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Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

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Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#211

Post by dangerface »

shanusmagnus wrote: post #161
DonHopkins wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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?

> 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.

I often find kpi is implemented with the messaging that it is to help managers understand the staff but once implemented this messaging is quickly replaced with the manager bitching that his staff have not met their happiness quota.

Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#213

Post by sumy23 »

epberry wrote: post #199

Coinbase has been slipping in several ways. - Yesterday was onboarding my friend to Coinbase wallet and the landing page for that product was 404'ing. This is the first result on Google! Proof - https://imgur.com/yMt1N49 - They activated the dapp browser in the app, with a new wallet that's different than my existing coinbase wallet. Why?? Why do I now have 2 wallets. - Coinbase direct deposit does not work with Gust…

> Rescinding offers. Terrible, how could they not forsee a massive backlash?

While it is sad that offers are rescinded, the company is struggling. Sometimes, hard choices need to be made.

Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#214

Post by eightysixfour »

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"

2 MB/per minute/per stream at Netflix scale is crazy.

Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#215

Post by mceachen »

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…

I can see how this went sideways at a toxic company, but as both a manager and an individual contributor, sharing this metadata with your team _can_ be a healthy outlet, as long as:

- the manager and team lead actually take low happiness scores as a call to action to dig into what's going on and try to help address whatever is bringing on stress or sorrow

- the score is authentic--people feel safe enough to share grievances

- the score is only shared with the core team: HR and higher-ups don't see these (Lord knows what they'd do with it)

During stand-ups I'd ask "where's your thumb?" -- people would then either do thumbs-down or thumbs-up, but people quickly switched to analog--pointing their thumb somewhere between 6:30 and 11:30.

If people showed a low score, they could discuss it in the standup with the team, or follow-up in their one-on-one meeting that week, in private.

(I've done this at four companies--if the criteria can be met, it can really help avoid disconnects, unneeded stress, and esprit de corps).

Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#216

Post by coryfklein »

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…

And if you manager had been regularly checking in with how you are feeling then this would have been... worse? I suspect that, given a manager with as poor people skills as yours has, your manager initiating the contact and asking you instead of you going to your manager may have instead made all the difference.

Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#217

Post by krnlpnc »

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…

Thumbs up on communication, thumbs up on completeness of work on time.

But, like major thumbs down on their vibe. They need more positive vibes.

Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#218

Post by coryfklein »

shanusmagnus wrote: post #161
DonHopkins wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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?

Ditto. We do this at my company today, but it's done as part of a culture of trust and openness. (Which culture – I might add – is one of the biggest reasons I'm still there.) And it doesn't displace 1:1s where my manager can talk in person about how I'm doing either. Why wouldn't my manager want to know if I'm happy at work? This seems like one of the most basic things your manager would want to know, and often enough to use a tool to automatically share this regularly.

Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#219

Post by hdjjhhvvhga »

itsoktocry wrote: post #176
hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I dunno, it only asks for a thumbs up or thumbs down Yeah, but why? Why would I even "rate" my coworkers? I would prefer not to. If someone is a prick, I talk to them first, and if it doesn't help and the case is serious, I go to the manager or file a formal complaint. What's the point of giving people thumbs up/down? Someone has a bad day, let's make it even worse by giving them a thumbs down, it's ridiculous.

> Someone has a bad day, let's make it even worse by giving them a thumbs down, it's ridiculous. So giving them a thumbs-down is bad, but filing a formal complaint is fine? That seems like an extreme escalation. Maybe I'm far less cynical than others here, but as has been mentioned in other comments, I don't believe that people are going to down-rank people out of spite. And if you ask a broad question like, "Is this…

> So giving them a thumbs-down is bad, but filing a formal complaint is fine? That seems like an extreme escalation.

No, on the opposite. If a coworker is just a bit unpleasant but I'm forced to rate them, I'm more likely to rate them negatively for reasons I have no idea about (maybe their dog died or are taking new medicine or whatever).

If I'm not asked to rate them, I won't do anything, until it's grave enough I should intervene. In this case, I will contact them directly trying to understand them and solve the problem in an amicable way, without involving any external party. This helps in a vast majority of cases. Only in extremely rare cases, once in a few years, the problem becomes so grave that another person needs to be involved. In any case, giving anyone a thumbs down doesn't solve anything.

Re: Coinbase employees petition to remove execs

#220

Post by qgin »

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…

I have a hard time not imagining the shoe Community (season 5 episode 8) where the college starts using an app that rates every interaction between people.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/App_Development_and_Condimen...

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