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Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

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Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

#111

Post by krapp »

pettycashstash2 wrote: post #82
irl_chad wrote: post #11

[flagged]

Thomas Edison interviewed candidates for research assistant positions, he offered them a bowl of soup. Why? He wanted to see whether they would add salt or pepper to the soup before they tasted it. Those who did were automatically ruled out. Edison wanted people who didn't make assumptions, since assumptions tend to be innovation killers.

> Edison wanted people who didn't make assumptions, since assumptions tend to be innovation killers.

... this was the man who assumed DC power was superior to Tesla's AC power and made every effort he could to stand in the way of innovations that threatened his own bottom line.

What an asshole.

Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

#112

Post by MattPalmer1086 »

ushakov wrote: post #83

> I've made the difficult decision to reduce our operating expense(1) by about 25% Q/Q, which includes letting go of about 950 people read that again you're not an individual to corporations, just an expendable can only imagine the joy shareholders get out of "cutting expenses", they get richer and you peasants lose jobs

Why would you expect a corporation to treat you as an "individual"? What would that even mean?

You think executives should let a company go bust, rather than shedding staff when times aren't good?

Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

#113

Post by irl_chad »

monkey_monkey wrote: post #81
irl_chad wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot is being demonstrated with it being on your resume: 1) enjoying the technical challenges of crypto is to me like a guilty pleasure. So do I, but I don’t tell the world about it (outside of this HN comment). 2) such a high % of the people involved in crypto are doing something shady or illegal. Personally I would bet that only a slim slim slim monitory of US crypto holders pay their taxes accurately. For any top…

Sure, but then again I wouldn't work for a company whose CEO thinks "irl_chad" is a cool name, and talks about being seen in Kyiv in "designer and an iced out Rolex"

Well, that was pre war. I was pretty nouveau riche. Then I almost got blown up in combat, and my tastes changed.

Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

#114

Post by aliqot »

a13o wrote: post #50
drstewart wrote: post #5

>accountability rests with me as the CEO There it is. Rings incredibly hollow when the same line was trotted out just a few months ago with zero impact or meaning behind the statement, given it clearly didn't change anything.

I don't get why every CEO is cargo culting this line in layoff announcements. It plays extremely poorly because it's clear there's no accountability.

because there is no consequence other than us rolling our eyes.

Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

#115

Post by rvz »

irl_chad wrote: post #11

[flagged]

> To me, seeing crypto on a resume means the engineer is a true believer in viability of crypto, and therefore not smart enough to do well in a big boy company.

Even the skeptics here are laughing at such an absolutely nonsensical comment like this.

I guess engineers at Square, Twitter, Stripe, Mastercard, Visa, Checkout.com, Google, Meta, etc are not doing well for sure despite still having crypto products and partnerships. /s

As always, absolutist comments like this can be safely ignored and laughed at.

Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

#116

Post by rco8786 »

SilverBirch wrote: post #87

Coinbase is a weird company, because it's got such an obvious comparable: CME Group. CME Group has about 3500 employees, did 1.2bn in revenue last quarter with 680m net income. Then you have coinbase now trimmming to about the same number 3500, 590m revenue and a net income loss of 550m. That's right, as far as I can see, Coinbase loses $1 for every $1 of revenue. Firstly, I don't see how Coinbase needs as many peopl…

> They're meant to be a disruptive start up they should be lean.

When has this ever been a thing? They raised tons of money in huge valuations and used it to hire a boatload of people. Tale as old as time.

Agree with the rest of your post though, it’s unclear what their endgame was/is to get into the black.

Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

#117

Post by iLoveOncall »

kasey_junk wrote: post #96
iLoveOncall wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They literally had people with 1-2 years of experience conducting interviews last I remember. What's the problem with that?

It’s indicative of a very inexperienced staff or one that is desperate for interviewers, presumably because they are binge hiring. There are places that go out of their way to get very junior people interviewing early on purpose but in those cases there is usually someone more senior also involved. For most places though it means they were throwing whoever they could find at the interviews.

Why would you need someone with decades of experience to hire an intern or a new grad?

It's customary for a lot of companies to have an interviewer which is above or _at_ the level that you are recruiting. Therefore someone with a year or two of experience is perfectly able to hire an intern or someone that will be hired at the same level as them.

Looking at Amazon for example, "Hire and Develop the Best" is one of the leadership principles, and you CANNOT be promoted if you don't conduct interviews.

Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

#118

Post by mickael-kerjean »

988747 wrote: post #77
Lalabadie wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we're past believing that our top .1% is bringing value that's worth billions of times more than the rest of the population. They're all hoarding wealth and offloading risk on others, it's just that in comparison, the crypto-rich are not (yet?) a social class with an army of lobbyists on its payroll.

> I think we're past believing that our top .1% is bringing value that's worth billions of times more than the rest of the population. Fortunately, we do not have to rely on our beliefs here, we have an objective measure, which we call "money". If someone starts a company in their garage, and a decade later that company is worth few billions of dollars then that's the value this person brought to society - because pe…

By that only measure Nobels are thousand of time less valuable than Sam Bankman Fried

Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

#119

Post by danjac »

irl_chad wrote: post #69
danjac wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm deeply crypto-skeptic but that seems grossly unfair. I've worked for a number of startups that, in retrospect, had terrible business models. Does that make me a "true believer" in their viability? Maybe, but then I learned better. Or maybe I joined because I needed a paycheck and they had a good offer. Either way, my performance as a developer had nothing to do with the viability of their business model. Even if…

That’s an interesting point. But I still wouldn’t include crypto on my resume - instead, leave a gap in the resume, and if the hiring manager asks, explain. It reminds me of how I see a lot of applicants to LinkedIn job posts with people who list their work history all the way back, past their time in the industry. Eg McDonald’s cashier. You may think that has a positive effect (has experience talking to customers, c…

Both these points are unfair to junior developers. Suppose your first job out of college was in crypto? Yeah a mistake, but it shouldn't blacken your entire career, especially if you learned some non-crypto skills in the process. And if it's your first job you need something else in your resume to show you have some non-tech skills and responsibilities. Nothing wrong with cashier in McDonalds, it shows you can work in a team, talk to customers, and deal with pressure.

Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

#120

Post by nibbleshifter »

jeswin wrote: post #47
shp0ngle wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate crypto as much as the next guy, but that's nonsense, sorry. You are filtering out possibly good people. There are still, even now in 2023, so much jobs that are crypto-related, and people still need something to eat. If you are a Rust developer, you pretty much need to do blockchain stuff, as most of the Rust jobs are related to that. And so on.

> If you are a Rust developer, you pretty much need to do blockchain stuff, as most of the Rust jobs are related to that. And so on. I'm not a Rust developer, but I must admit I'm kinda surprised by this statement. Let me do my own research.

An awful lot of the well paid rust jobs (good comp, good bennies) are in the blockchain space.

I know a handful of rust developers who refuse to work on anything that touches a blockchain, and they regularly express frustration that the majority of rust jobs they see advertised are in that space.

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