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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%

#561

Post by siren2026 »

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…

Or maybe we should go back to what it was before Google and big $$$ tech decided that if you were a "manager" you shouldn't contribute technically. Being a manager now means a bunch of busy work talking to other managers and weekly 1:1s. There is a ton that has been written about the managerial class. Producing nothing, but for sure making themselves look self-important.

Before that the manager was essentially the best engineer in the team (or the one that wanted to get promoted). Being a manger meant you were respected directly for your skills and you were expected to still be a full time contributor. Directors meant you were one of the best ICs out there. Now, being a manager or a director means you sometimes did an MBA in an unrelated field. This brought a ton of politics, nonsense meetings (because the most visible output for managers is more meetings where they can posture).

Let's go back to what it used to be. We don't need weekly 1:1s to check on feelings. We don't need a full layer of managers syncing with each others and taking political decisions that will mainly advance them. We don't need another layer of gatekeepers.

I'm not saying all managers are bad, but this charade has been pushed a bit too far.

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

#562

Post by aprilthird2021 »

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.

Give an example.

I have an example in my line of work. Full service rewrite in a new language. Would have taken forever without AI. AI makes it easier, faster. The service has better throughput, uses less machines. Having a complete full test harness that allows us to ensure we are meeting all the functionality of the previous service is key. AND we are keeping the old service on standby because we know we don't know what might be wrong with the new one.

What's your example?

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

#563

Post by ultratalk »

friendzis wrote: post #539
kuboble wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuine question. Let's say you are bad with words. If you ask AI to generate hundred different paragraphs and choose the one which best conveys what you actually feel and want to communicate. Is it is still a perfect nothing?

> Is it is still a perfect nothing? You do get how that's worse, right? The person rather spends their time arguing with the clanker than thinking about the person and putting those thought into words, however unstructured they are.

Yeah, but communication is a two-way street. It might not matter to me that my words are unstructured, but it will to the person I'm writing to if they can't make head nor tail of what I'm saying, or worse, misunderstand it as being insulting when it isn't.

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

#564

Post by aprilthird2021 »

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…

What's an example of such a thing? Just curious

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

#565

Post by SomaticPirate »

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…

I think unethical and illegal activity is par for the course in most realms of American business. And I would replace “sued into oblivion” with mandatory arbitration and “appropriate settlement”.

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

#566

Post by aprilthird2021 »

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…

Also, why use the analogy of player-coaches? How many successful player-coaches are there in the big leagues? There's a reason it's very uncommon ...

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

#567

Post by lwhi »

turtlebits wrote: post #118
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

Who cares? If you're getting laid off, the only thing that really matters is the severance package. Its all lip service - either AI generated or hand written.

If the main guy's email is written by AI, at this point we're actually in an invasion of the body snatchers scenario.

Who actually is required?

.. fundamentally, it's only the person collecting payment.

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

#568

Post by smugglerFlynn »

BadBadJellyBean wrote: post #559
smugglerFlynn wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It is not a problem if you are an assembly line robot making motions. People, however, are not robots. They get held accountable by their higher-ups for delivering on these (often nonsensical) priorities, they risk getting fired when expectations are not met, and high uncertainty of faulty planning systems like that is extremely stressful in itself.

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

#569

Post by skippyboxedhero »

siren2026 wrote: post #561
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…

Or maybe we should go back to what it was before Google and big $$$ tech decided that if you were a "manager" you shouldn't contribute technically. Being a manager now means a bunch of busy work talking to other managers and weekly 1:1s. There is a ton that has been written about the managerial class. Producing nothing, but for sure making themselves look self-important. Before that the manager was essentially the be…

As a data point, I work at a US company that ended up in this place and the same thing is happening.

In my BU there were directors with 2 direct reports. Even at the next level up, the number of non-IC directs is only high single digits. There are many managers who were already engaging technically with the product (not PRs but playing an active role in planning work) and they have no idea what directors are actually doing...aside from attending meetings with other directors.

Almost all decision-making capacity has been moved outside of teams which has resulted in almost no actual work (because everything needs to be cleared by someone with no engagement with product) and people leaving (because promo decisions are made by people who have no idea what anyone is contributing, the worst ICs are the only ones they can retain ofc).

It is a terrible environment to work in.

I don't necessarily think the manager should be best IC but definitely someone who is genuinely talented with sufficient scope and responsibility to make good decisions/add value for ICs. There are way too many passengers today.

Also, this is true of higher-level ICs. At my work, they have no real engagement with product so have influence through ambiguous statements about the general direction that get passed around like the word of God. None of these decisions, so far, have been helpful or relevant.

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

#570

Post by johanyc »

kelnos wrote: post #517
LaFolle wrote: post #508

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

Same. Replace x.com with xcancel.com and it'll load there.

Direct link https://xcancel.com/brian_armstrong/status/20516167591451857...
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