as good of a layoff email as he could have sent. * explains the reasons (financials, AI enablement) * talks about what folks who are leaving get in detail (first) and thanks them * talks to the folks who are staying Layoffs are hard, no doubt, and I am not sure he's making the right choice. I see plenty of doubt about some of the actions in other comments that…

I assume blaming AI is a way to soften the blow even if its not really a reason, it sounds hip and attractive to investors who want to hear that sort of thing.

Of course it is. That's the reason it's getting pushed so hard. Their end game ideal would be to get rid of all the developers.

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

#544

Post by LaFolle »

LaFolle wrote: post #508

Can't access x.com, getting "Invalid request rewrite". Has anyone else seen it?

It started working after sometime but had hit this issue multiple times. Even my friend in AU hit the same error when he tried to open the same hn link.

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

#545

Post by CamouflagedKiwi »

muzani wrote: post #530
kelnos wrote: post #515

> Leaders will own much more, with as many as 15+ direct reports. [...] 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. Oof. So not only are they giving their remaining managers more reports, but those managers will be expected to do lots of other, non-management work. Sure, nothing can go wrong…

This jumped out at me right away too. What happened to the days when a dedicated manager would manage 8 reports? What now? AI is going to double the communication bandwidth with these reports and further double the free time they have? I do think the most efficient form of team is a "cell" of three people. One is a little unstable.

> What happened to the days when a dedicated manager would manage 8 reports?

Cheap money went away which caused companies to start asking hard questions about productivity and how much those dedicated managers were contributing.

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

#546

Post by rohin15 »

tootie wrote: post #333
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.

Exactly, it's too easy to overlook the balancing that good middle managers do.

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

#547

Post by audunw »

SkyPuncher wrote: post #439
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…

Yes, it can. I do this regularly. I have literally built and shipped multiple things that would have taken me many many months to do and I’ve done it in under a week. Many of these are LLM heavy features where the LLM can literally self-evaluate and self-optimize. I start with a general feature, it will generate adverse, synthetic data, it will build a feature, optimize it the figure out new places to improve. 1 year…

The C compiler was a prime example of an application where the LLM can self-evaluate/optimise, with one of the best set of tests could imagine. Yet the end result was a mess.

I have experienced areas where high productivity can be had without much loss in quality. So I can believe it. But it really depends on what you’re doing and I firmly believe many companies will run out of easy stuff that we can blaze through with AI fairly quickly. At least that’s where we seem to be heading

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

#548

Post by smugglerFlynn »

kelnos wrote: post #515

> Leaders will own much more, with as many as 15+ direct reports. [...] 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. Oof. So not only are they giving their remaining managers more reports, but those managers will be expected to do lots of other, non-management work. Sure, nothing can go wrong…

> They're not going to get to spend enough time meeting each report's needs, not a chance.

What needs? If you squeeze people hard enough there are no needs anymore, only responsibilities and urgent+important backlogs that have no bottom.

Welcome to 2026.

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

#550

Post by Terr_ »

CityOfThrowaway wrote: post #433
Terr_ wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hold up, even before discussing the word "native", there's a weird logical-disconnect between the above two comments. I think paraphrasing is the simplest way to illustrate: {1} scottlamb: "I suspect their lofty stated goal of X is a lie, to disguise their true goal of Y, which is something common which companies find much easier and more-desirable." {2} CityOfThrowaway: "You are wrong, because it's obvious that X is…

Sure, but we're talking about Coinbase, which is a relatively young company not staffed with a bunch of old people in the first place. It's totally random to accuse them of using "AI-native" to fire old people.

> a relatively young company not staffed with a bunch of old people

1. What statistics support this assumption? (Either for Coinbase specifically, or "tech companies" in general.)

2. Nobody has to be a literal greybeard in order to be in the crosshairs of downsizing. Just look at Amazon's "make them quit before vesting finishes" pattern.

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