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Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

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Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#201

Post by andsoitis »

PheonixPharts wrote: post #175
shanusmagnus wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get why this is viewed as beyond the pale? Sounds like your manager cared about how you all were doing, and wanted a way to observe trends in how you were doing in order to help you, which is the same exact thing a manager does implicitly every time she talks to you. Obviously this isn't reproduceable psychological science, but is there more to the story to explain why you found this to be objectionable?

I see you've never worked in a toxic organization (or at least not noticed). My experience has been if you voice displeasure it will be reflected in your performance review. I had a role on a team once, I was doing great, getting work done and all my coworkers enjoyed working with me. Got along well with the team lead etc. However I was grossly mislead as to what the role was. I finally decided to talk to my manager…

> I had a role on a team once, I was doing great, getting work done and all my coworkers enjoyed working with me. Got along well with the team lead etc. However I was grossly mislead as to what the role was.

Can you explain how you were doing great (presumably at the role) but was grossly misled as to what the role was?

Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#202

Post by julianeon »

itsoktocry wrote: post #156
kstenerud wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been in situations like this before. The end result is one giant popularity contest, with the beautiful people clique getting the highest ratings, and everyone else getting varying degrees of shit based on how unpopular they are and how much intrigue is currently going on. They didn't even have to actively collude; humans come with very sensitive popularity meters built-in, so they instinctively know where to pl…

> with the beautiful people clique getting the highest ratings, I don't think you're wrong, but it's also a cynical interpretation. Another way to look at it is that people who other people want to work with get high ratings. Is that bad? From a company culture standpoint, I'm not sure it is. In fact, I often see posts and comments on these very boards about the toxicity surrounding "really good programmers" who are…

I mean, by the same logic, you could also say it's also a cynical interpretation of the high school clique...

Another way to look at [high school cliques] is that people who other people want to be around get high [social] ratings. Is that bad?

From experience: yes, it is. The fact that this criticism can be reframed in a way that hides the problem, that something we've all experienced becomes invisible, shows that it is a problem. There is a kind of problem with group social dynamics that can't be easily ironed out; the real experience of existing high school cliques is proof of this. Unsurprisingly, this same problem that comes up in high schools appears in workplaces also.

Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#203

Post by e3bc54b2 »

DonHopkins wrote: post #127
fathyb wrote: 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…

Sounds like something that happened at Sun around 1990, which I described earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15660759 At Sun, during the dark days of Solaris, when everyone was depressed and wanted to quit, our manager sat down with each of us and asked: "I want to know your happiness index, a number from 1 to 10. You can use any algorithm you want to come up with it, just use the same algorithm each time…

> cow-orkers

Not sure if its a typo, but sure fits the theme.

Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#204

Post by FredPret »

sjtindell wrote: post #34

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,…

Here’s another thought: Decreasing communication costs decreases the optimal organization size.

In the days of horse-delivered mail, you wanted all your employees in one big building, and you wanted to cover all the functions inside your own org so you don’t have to send many slow, expensive letters.

Fast forward to email and zoom and automated SaaS businesses - there is very little friction in engaging a third party to do the things you don’t specialize in. You don’t need any employees beyond your core team anymore.

Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#205

Post by westpfelia »

jaywalk wrote: post #165
asien wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2 MB of logs per minute of user streaming time. 2MB/minute is 33KB/second. How is that impressive?

I think it's impressive that they somehow found 33KB/second worth of data to log for each stream. I can't even imagine the amount of useless shit that must be logged to get to that number.

This is where I'm at. Like thats honestly not much log data. But what are they actually logging? I imagine there is a LOT of repetitive data.

Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#206

Post by vecter »

thinkharderdev wrote: post #152
koonsolo wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this theory is proven in practice. If you look at the major tech companies, they are all run by people who programmed at some point. Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Larry Page, ... . However, Steve Jobs seems to be an exception here (In Dutch, we have the expression "The exception proves the rule" ;), which basically means that all theories have exceptions) I think it's very hard for non-builders to really…

Was Bezos an engineer? I thought he was a hedge fund guy before founding Amazon.

He studied Physics at Princeton and had a technical background from what I understand.

Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#207

Post by chaostheory »

fathyb wrote: 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…

This is how Bridgewater, Ray Dalio’s company, is run.

The app is based on his philosophy https://www.principles.com/

Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#208

Post by FredPret »

schmeckleberg wrote: post #164
asien wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2 MB of logs per minute of user streaming time. 2MB/minute is 33KB/second. How is that impressive?

i think you and the above poster are in vehement agreement. ingesting 2 MBs of logs per minute is impressive in its pluperfect unimpressiveness. maybe the presentation was called "Timmy's first named pipe" or "Sally explores /etc/logrotate.d"

That’s a LOT of text to describe me sitting on my couch. 2MB per minute is far more than the most detailed biography in existence.

Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#209

Post by nemothekid »

koonsolo wrote: post #83
blocked_again wrote: post #38

Companies should only hire entrepreneurs and engineers who has proven track record as builders as execs. Hiring people from business schools and non engineers as execs is the stupidest thing you can do for long term sucess of the company. Hire builders. Not resume builders.

I think this theory is proven in practice. If you look at the major tech companies, they are all run by people who programmed at some point. Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Larry Page, ... . However, Steve Jobs seems to be an exception here (In Dutch, we have the expression "The exception proves the rule" ;), which basically means that all theories have exceptions) I think it's very hard for non-builders to really…

>Jeff Bezos

Jeff Bezos was a programmer?

Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#210

Post by tomlockwood »

andrew_ wrote: post #186
tomlockwood wrote: post #59

Sounds like those employees that took exit packages to leave after their "apolitical" pivot 2 years ago, got a good deal. There was a lot of congratulatory posting here then, about how the company was going to come out of that a lot better, and with less of the fat. Now it doesn't look like that really happened.

We can't possibly know that solely based on (what other comments have rightly pointed out) a vague, anon petition lacking nuance or details. This could just as well be a very small, vocal minority. We have no way of knowing without more information.

One of the stated goals of the no-politics at work stuff was to allow Coinbase staff to "Support each other, and create team cohesion". It doesn't look like that has happened!
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