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Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

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Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#101
post #10

Initiatives like the Dot Collector and the Performance review system that has led to a toxic workplace culture I was curious about that "Dot Collector": Dot collector was an application invented by Ray Dalio’s hedge fund and Bridgewater Associates. The application has set its foot in Coinbase since the start of the year and has been in use by the HR and IT teams of the company. The user interface of the app is quite…

> include values like positive energy There is so many things wrong with a system like this. It's asking coworkers to rat on each other. This is dystopian.

Right. I’m reminded of Travis Kalanick’s “super pumped” metric at Uber.

And of course that Black Mirror episode. Constantly evince a super positive energy or else.

Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how well they demonstrate the 10 crore Values at coinbase I wonder if these are the 10 core values, or Coinbase actually has 10 crore (100,000,000) values they want employees to think about... Doesn't seem impossible given some HR departments I've seen.

To paraphrase the economics joke: Coinbase doesn't have any value(s). It has ten prices, none of which are correct, and it doesn't know the difference. Even with slightly less snark: you try to come up with a list of ten "core values" and "positive energy" is one of them? Does anybody notice that "positive energy" is a completely empty shell of a phrase? It's "why are you sad? When I'm sad, I decide to be happy inste…

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Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how well they demonstrate the 10 crore Values at coinbase I wonder if these are the 10 core values, or Coinbase actually has 10 crore (100,000,000) values they want employees to think about... Doesn't seem impossible given some HR departments I've seen.

To paraphrase the economics joke: Coinbase doesn't have any value(s). It has ten prices, none of which are correct, and it doesn't know the difference. Even with slightly less snark: you try to come up with a list of ten "core values" and "positive energy" is one of them? Does anybody notice that "positive energy" is a completely empty shell of a phrase? It's "why are you sad? When I'm sad, I decide to be happy inste…

I disagree, emotional work is work, and « positive energy » sums it up quite well.

Edge cases exist, but when I’m sad, I just stop being sad at work, because it’s been clearly stated, from the first interview, that positivity was a requirement of performance.

One edge case: colleague lost her mother last year, of course we didn’t expect her to perform excruciating emotional work.

Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#106

This is a pretty vague and poorly thought out petition. It leads with the collapse of NFTs, which has little if anything to do with Coinbase or its execs; it complains about infra/tech debt but says nothing about why that's bad, much less the execs' fault; fluff like "a generally apathetic and sometimes condescending attitude" is not actionable; and much of the phrasing like "the wisdom of the crypto industry" (lolwu…

>> It leads with the collapse of NFTs, which has little if anything to do with Coinbase or its execs; it complains about infra/tech debt but says nothing about why that's bad, much less the execs' fault;

It has everything to with Coinbase and it's execs. The astronomical compensations at C-suite and leadership is to build strategy and vision around where to invest (e.g. NFTs?), how to differentiate your offering (e.g. vs. Open Sea), and how to minimize risk, and maximize success (e.g. adoption).

Investing too much in new initiatives, while not building the right platforms, and tech infra for it, will lead to even higher tech debt and more chaos - so they seem like logically reasonable complaints. Whether they are true or not I have no idea but the points do not seem vague at all.

Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#107
post #10

Initiatives like the Dot Collector and the Performance review system that has led to a toxic workplace culture I was curious about that "Dot Collector": Dot collector was an application invented by Ray Dalio’s hedge fund and Bridgewater Associates. The application has set its foot in Coinbase since the start of the year and has been in use by the HR and IT teams of the company. The user interface of the app is quite…

> include values like positive energy There is so many things wrong with a system like this. It's asking coworkers to rat on each other. This is dystopian.

Did this as far back as 18 years ago - but in a team of four people. You can see the problem with that.

Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To paraphrase the economics joke: Coinbase doesn't have any value(s). It has ten prices, none of which are correct, and it doesn't know the difference. Even with slightly less snark: you try to come up with a list of ten "core values" and "positive energy" is one of them? Does anybody notice that "positive energy" is a completely empty shell of a phrase? It's "why are you sad? When I'm sad, I decide to be happy inste…

I disagree, emotional work is work, and « positive energy » sums it up quite well. Edge cases exist, but when I’m sad, I just stop being sad at work , because it’s been clearly stated, from the first interview, that positivity was a requirement of performance. One edge case: colleague lost her mother last year, of course we didn’t expect her to perform excruciating emotional work.

This sounds like a company I would never want to work for.

No one is positive and happy all the time and having to fake it "as a job requirement" sounds wrong on so many levels.

Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#109

I’ve become convinced that hiring more people is generally a warning sign. A team of between a few and about twenty people seems to produce all the good stuff. Anything beyond that, your value per employee drops drastically, and your cost per employee goes up as you need to offer higher and higher salaries to stay in competition. A company going on a hiring spree is now a negative indicator for me. I think FB, Goog,…

I too think this and I have no data or anything to back this up. Just a cut feeling as well.
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