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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%

#731

Post by t43562 »

reverend_gonzo wrote: post #268
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 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.

...but you're probably expensive and getting rid of expensive people without being involved in an "ageism" lawsuit is a great gift to a CEO.

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

#732

Post by t43562 »

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.

It might just be "expensive" people - old is relative.

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

#733

Post by shipman05 »

irishcoffee wrote: post #689
parliament32 wrote: post #662

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We don't need weekly 1:1s to check on feelings Hard agree. One-on-ones are one of the silliest fads in our industry lately. Why would you wait until a weekly scheduled meeting to bring something up? Your manager's job is to be available to you when you need something, not just once a week. And if they want to know how you're feeling.. they should ask, putting it on an agenda feels very disingenuous. Me and my direc…

I make it a point to have 5-10 minute ad-hoc conversations with my directs 1-2 times a week, feels a lot more natural than a scheduled 1-on-1. Twice a year we have a company-sanctioned formal sit-down about perf. As a result, people pop in my office regularly to start these conversations, which I prefer because it leads me to believe I am approachable, which is by far one of the most important things a manager should…

> I make it a point to have 5-10 minute ad-hoc conversations with my directs 1-2 times a week, feels a lot more natural than a scheduled 1-on-1.

I prefer the exact opposite, especially when working remote.

When I was a manager, I saved non-urgent topics for a weekly 1-1 instead of pestering busy people with "Quick chat?" or "Do you have a minute?" messages. I wish others would do the same.

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

#734

Post by shepardrtc »

dahart wrote: post #672
siren2026 wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> We don't need weekly 1:1s to check on feelings. As a manager that does weekly 1:1s, I agree with that statement. But I do need 1:1s to check on progress, uncover blockers that people haven’t surfaced on their own, make continuous small decisions, offer support, assess performance, collect status information for my manager, and last but not least give employees the opportunity to share feelings frequently. They do,…

> uncover blockers that people haven’t surfaced on their own

I constantly reiterate to people, whether they're reporting to me or not, that they need to speak up when there's a blocker. I feel its a very telling skill of engineers whether or not they can communicate issues in an effective manner urgently and figure out the best course of action to unblock.

I've heard tales of 300k/yr engineers that just sit there and wait for a manager to ask if they're blocked, or just sit there until they're told what to do.

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

#735

Post by izacus »

missedthecue wrote: post #274
chrsw wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I'm not buying this story about layoffs due to AI. It's a convenient excuse, which these companies seem to be getting away with too. And something else I don't get about these AI related layoff announcements: if AI was a productivity boost wouldn't you hire more engineers and technical staff to capture the value? Or else you're basically saying "we're a tech company that has no idea what to do with more super-en…

At this point, I truly do not believe there is anything that could happen that would convince HN that LLMs reduce demand for engineering labor hours.

Let's try with you providing some proof instead of talking about belief. We're not a church.

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

#736

Post by t43562 »

SamPatt wrote: post #30

Many comments are mocking the "Non-technical teams are now shipping production code" line as an obvious disaster waiting to happen. I think this will be commonplace in the not too distant future. Some disasters will happen, just like they did before AI. Skeptics will gleefully point out these failures while more and more non-technical teams ship code.

What could also happen is that we stop needing companies that produce software altogether.

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

#737

Post by AdrianB1 »

broken-kebab wrote: post #607
siren2026 wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The best manager I had in my career was a guy with zero software dev experience. Technical skills and leadership are simply different fields. Converting a best engineer into a mediocre manager doesn't sound like a solution for anything.

I wonder how the best manager was not qualified to understand what his team is doing, if they do it right or not and was also not able to help them in case there was a technical challenge. This is not how successful companies operated when they became successful, before getting bloated.

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

#738

Post by kmac_ »

muyuu wrote: post #698
exabrial wrote: post #666

Please stop calling it "AI First". Call it "we overhired, and bitcoin prices are in the tank" and be honest.

They overhired, and BTC prices not being actually in the tank won't save them.

BTC's price isn't the point. Crypto businesses are a shrinking niche (not counting cases like Binance, but those are exceptions), and VC money has moved on. Crypto had its shot but couldn't go mainstream. AI is a better bet now.

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

#739

Post by Centigonal »

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…

Crazy jeremiad here. This never existed as a norm across the industry outside pockets like Bell Labs. Office Space was not a film about Google's pioneering new management philosophy.

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

#740

Post by toraway »

maccard wrote: post #621
adamtaylor_13 wrote: post #374

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.

Can you link to a changelog that shows the 5-10x feature increases? I keep hearing this, but I don’t see anything I use ever actually shipping like this, or people backing this up with any sort of proof.

That reminds me of a chart I saw posted in HN comments recently that someone created tracking bullet points in Claude Code release notes per day that was cited as "proof of a step change" in AI development over the last year. It showed like a dozen or so on average that jumped to to like over 50 one month and stayed around that number.

(Not the exact same chart but similar idea, I guess it's sort of a meme: https://imgur.com/a/YrNGYOR)

So I looked at the most recent CC release notes on Github and the majority look like this:

  Fixed /clear not resetting the terminal tab title after a conversation
  Fixed session title chip from /rename disappearing while a permission or other dialog is active
  Fixed agent panel below the prompt being hidden when subagents are running (regression in 2.1.122)
  Fixed external-editor handoff (Ctrl+G) blanking the conversation history above the prompt
  Fixed /context dumping its rendered ASCII visualization grid into the conversation, wasting ~1.6k tokens per call
  Fixed OAuth refresh race after wake-from-sleep that could log out all running sessions
  Fixed 1-hour prompt cache TTL being silently downgraded to 5 minutes
  Fixed cache-miss warning appearing spuriously after /clear or compaction when changing /effort or /model
I'd be extremely interested to know what percentage of these were just fixing last week's Claude Code written PR that no human ever set eyes on.

But hey, all that churn looks great on charts being circulated on social media as free advertising for their flagship product (and consequently the company's valuation) so never mind, LGTM!

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