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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%

#551

Post by smugglerFlynn »

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…

“Welcome to layoffemailreviews.com - your daily source of best and most honest layoff email reviews in the industry.

Is there a flood of talent leaving after this one? Major breaches? Only time will tell.

Buckle up, and don’t forget your pudding!”

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

#553

Post by discordance »

“ I'm sorry. I didn't think it would be this hard. But goodbyes are always hard, especially when I am the one saying goodbye. Today, effective immediately, I, Gavin Belson, founder and CEO of Hooli, am forced to officially say goodbye to the entire Nucleus division. (MURMURING) All Nucleus personnel will be given proper notice and terminated. But make no mistake. Though they're the ones leaving, it is I who must remain and bear the heavy burden of their failure. It is my fault. I trusted them to get the job done. But that is the price of leadership. Thank you.”

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

#554

Post by robocat »

vitaflo wrote: post #126
orangecoffee wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the alternative

Start your own company. If you’re already doing everything yourself then you don’t need to do it for someone else.

Starting a company needs a lot more than those three skills. Plenty of people choose a pay packet with less stress.

Many founders recycle into tech jobs after they discover exactly why failure rates of startups are so brutal. Apparently 15-25% of employees aged 30–39 at major SV companies have a failed or acquihired startup in their history. Golden handcuffs can appear very pretty after you've missed out on striking gold by yourself.

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

#555

Post by mdavid626 »

adamtaylor_13 wrote: post #374
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 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.

Shipping garbage.

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

#556

Post by hansmayer »

> including “one person teams” with engineers, designers, and product managers all in one role.

The reads like typical MBA-efficiency-idiocy taken to the extreme. Clearly this guy is so deeply isolated from the actual work that he cannot even begin to comprehend just how utterly stupid this idea is. It's one thing to push for 100x engineering "output" with "AI", but something completely different to expect a single person to be 3-4 persons in one. Pure schizophrenia - but at least companies like Coinbase which adopt the AI-first illusion will burn themselves faster and leave the room for something new and genuinely innovative.

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

#557

Post by sajithdilshan »

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…

What makes you think old people have inferior knowledge on AI?

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

#558

Post by delis-thumbs-7e »

bruce511 wrote: post #505
delis-thumbs-7e wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s funny when bunch of nerds try to mask the fact they have know idea what they’re doing by some lame allegory to sports, military, or some other discipline supposedly more manly and rugger than girly (yugh) math, logic and programming. “We at the coding company LovelyBeeBunny should be like the samurai’s of the old, willing to pull our swords to die for emperor…” etc. And it is always riddled with complete misunde…

Your categorization of math, logic and programming as "girly" is hilarious. When I grew up those were the very definition of "not girly". Our math and comp sci faculties at uni would bend over backwards for any of the girl students. I would agree though that academics in general were "not manly" and at school at least streams of "academic" or "sporty" existed. For boys anyway. For the girls (less fascinated by sports…

I was being sarcastic (I at least hoped it was obvious). There is probably nothing as illogical as assigning a gender to a logic - or maths or science for that matter. I also find it pretty stupid how “girly” is considered an insult. I prefer girly to being thick.

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

#559

Post by BadBadJellyBean »

smugglerFlynn wrote: post #548
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.

If everything is high prio nothing is and if the backlog is always full it's not a problem if it fills up even more. If I am at the assembly line, I am doing my darnedest not to make it run faster. One can only sprint so long.

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

#560

Post by hansmayer »

cyberclimb wrote: post #222
vdnkh wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This email was 100% AI generated. I just edited a similar sentence from a claude code doc I'm writing - "we're not just X, we're fundamentally Y" is an obvious tell. I guess he's putting his money where his mouth is

> To get there, we are not just reducing headcount and cutting costs, we’re fundamentally changing how we operate: rebuilding Coinbase as an intelligence, with humans around the edge aligning it. For sure this part screams LLM

+1 and the irony of this CEO-Idiot calling LLMs "intelligence" and putting people, the stupidest of which are 1000x orders of magnitude more intelligent than an LLM, in the second spot "aligning it", i.e. fixing the AI slop.
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